Values and personality: you are what you defend

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What you defend, what inspires you and guides you in life also defines your personality. Paying attention to your values is a principle of psychological well-being because with them you guide your emotions, thoughts and behavior towards what matters to you.

Values and personality go hand in hand. People are what we defend, what we believe in and what also guides our behavior knowing what is right. The fact that these two dimensions are in harmony has a great impact on psychological well-being and this is something that we should promote, attend to and take care of.

We say this last for something very revealing. There are those who are still not clear about their scale of values. Those principles that one assumes as their own to guide their development, their way of relating or understanding their reality are facts that not everyone clarifies.

Phrases like “I don’t know what defines me, I don’t know what I like, I don’t know what I believe in” They show a very problematic lack of existential direction.

Therefore, in the context of psychological therapy it is decisive, in many cases, to help people determine what their values are to promote change. The moment one holds on to these dimensions, the personality becomes stronger and states such as anxiety, stress, insecurity and even depression are better managed.

Values and personality: dimensions that guide your behavior

Having the same values is what makes a friendship relationship, and certainly a couple, sustain itself. This is something we all know. On average, the human being is firmly and passionately involved with his scale of values, it is what guides him, what guides his decisions and even the way he interacts with others.

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Honesty, justice, nature, empathy, openness, compassion, altruism, independence… Everyone has their own and it is also common to add new ones as we mature. Knowing this, it is evident that we affirm that values also define our identity. However, as curious as it may seem, until not long ago psychology viewed values and personality as two distinct entities.

If personality represents the set of our traits, qualities, and patterns of thinking and feelings, values basically define what we believe is right. Furthermore, one reason to defend this separation was justified by the fact that while values can vary over time, personality, on the other hand, is a much more stable construct.

There have always been certain doubts when it comes to assuming that our scale of values also traces the type of person we are, as well as our identity. Although today, this idea is changing.

The Big 5 Model

In 2015, social psychologists Parks-Leduc, Feldman and Bardi conducted a study to find out the relationship between values and personality. To do this, they reviewed existing perspectives and analyzed about 60 previous works that had the same purpose.

They discovered that if we started from the Big Five model (the classic taxonomy of personality traits) there was a striking correlation of values associated with each factor:

Extraversion: power, achievement, hedonism, prosperity, abundance, stimulation. Empathy: benevolence, freedom, integrity, openness, friends, family, justice. Openness to experience: popularity, leadership, friendship, ambition. Conscientiousness: security, conformity, alertness, self-control, well-being, congruence…

Curiously, and according to this work, only people with the neuroticism trait (tendency to psychological distress, mental rumination, anxiety or maladaptive coping responses) do not show clear values. That is to say, neuroticism would be an indicator for not having clear principles of action in life.

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Values and personality: the impulse that guides your behavior

Altruism, friendship, sincerity, freedom… Nothing is as enriching as knowing what is valuable and significant to us in order to act in harmony with those principles. If I believe, for example, in justice, I will react to everything that I consider unethical. If I value family, I will not leave mine aside.

Values and personality go hand in hand because the former act as motivational components to drive behavior. This is what they explain to us in studies, such as those carried out at the University of Ulm (Germany). What we believe in and stand for guides behavior.

Clarify values to achieve psychological well-being

Clarify, identify and reflect on the values that define you as a person. Doing so will have a positive impact on your psychological well-being, because they are the ones who guide you on the journey of life. Even more, thanks to these dimensions you will make more consistent decisions so that desires and actions are always in tune.

You are what you think, what you believe in and what gives meaning to your existence. Milton Rokeach was a Polish-American social psychologist who focused much of his work on the study of values and personality. Something he told us is that there always comes a time when we must assess whether those values that our family has instilled in us are the ones that truly define us.

It is a priority to make this journey of internal clarification to decide who we are and what we do or do not integrate from our education received. All of this also allows us to build our personality with greater solvency to invest in psychological well-being. Let’s keep it in mind.