Know why I am doing a series on this?

What Psychologists Don’t Talk About?

What Psychologists Don’t Talk About Value System?

CONTENTS

Introduction

A Non-existent Pond

Learning to Co-Exist

Value System as Pivot

Ordering Thoughts, Emotions, Perceptions, and Tasks

Value System as Guide

Summary

Each person has a value system that may not be a replica of another individual’s value system. However, we have to learn to live with the discrepancies. The most surprising aspect of life is that all our psychological functioning revolves around our value system. This is What Psychologists Don’t Talk About Value System?

Introduction

We are all born asocial. We live in our tiny world, trying to fulfill our basic needs. But as we grow up, we gradually start being introduced to every segment of society. We start learning social interactions, and this learning will continue as long as we live.

All our psychological functions are geared towards forming a value system of our own. It could be our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, or actions. This system, in turn, will guide our behavior throughout our life.

A Non-existent Pond

Let’s look at a purely hypothetical situation.

Suppose someone in the highest authority creates a pond and tells all the members of society, “Throw any person into the pond, if you don’t like them.” People will slowly start thinking of reasons not to like specific people in their lives.

Finally, a time will come when a few people get ready to throw you, too, into the pond.

Of course, people can climb out of the pond, but then, everyone’s preoccupation will be to search for people.

Note here that we never bother about strangers. Our first preference will be our colleagues (especially boss), relatives (especially in-laws), kith and kin, spouses, children, friends, and acquaintances.

Note also that the strangers do not bother us.

What triggers this behavior is the thought that “If I don’t make the first move, so-and-so will throw me first into the pond!”

Learning to Co-Exist

What the hypothetical situation teaches us is that self-preservation becomes of utmost importance.

However, in the absence of such a decree, we have to think of reasons to like people in our lives and learn to co-exist with them.

How do we do that?

For illustration purposes, let us consider 12 psychological aspects. The following figure enlists them.

Our Perception, Intelligence, Personality, Learning, Motivation, Attitudes, Morality, Locus of Control, Achievements, Personal Efficiency, Emotional Regulation, and Relationships keep changing over time. Nevertheless, they all converge to form a stronger value system as shown in the figure below.

This is not a permanent or a one-time event. It keeps happening over our lifetime and our value system gets molded now and then. This is also something What Psychologists Don’t Talk About Value System.

Value System as Pivot

At any given point in time in our lives, the value system that has thus evolved becomes the pivot of all our behaviors. It directly or indirectly influences all our psychological functioning. This is depicted in the figure below and is also What Psychologists Don’t Talk About Value System?

Your time allocation to a particular task depends on your value system.

We automatically spend more time on something that has the highest value.

The higher the value we give to something, the greater the time we spend on it.

Find out if it is worth the value you are giving and whether it is useful to you or not.

Ordering Thoughts, Emotions, Perceptions, and Tasks

The following set of exercises may help you to manage your value system. This will enable you to use judiciously your time, memory, intelligence, goals, wants, attitudes, morality, internal control, achievements, self-management, personal efficiency, emotional regulation, interactions, and relationships. In short, your whole personality.

Whenever you come across a situation or a problem that needs to be tackled effectively, you can use the VALUE INDICATOR mentioned below.

Make a list of all the thoughts, emotions, and perceptions that engage you or tasks you intend to do. Use separate sheets (You can download this Value Indicator as a PDF file and print as many copies as you need). On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is the least and 10 is the highest, indicate the degree of ‘value’ you will ascribe to the tasks you have enlisted.

DOWNLOAD VALUE_INDICATOR.PDF

Rank each task according to the value. The task with the highest value, say 10, will get Rank 1. You can plan to take up those tasks that have the first five ranks. The tasks that have the last five ranks can be supervised, delegated, ignored, or postponed.

Value System as Guide

Individuals manifesting psychological disorders and social problems are expressing their built-in value system. Billions of dollars are being spent in trying to correct their behavior (that is only part of their value system) but not much focus is there in trying to correct their value system. This is the reason why despite so much advancement in the therapeutic systems, there are a greater number of relapses occurring.

It is easy to say be honest, always tell the truth, be kind, don’t be greedy, etc., but when these are not appreciated by the majority, the person with higher morals will become an outcast in today’s world. When money, wealth, authority, materialistic ambitions, etc., are given greater importance, the value system has a definite deterioration. This is when society should work towards modifying the values by rewarding those behaviors rather than punishing them.

This calls for my effort to engage in the "3C" Clean Consciousness Campaign. Consciousness pollution is not restricted to individual consciousness. Toxicity is everywhere. If the collective consciousness itself is corrupted, cleaning individual consciousness becomes a waste of time and energy. Sometimes, possessing a clean consciousness will become a burden for the individual as society punishes them for it.

Rather than judging whether someone’s value system is good or bad, we should acknowledge that it is the basis on which all behaviors are regulated. If corrective mechanisms have to be instituted, they must aim to change the value system of society, community, and then individuals instead of blaming them for their behaviors. This is also What Psychologists Don’t Talk About Value System?

Summary

We keep learning as we grow and all our psychological functions are guided by our value system. Though there are individual differences between one value system and the other, we have to learn to co-exist. The value system that has evolved becomes the pivot of all our future behaviors. We can manage our value system by assigning ranks to our thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and tasks. We can correct our behavior by making changes to our value system.

Know why I am doing a series on this?

What Psychologists Don’t Talk About?

Let me know if I am wrong. I have started this series because there are hundreds of things psychologists don’t talk about. I feel that it would benefit everyone if they did so. I hope at least now, they will make a beginning.

This is an attempt to reveal what has been hidden for a very long time.