Posts Tagged ‘values’

Status Update on My Values Project

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

A while ago I polled my family and friends to get a list of values that they think I hold. The list my method produced was obviously not orthagonal: some values, such as order and neatness, were obviously close to synonyms. I experimented a bit with using Google hits to calculate orthagonality (eg: hits for “order” + hits for “neatness” / hits for “order AND neatness”) but got some nonsense results.

The five personality factors were extracted from adjectives of language using factor analysis: a statistical method for finding orthagonal factors. I looked into using that analysis of language on my values. The first issue is that the factor analysis is not trivial: most adjectives are loaded on more than one factor, suggesting that a model called “the Abridged Big Five-Dimensional Circumplex” (AB5C) is more appropriate. I am nowhere close to understanding it, but I think the model basically says that five-dimensional personality space is not Euclidean but Elliptic.

Applying personality results to values also raises the question: what’s the difference between values and traits? It turns out there is some research that finds very definite links. I haven’t had time to read this research yet, but I’m guessing that traits drive non-conscious behaviour and values drive conscious behaviour – the gap between them is cognitive dissonance.

Related to both values and traits are the 24 character strengths that are one of the foundations of positive psychology. The strengths were generated from factor analysis of the values of many cultures and are experimentally supported. They get organized into six virtues that I’ve heard do not hold up under factor analysis, although I haven’t gotten around to reading the studies (so think of them as mnemonics).

Playing to your strengths is one of the best ways to be happy. So focusing on your strengths is probably more useful than traits or values. I have a bunch more research to do (and maybe some movies to watch) before I figure out where to go from here…

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Define: Authenticity

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Wikipedia says there’s a debate about whether authenticity is a measure of the things you do or the way you do them. The former definition strikes me as degenerate: surely violating the rules of society just to be cool is not what anyone means by “authentic”. Non-conventional behaviour only appears authentic to the casual third party who doesn’t consider the possible benefits. So authenticity looks like a virtue ethical system: the reasons justify the ends.

Development of authenticity in a person could be similar to morality:

  1. do whatever is easiest
  2. do what everybody else is doing
  3. do things for your own reasons

Apparently the authentic = counterculture definition came from the idea that Western society is inherently inauthentic, so anything against Western society must be authentic. But subcultures create and maintain themselves through appeals to specific authenticities, so it must be relative. An action is authentic if and only if the person doing the action has “pure” intent. Purity is a measure of adherence to a culture’s values.

Striving for authenticity is either trying to get at the “soul” of your culture, or trying to avoid inauthentic impulses that have infected your culture (such as from the dominant culture). Either way, it’s still within and relative to your place in culture.

Cravings for authenticity are not sacred, they’re just a cravings to be the best, deepest sheep. If you buy the rejection of authenticity you have three options:

  1. accept that your culture is a game and decide to win it
  2. decide to worship inauthenticity instead
  3. stop considering some reasons for doing things better than others

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HOWTO: Figure Out Your Values

Monday, July 6th, 2009

I want a list of my values to experiment with personal branding and just to see what all the fuss is about. I don’t think sitting down and thinking hard about it is the right way to generate the list. So here’s what I did instead:

  1. recruit n family members, good friends and ex-significant others
  2. take this list of 374 values and divide them randomly amongst your participants so that each gets 374/n values
  3. ask each participant to choose 374/n2 that they believe you hold (they should find this easy)
  4. for each participant, take the 374/n values chosen by other participants and ask them to choose the top 374/n2 of those (this will be much harder)
  5. rank the values based on how many participants chose each one: the top couple are your values

For example:

  1. I chose 4 family, 5 friends and 2 ex-girlfriends as participants*: n = 11
  2. I dealt the values in alphabetical order to make 11 lists of 34 values each
  3. each participant selected 3 values from their list, giving me 33 selected values
  4. each participant got a list of the 30 of those values they hadn’t seen before
  5. each participant selected 3 values from the second list

Note that all the values are positive: they’re different from characteristics. It’s important to stress that your participants are supposed to be making their best judgement on your internal nature: they’re not supposed to be saying what they like best about you or pushing their own beliefs. I chose plurality runoff voting because I believe it’s the easiest system for the voter.

* One of my friends took a bit of convincing that this wasn’t a test of him; one of my ex-girlfriends completely refused.

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Your Personal Brand

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

Modernist identity theory says that it is virtuous to be authentic to your essence. Acting inauthentically is a cardinal sin. For example, if a guy asks how to get girls, most of the time he’ll be told “just be yourself”.

If left to our own devices, most of the decisions we make are satisficing: choosing to do things that are good enough. You wear whatever’s clean, you watch whatever’s on, you do stuff because your friends are doing it, etc. (If your habitual actions happen to be Stuff White People Like, then you’re automatically authentic.)

But under modernism, this unplanned, unexamined life is supposed to be better than a life that’s engineered, a life of artifice. I beg to differ: people should be allowed to invent their identities, to “fake it till you make it”. The test is how well they pull it off, how consistent is their identity? And, of course, acting a particular way for personal gain is not cool, while acting a particular way because it’s enjoyable is cool.

Let’s call this act of constructing, projecting and maintaining an identity “personal branding“. I think that rather than construct an identity out of thin air, you should look at where you’re successful in life and what aspects you’re happy about. Distil a brand essence out of those. Then build on your strengths and nudge the rest of your life into alignment with your brand.

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How NOT to Figure Out Your Values

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

A lot of guides to living your life with values talk as if you should just have your values at the tip of your tongue, and all that’s needed is to write them down and refer to the list frequently. If your values really are that present, why wouldn’t you already be following them? I think that most people are not in touch with their values. The better guides have introspection exercises to reveal them.

Introspection is untrustworthy: a lot of crazy philosophy, psychology and religion has come out of very smart people doing introspection. I especially don’t trust introspection for this kind of thing. It will yield a combination of society’s values (the metanarrative), the unrealistic person you’d like to be (superman’s values) and values that other people are pushing on you (mom’s values).

I don’t believe that people have intrinsic, unchanging values, but introspection will not even give insight to your socially-constructed self. Postmodernism says that not only is the self not fixed, but it’s fuzzier and less solid than we think it is. (And we think that our selves are sharp and solid because of introspection.)

Instead, you need to observe yourself to reveal values in your behavior. Rather than identifying the values you’d like to live by, I think it’s better to identify the values you actually are living by. Observing yourself without falling into the trap of introspection is hard: it’s easier to observe other people and get other people to observe you.

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All the Cool Kids have Values

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

It’s very fashionable right now to identify your values and live according to your values. Promoting “good values” is what the religious right says they’re doing. Corporations are writing values instead of mission statements (for example, the BC Public Service). It’s big in self-help literature from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (see habit #2: “begin with the end in mind”). Values are a major research focus in positive psychology.

I’m interested in identifying my values for three reasons:

  • To better understand why values are fashionable and what the effects of that are
  • I’ve read that talking about your values is a good way to create rapport with people, which is something I’m working on.
  • Measuring your actions against your values is a way to determine if you live with grace. However, David Allen observes in Getting Things Done that living according to your values usually creates extra work: “it raises the bar of our standards, making us notice that much more that needs changing”.

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