where do the personal values come from?
May 19, 2007 - 2:41pm — louise kronstrand
Hello everybody.
I hope that someone can help me clarify a question - because my mind seems to keep wondering on about this: if the "true" self in ACT is 'self-as-context' (because it is more 'functional') which is much less 'personal'that self-as-content. From where does the client choose his personal values? By which criterion are these values chosen, if the truth criterion in ACT is pragmatic? If both self-as-content and self-as-proces are constantly changing, and self-as-context is impersonal, where do the values rest?
-Louise, Denmark
Below the words
That's a question I've wondered about as well. We use words like 'self' and 'values' but to me they point to something that is very intimate at a deeper level - something 'below' the words themselves.
Do you want your life to be about finding intellectual answers to questions like "Where do personal values come from?"
Or is there something else that is more important to you in this life?
Values are defined by actions.
Louise,
If I don't know someone I can get a good idea about what they value by watching what he or she does. If I had and "eye-in-the-sky" camera (just video, no audio) I would just watch and over just a day or so I would start to get a good idea about what the person valued. Now I might ask this person to tell me about his or her values with words, but there is no guarantee that the words will match the actions.
It's the same with all of us. When we use words about values we say one thing. Our actions probably tell another story about our values.
With clients my colleagues and I have them start by watching themselves for several days before they start using a lot of words about values. Of course this is primarily a self-as-context exercise, but it also serves the values conversation well.
Cheers!
Kevin
Excellent question on a subject often fudged
Good question. Not often addressed in ACT materials, which prefer to speak of values in terms of how clinicians can help clients define them - with the usually unspoken implication that values are always positive rather than destructive.
However, RFT materials do speak a little more to your question - that is, where values lie in relation to the three relevant selves of content, knowing, and context. What's interesting to discover or perhaps reaffirm is that none of these three selves is truly defined as being the "best"; it's simply that many of us tend to spend too much time with self-as-content and not enough time with self-as-context. Rather, a balancing of all three selves is sought.
Below is an excerpt from a book chapter that illustrates this; you can download it from the Publications part of this site (if you're an ACBS member) - Barnes-Holmes, Y., Hayes, S. C., Barnes-Holmes, D., & Roche, B. (2001), "Relational frame theory: A post-Skinnerian account of human language and cognition." The example being given is of a person trying to decide on a future career, specifically, whether they should study to be a doctor:
"If the person simply chooses a career based largely on self as content, little or no contact is being made verbally with many of the important consequences of that decision. The person ... may decide to train to be a doctor because she or he thinks "doctors are good people and so becoming a doctor will make me a good person." In this case, the verbal construction of self (as content) as a good person dominates the decision, rather than the verbally constructed future of what being a doctor would actually be like. As a result, the person may well find later that he or she does not like being a doctor, thus having wasted many years training.
"A decision based solely on self as process might also be problematic. In this case, the person might verbally construct a career as a doctor and decide that "I feel like I would enjoy it." If the decision is made on this basis alone, the person may start training to be a doctor and then give up 'impulsively' if at some point being a doctor no longer feels good.
"In short, when a person makes a 'good decision,' all three types of self seem likely to play a role. Self as context broadens the scope of the stimulus control, so that neither self as content nor self as process obtains absolute control over the final decision. In effect, self as context provides a psychological space in which the person can contact self as content (e.g. I have good eyesight and a steady hand, so I might make a good surgeon) and self as process (e.g., I really enjoy reading medical textbooks, so I might enjoy being a doctor).
"In this sense, a more balanced decision can be made in which a broader range of relevant issues are factored into the final choice."
Two points turning
I like this post. Some strong points made. Going further off of this, with an attempt to answer the original post - Louis' question - I have something to say. I think that this is a common theme in psychology.
Picture a 500-lb gorilla and a... 500-lb gorilla ;). Who wins?
It's not that easy, is it? Basically, the self-as-context offers up the value or even "force feeds" the value to the person when the self-as-context, or the environment that is considered the self-as-context environment is overpowering. Similarly, the self-as-process wins out when the self-as-process or the environment linked to this is overpowering. What exactly "power" is might be a little more difficult to discern.
This is a really stupid example, but it's external, and I think it's easy to understand and remember. I'll give it:
A Shaking Aspen values its posture, in nature, but when the wind blows strongly, the tree bends with the breeze at the expense of its aesthetic.
This doesn't show a dynamic value shift. I think someone else was driving at the old, 'What's a value? I can't touch it?' Refute. It's questionable whether or not there is "value" involved....
I think that the next question on your list of questions to pose should be this: 'When does the self-as-context overpower the self-as-process and visa-versa?'
Perhaps that is part of what Steve Hayes has covered in his research on the strategies for effecting the mechanisms of change in acceptance and commitment therapy.
~J
Values
Hi Louise
There are at least two principle ways to answer this. One is the more strict, scientific answer.
It is important to remember that values are no objects, nothing thst exists as an independent "thing". In a strict way, there are no "values", there is only an organism acting in a context. What we are trying to analyze is a particular kind of action, a particular (verbal) behavior. Valuing is something a person does. What controls this behavior of valuing? Well, as all other behavior: context: past (history) and present. So I guess you could say that the choice is made as a result of this individual's history and present context.
Now the use of the word choice brings us to another level of answer. If the above is scientifically correct then why talk about choice? Simply because that is helpfull and there is no better way to speak to this definite human experience, that is the experience of choosing. The actual historical, and present, control of my behavior is not available to me for discrimination. Except in a very limited sense. I simple can not know what controls my behavior, not in any scientifically solid way. So in that sense I "simply do it", that is I choose. Experientially "free action". In a way, then, we could "choose anything". Of course we don't. History gives us limits, some things are things that atract us, other things we don't like. But there is no "definite answer" that we can appeal to. If we do, then that is what we value. But where do we base that? If there is an answer, that is what we value. And so on until "this is just what I do!!" Choice. Valuing is choosing. Freely. What do you really, really, really want?
Niklas