Personality is a complex, multi-layered formation that has its own hierarchy. In Russian psychology, the highest level of personality structure is called orientation. This is a system of values, beliefs and attitudes that are formed during life. They largely guide a person’s activities and determine his attitude towards the world, himself and other people.
Values, their types and hierarchy
Everything in our life has its own value, and we are talking here not only about material or monetary terms. But the value of objects and phenomena is different. There are things that are of fundamental importance, and there are those that we can easily abandon in favor of others that are more significant and valuable. This value system largely determines our life choices, our careers, hobbies, principles, and relationships with others.
Types of values
In psychology, values mean objects, phenomena, ideals, etc. that are significant for a person. Each of us has such significant things in different areas of life, and their content is also different. There are 3 types of values.
Material values
These include real objects of the surrounding world that are necessary for a person to feel comfortable. Some of them are vital, for example, clothing, housing, food. And others can be classified as luxury or increased comfort items - cars, household appliances, smartphones, jewelry, accessories, etc. A person can do without them, but for many these things are a symbol of well-being, and owning them is considered prestigious. That is, these things have a transitory value, which is determined either by fashion or by the subjective preferences of a person.
Spiritual values
They are often contrasted with material ones and are considered more sublime and significant for humans and humanity as a whole. However, this is not always the case. Spiritual values are a product of human consciousness, and their significance is determined primarily by cultural traditions, moral norms, ideological principles, etc. You must agree that the spiritual values of the Middle Ages were not always of a sublime nature, and not all of them are significant for modern man .
There are, of course, universal human values that are important in any society and in any historical era. These include freedom, family, love, friendship, loyalty and devotion, and a sense of duty.
From the point of view of human evolution, spiritual values were formed later than material ones and include several types:
- life values associated with universal human norms and of fundamental importance for people’s lives: love, faith, freedom, family, health, protection of offspring, etc.;
- moral values reflect a person’s attitude to the basic categories of morality: honesty and fidelity, humanism and compassion, duty and respect;
- aesthetic values, perhaps the youngest of all types, associated with aesthetic experiences, such as a sense of beauty, enjoyment of form, sound, color, etc.; aesthetic values are determined by cultural traditions.
Speaking about the superiority of spiritual values over material ones, we should not forget about their subjective, individual nature. So, perhaps, for one person, fidelity to duty will be a significant value, but for another it will have no meaning at all. Some will be faithful to the chosen principles of humanism, while others will promote unprincipledness and misanthropy.
Social values
This type of values is associated with interpersonal relationships and a person’s idea of the role of society and his place in it. Social values include the following:
- belonging to a particular social group;
- circle of friends;
- Friends;
- communication skills;
- political views and beliefs;
- social status in the hierarchy of interpersonal relationships.
Man is part of society, and the normal life of even the most withdrawn and unsociable individual is impossible outside of society. Therefore, social values are objective and significant for any person, even if he is not always aware of it.
Terminal and instrumental values
In psychology, these two types of values were described by M. Rokeach (USA), the author of a well-known method of psychological diagnostics of a person’s value orientations.
Terminal values are understood as basic values that are significant in themselves. These include spiritual and social values, and vitally important material ones, for example, friendship, beauty, education, career, family, creativity, health, freedom, comfort, etc. Sometimes terminal values are compared with the goals of life that one sets for one’s life. yourself as a person. This is what we strive for.
Instrumental values, as the name suggests, are tools for achieving life goals. Terminal values include, first of all, personality traits, for example, perseverance, hard work, responsibility, creativity, curiosity, will, tolerance, open-mindedness, etc. This is what we value in other people and in ourselves, what we believe necessary to develop.
Hierarchy of values
Since values have different weights and different significance, in psychology it is customary to talk about a hierarchy of values. It can be presented in the form of a pyramid of several steps or levels, and the structure of the pyramid is different for each person.
For some, the pinnacle will be success, career, material well-being, expressed in a car of a particular brand or penthouse. And another person will have love and a happy family at the top of the hierarchy of values. It is believed that spiritual values are more important and significant than material ones, but not everyone has them at the upper levels of the pyramid.
No less important is what values underlie our lives and form the basis of the hierarchy. Some people consider family to be such a solid foundation, others consider material wealth, while others consider man as the measure of all things at the base of the pyramid.
Factors influencing the rethinking of values
As we have already noted, the composition of life values and their hierarchy change throughout a person’s life. Their transformation can be influenced by both negative and positive factors. Let's get to know some of them.
Change in social status
If a person lived alone for a long time, thinking only about himself, then marriage and the birth of a child will greatly change his value system. He is starting a new life, where family harmony and happiness will be a priority.
Also, social status may change with the death of a loved one. This is a very serious blow, which often leads to a re-evaluation of one’s entire life and a revision of its meaning.
Financial difficulties
There are two possible scenarios here. Firstly, financial difficulties may arise due to the collapse of a career. Then a person is forced not only to moderate his financial appetite, but also to reconsider the values associated with self-realization and profession.
Secondly, a person may place material goods at the top of the hierarchy, but not be able to provide for his growing appetite. He gets into debt, loans that he cannot repay, and bankruptcy occurs. Of course, such a situation will entail a rethinking of life attitudes.
Change in health status
It's no secret that while we feel great, full of strength and energy, we think little about the value of health. A dangerous or long-term illness radically changes this situation. Of course, it’s better not to let this happen and take care of your health from a young age!
Another rethinking of life occurs when a person begins to notice the first signs of impending old age. Approaching the end of life's journey forces a person to look back at the years he has lived, rethink something, and perhaps find a new meaning in life.
Dissatisfaction with life
It happens that outwardly everything is fine with a person: a good job, a happy family, regular rest. But he is constantly consumed by dissatisfaction with his life. Irritation towards everything and everyone gradually grows.
In such a situation, a person should pause and try to rethink his life values. Perhaps something is not at its right level in the hierarchy (for example, you want to devote more time to creativity rather than work) or a person simply forgot about some important value and did not allow it to be realized in his life.
Wrong priorities
Poor prioritization can occur due to low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence. Sometimes a person lacks the inner strength to stand up for what is important to him, and he lives “like everyone else.” Perhaps you have heard the expression: “I don’t live my life.” This is exactly the situation.
But sooner or later, such a life ceases to suit, because the person feels unhappy, as if superfluous. As a result, a rethinking of priorities and values becomes inevitable.
Personal Beliefs
In psychology, beliefs are understood as a person’s system of views on the world and his place in it, on relationships with other people and attitude to business. Beliefs are formed throughout an individual's life under the influence of the social environment and personal experience.
The dominant role is played by the social factor; therefore, the foundations of beliefs are laid in our consciousness by society. The authority of the source and the faith factor are of great importance. Children trust their parents and teachers; they are authorities for them, and therefore have a decisive influence on the formation of their worldview. And adults believe in politicians (although they don’t always admit it), the media, authoritative friends and books. It is these sources that have the most noticeable influence on a person’s beliefs.
However, it is also impossible to call a person a passive object of social influence. He passes through himself and processes any information, correlates it with existing experience and significant values. Therefore, we can say that beliefs are a kind of fusion of the social and the individual.
Beliefs play an important role in a person's life. They largely determine his social position and personality orientation. Beliefs are also closely related to life goals and attitudes.
What are life values?
So, a person’s life values can be called the scale of assessments and measures with the help of which he verifies and evaluates his life. During various periods of human existence, this scale was transformed and modified, but certain measures and assessments were always present in it and continue to be present now.
A person’s life values are absolute values - they occupy the first place in his worldview and have a direct impact on which areas of life will be a priority for him, and what he will perceive as secondary.
Attitudes, their types and role in human life
Attitudes are an ambiguous concept; in psychology it is used in two meanings:
- as a certain, predetermined perspective of perception of reality, events, people;
- as a predisposition to a certain behavior or type of social activity.
In general, an attitude can be considered as a person’s readiness to perform certain actions and actions. For example, before crossing the road, a person usually automatically checks to see if a car is moving. This triggers an attitude formed in childhood. Or another example: seeing through the window that it is cloudy and windy outside, we dress warmer, as the setting is triggered - if there is wind, then it is cold.
These are the so-called everyday attitudes, and ideological attitudes are in many ways close to beliefs, connected with them and often formed in inextricable unity. For example, a person with nationalist beliefs has attitudes toward perceiving people of other nationalities as less valuable, flawed, and endowed with unpleasant qualities.
Unlike beliefs, attitudes are less conscious. For example, there is such a widespread attitude that the higher a person’s social status, the smarter, more educated, and more professional he is. Therefore, without realizing why, we trust the opinion of our boss more than that of a subordinate or even a colleague.
Types of installations
In psychology, there are 3 types of attitudes depending on their influence on a certain area of activity:
- Meaningful attitudes relate to the content of our consciousness and include several components: behavioral – associated with the willingness to act in accordance with beliefs; informational, forming a person’s belief system; evaluative, influencing a person’s attitude to the world and expressed in emotions of sympathy and antipathy.
- Goal settings define the process of goal setting. This type of attitude includes, for example, the idea of the importance of career growth and the need for hard work to achieve success, or the conviction of a girl who associates her future exclusively with marriage. Goal settings support a person’s activity in case of failure and encourage him to start moving towards the goal again and again.
- Operational settings control the choice of ways and means to achieve a goal. This type is perhaps the least stable. Attitudes change under the influence of the learning process, personal experience, advice from others, information from various external sources (books, the Internet, etc.). No matter how inert a person’s thinking may be, he will never endlessly perform actions that do not bring results, but will try to find something more effective.
The identification of these types is rather arbitrary; in the real consciousness of a person, all attitudes are intertwined and interconnected.
Features of the formation of a system of life values
The system of life values of each person begins to form from the first years of his life, but it is finally formed only upon reaching a responsible age, i.e. by about 18-20 years, although even after that it may change in some ways. The process of its formation itself takes place according to a certain algorithm.
Schematically, this algorithm can be expressed as follows:
- Aspiration > Ideal
- Aspiration > Goal > Ideal
- Aspiration > Values > Purpose > Ideal
- Aspiration > Means > Values > Goal > Ideal
However, subsequently, between all these points, another one appears - ethics, as a result of which the whole scheme takes on the following form:
- Striving > Ethics > Means > Ethics > Values > Ethics > Goal > Ethics > Ideal
From this it turns out that first of all, the ideal and the very desire for this ideal arise. An ideal, which can also be called an image, if there is no desire for it, is no longer such.
At the first stage, which is most often instinctive, the ideal is neutral from an ethical point of view, i.e. it cannot be assessed in any way, and it can be formed in the form of a sensory-emotional substance, the content of which is quite difficult to determine. The meaning that is attached to the ideal is formed only at the stage of transformation into a goal. And only after this, reaching the third stage, values are formed that serve as resources, conditions and rules for achieving the goal that leads to the ideal. And the entire algorithm ultimately ends with the so-called inventory of the necessary and available means to achieve the goal.
Each element of the presented algorithm is extremely important, but you need to pay attention to the fact that the ideal, goal and means are formed and selected under the influence of not only needs, but also ethical norms, which seem to “filter” all stages of the algorithm. At the same time, ethical standards may exist in the human mind, as well as in the mass consciousness, representing the results of the action of previous algorithms, and therefore be perceived as “existing objectively.” In addition, they can also be formed as new ones, being conditioned by a newly emerged ideal and the corresponding algorithm.
The life of any person, as we have already mentioned, from childhood begins to obey this algorithm, and it does not matter what it concerns: the choice of a future profession, a loved one, political or religious views and actions performed. And here “ideals” play a special role, regardless of whether they exist in a person’s consciousness or in his subconscious.
To summarize, we can say that a person’s system of life values is a fairly stable structure, despite the fact that it is subject to changes, both small and global. And a person’s awareness of his system of life values is the first step towards understanding his life purpose.
We also recommend reading:
- Storytelling
- Definition of values
- Picture of the world: the essence of the phenomenon, sources of formation and the nature of the influence on humans
- Graves' Spiral Dynamics: Pathways to Human Development
- Brian Tracy: "Live Simpler": Key Ideas
- 7-S structure
- The influence of social roles on personality development
- The main life values of people: what is most important in life and how to understand it?
- Axiology
- Social anxiety
- Something very important
Key words:1Self-knowledge
Kinds
- Cultural are ideal and material objects that have historical and material, as well as humanistic significance. Here, it is clear that these are works of art, painting, and architecture. In general, any object created within the framework of one or another type of art is a cultural object.
- Spiritual values are a system of beliefs, traditions, and moral norms that shape acceptable and unacceptable human behavior in society, and also set the ideals to which society strives. They determine a person’s attitude towards himself and others. As a rule, they are included in cultural ones.
- Moral is a system of ideas and beliefs about good and evil. Read more about morality here.
- Material values can be money, objects of art, science, painting, and indeed any objects that people use. It is clear that everything here depends on the context. For example, when we say “He has some material values,” we immediately imagine expensive jewelry, ancient and expensive things, gold - in a word, everything that the agents of socialization told us at one time.
- Humanities. These are values that place human life, development and vital activity at the forefront. They (humanity, the value of human life, etc.) became especially relevant after the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War.
Are you living your chosen personal values?
When you have 5 to 10 core values left, see how you live them. How well do you live each of the values. Rate each on a scale from 1 to 10. Where 10 is the optimal rating.
Determine your level of satisfaction with each priority. You can write it down in a notepad or PDF document. Write the date at the top of the column. Do this assessment once a month or quarter. This way you can evaluate your progress.
For example, you scored 7 points for one of the values. What changes need to be made, what needs to happen in order to respect this value more?
This is where self-coaching invites you to come into play:
- Define your goals.
- Create a plan.
- Update it.
- Check with top priorities.
- Assess the difference in your level of life satisfaction.
Do values change throughout life?
A person, as a rule, enters adult life with an already formed system of values. But this does not mean that until the end of his days it will remain unchanged. Life changes - priorities change, experience accumulates. All this leaves an imprint on the value-semantic sphere.
How do a person's priorities change? Most often this happens without his conscious participation. For example, due to age-related changes. Yesterday's teenager and a person who has crossed the 30-year mark are very different in their views, lifestyle, and habits. If for the first the main things in life can be pleasure and entertainment, then the second is more focused on family and career.
Also, accumulated negative experience can lead to the breakdown of the existing system of priorities. For example, a person was in a relationship for a long time, made plans to start a family, but his partner betrayed him. Having experienced severe pain and fearing a repetition of the situation, our hero decides to reduce the importance of the value “love” for himself and focus on his career. Or rather, his brain decides this for him, and he himself simply feels frustration in this area of life.
Source
Sources:
- //iklife.ru/samorazvitie/chto-takoe-cennost.html
- //KtoNaNovenkogo.ru/voprosy-i-otvety/cennosti-chto-ehto-semejnye-zhiznennye-duhovnye-cennosti-cheloveka.html
- //ege59.ru/2021/05/17/tsennosti-eto/
The importance of personal values
Values are what people value, what they extol above all else. These are phenomena, ideals or objects from different areas of life that are significant for each of us.
Values highlight what we stand for. It is a part of us, our unique, individual essence. Life priorities reflect our behavior ; they provide each of us with a code of conduct. And we get satisfaction if we follow and honor personal values.
Otherwise, bad habits begin to prevail, the person degrades or returns to childhood to raise self-esteem.
