How Protected Are
Your Protected Values
I
feel my Protected Values (PV) are what provide me with a moral code through
which I keep integrity, clarity, and fairness. Of all my values, I protect
those that reflect ‘saying what you mean’ and meaning what you say’, intention
of being forthcoming and up-front, and lastly, giving fair consideration to
others (Hoch, Kunreuther &Gunther, 2001). As for trade-offs, they can
affect you positively and negatively, depending on the circumstances. In the
case where I share a PV with my spouse, such as keeping our children healthy,
we generally believe in not vaccinating. While we believe vaccinations can harm
our children, they can also support the scholastic community in staying healthy
against what the vaccine is for.
These
three highly protected values of mine are nested in a larger frame of beliefs.
When I was married, these three beliefs were rooted into our vows for our
marriage, and still live by them today as the foundation of our relationship.
The first belief is in Communication. I believe communicating is a vital aspect
to any relationship. I feel when visual and audible communication are withheld,
the relationship can be left with a myriad of ideas, assumptions and emotions
to figure out. Listening to people communicate, there appears to be a need to
convey, and unfortunately, need to convince. Either way, I have a strong
feeling when it comes to semantics. Where words have meaning and used to convey
an idea, when improperly used, can take an ordinary day, and make it a
challenging and stressful one. On the other hand, when choice words are used,
yet confusing, it can promote the consideration of other meanings that
otherwise may be outside of our awareness.
In terms of a
trade-off when it comes to communication, I would accept poor semantics in the
event of talks with my spouse. The benefit here is that it gives me pause to
consider her emotional disposition where she may be effected semantically. The
other side of this coin is the frustrations that come with misunderstanding.
When someone thinks ill of me, because of my semantics, thusly feeling
misunderstood, I make every attempt to correct what was said. This is
particularly true for those I am close with, and to a much lesser degree for
those I have no emotional interest.
Another belief I
carry is that of honesty. Within this belief, I demand integrity in my personal
and professional life. However, my professional life requires, at times, a
straying from the truth with other foreign nationals in order to meet
objectives. In my personal life, my integrity is typically unwavering. With
respect to integrity at home, it is not just about telling the truth, but
acting on my inner truth, my feelings. What I mean is that there is a
difference between my absolute truth, and a perceived truth. While my belief in
being honest covers down on everything generally, my PV of integrity continues
to guide my moral compass. As a pro to a trade-off, I would think that perhaps
a ‘white lie’ may produce a happy feeling in another if it was something they
wanted to hear. A con, however, is the guilty conscience of telling a lie, and
deceiving someone.
Lastly, allowing
for fairness in everything I do, gives those I work with and live with an
opportunity to be heard, seen, and enjoy something to a greater extent. This
fairness is nested in the belief of compromise; compromise in the sense of
fairness to all, not of my values. At work, compromise occurs when multiple
agencies annually may take a turn in running a Joint Inter-Agency conference.
Often, the benefits to trading-off on this would be a sense of continuity if a
particular agency were to take two, or more years consecutively, whereas a con
would be missed opportunities by other agencies for years, possibly hurting
inter-agency relationships.
Looking at all
three beliefs at this time, continues to strengthen my support for, and resolve
of them. Often, I find the need to promote the necessity for them, both at
work, as well as at home. However, Baron & Leshner (2000), shares “PVs are
strong opinions, weakly held…in the sense that they express infinite
trade-offs” (pg. 193). I truly feel both my PVs, as well as their overarching
beliefs in general, are standards that would make us all better people. While I
may not always live up to my own standards, it is a standard nonetheless that I
can continue to measure myself with to determine growth over time. Hoch et al.
(2001), states that “…people have some threshold for when it is appropriate to
hold this value and when it is appropriate to trade it off” (p.254). At this
moment, I feel stronger about them than I did prior to beginning this exercise.
References:
Hoch, S. J.,
Kunreuther, H. C., & Gunther, R. E. (Eds.). (2001). Wharton on making decisions. Hoboken NJ. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Baron,
J. & Leshner, S. (2000). How serious are expressions of protected values? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied,
6(3), 183-194. DOI: 10.1037//1076-898X.6.3.183
Tanner, C. & Medin, D. L. (n.d). Protected
values: No omission bias and no framing effects. Retrieved from http://groups.psych.northwestern.edu/medin/publications/Tanner%20%26%20Medin%202004%20Protected%20Values.pdf
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