Psychology of Personal Decision-Making

 Exercise: Defining Values  Exercise: Personal Value Mining  Exercise: Rank Ordering  Values assessment ▪ Terminal vs. Instrumental ▪ Reiss Motivation Profile  Value Checklists  Other ways to get at values

 What is a value? ▪ List as many personal values as you can…more coming ▪ What is important to your family? ▪ What is important to you? ▪ Could anyone make you change these values? ▪ Pretend you have children, you think they’ll have the same/similar values as you?

 Values for aliens to live well on our planet

 Who in history do you admire who is now dead? ▪ Why?  Who in your life do you know and admire? ▪ Why?  Think of very positive events in your life ▪ Why were these so great?  Think of very negative events in your life ▪ Why were these so bad?  Think of tv shows/movies where you would love to be in the actor/actress’ shoes ▪ Why?

 Rokeach (1973)(1) A value is an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite…mode of conduct.  Terminal Values:  Desired goals (Ends)  Instrumental Values:  How to reach the goals (Means)

Terminal Values 1. A comfortable life 2. An exciting life 3. A sense of accomplishment 4. A world at peace 5. A world of beauty 6. Equality 7. Family security 8. Freedom 9. Happiness 10. Inner harmony 11. Mature love 12. National security 13. Pleasure 14. Salvation 15. Self-respect 16. Social recognition 17. True friendship 18. Wisdom Instrumental Values 1. Ambitious 2. Broadminded 3. Capable 4. Cheerful 5. Clean 6. Courageous 7. Forgiving 8. Helpful 9. Honest 10. Imaginative 11. Independent 12. Intellectual 13. Logical 14. Loving 15. Obedient 16. Polite 17. Responsible 18. Self-controlled

 Reiss’ Motivational Theory  Multiple basic desires that are motivational traits.  Basic desires found in multiple species.  Basic desires reflect genetically distinct motives.  Satiation of basic desires produces joy. Reiss, S. (2004). Multifaceted nature of intrinsic motivation: The Theory of the 16 Basic Desires. Review of General Psychology,

 Reiss’ Motivational Theory  Each desire is a continuum. ▪ People generally seek moderate levels of each desire  Each person has a different set of priorities among the desires.  Motivation = discrepancy between desire and recent experience.  Desires organize behavior, attention, feelings, etc. ▪ What we attend to ▪ What we ignore

 Reiss & Havercamp (1994; 1998)  Developed 300 statements reflecting basic desires  “I would rather lose my life than my honor”  “I enjoy learning new skills”  Tested 2,500 people & Found 15 factors  Added 16 th factor (savings) and confirmed with 500 more people  Basic Psychometrics  Very good reliability evidence  Good validity evidence  Some cross-cultural generalizability evidence

 Lots of questions! Reiss! ▪ Emotional reactions to this? ▪ Previous?

 Honor (desire to obey a traditional moral code)  Order (desire to organize & add structure)  Eating (desire to eat)  Physical activity (desire to exercise muscles)  Independence (desire for autonomy, self-sufficiency)  Power (desire to influence others)  Idealism (desire for social justice)  Social contact (desire for friendship, belonging)  Acceptance (desire for approval)  Status (desire to be/feel important)  Curiosity (desire for knowledge, new experiences)  Tranquility (desire for peace/restfulness)  Vengeance (desire to get even, compete, win)  Family (desire to raise own children)  Sex (desire for sex, romance, & beauty)  Saving (desire to collect, be frugal) Reiss, S. (2004). Multifaceted nature of intrinsic motivation: The Theory of the 16 Basic Desires. Review of General Psychology,

 Behavior predicted by patterns (profiles) of needs  Youth Violence ▪ Vengeance (+), Status (+), Loyalty (-), Aversion (-)  Religion ▪ Independence (-), Social contact (+), Family (+), Honor (+)  College Athletes ▪ Physical exercise (+), Social contact (+), Family (+), Vengeance (+), Power (+), Curiosity (-)

 More general “cores” than alternatives  Can open you up to more possibilities

 List of values (modified from Maslow)  Decision values checklist

 Good for force fit  Cognitive/Aesthetics – Experiencing beauty, meaning in life  Social – Being loved and respected  Safety – Feeling secure  Physiological – Free from hunger, thirst, pain

 Stakeholders  Positive and Negative consequences  Present and Future consequences  Tangible and Intangible consequences  Community

 Stakeholders ▪ Envision values from their perspective on your decision

 Positive and Negative consequences  Tend to overlook the negatives, so a good reality check

 Present and Future consequences  Tend to overlook the long term, so a nice wakeup

 Tangible and Intangible consequences ▪ How we or others feel about us afterwards? ▪ Mercedes purchase?

 Community Values  Group membership  Part of an intelligently run community  Shared sense of identity

“When we become what we value, we value ourselves and become happier.”

 Are more pleasant to be around  Feel more in control  Feel more like they are making contributions

 Rank ordering:  What alternative you like least/best? What about it? ▪ The “What about it” piece is a value  Pros and Cons of alternatives:  For each: What is best feature? Worst? ▪ The “features” are values  Best and Worst cases for outcomes:  What do you like? What do you not like? ▪ The differences are values

 Bring goal distance into focus by breaking goals into smaller attainable pieces  EXAMPLES: income, knowledge, skills, social connections  Means or end?  Ask yourself: “Why do I want this?” ▪ If you want it for where it gets you  means ▪ If you want it for the sake of it itself  end

 Completeness  Relevancy  Non-redundancy  Testability/Measurability  Meaningfulness  Value Independence

 Ensuring you’re considering all important values  Commonly overlook:  Consequences to others  Negative consequences  Long term consequences  The ways we and others think about ourselves

 Coin flip mental test:  After listing out values and possible alternatives ▪ Would you let a “weighted” coin flip determine your decision? ▪ If no, find other values to ADD ▪ If yes, you’re good to proceed

 Rule of thumb: 5-7 values required for completeness  If you’ve already got that many, use the relevance test to SUBTRACT values:  See if you can find a substantial difference between a group of your values and one other value  Use +/-/~ rankings to determine

 Are your values objective enough?  For testability: ▪ Safeguards against irrationality ▪ Clarifies what you mean, “does income mean profit or revenue?” ▪ Easier to get information from somewhere else  For Measurability ask yourself: “Can I assign units of measure to all of my values?” ▪ E.g. – people, dollars, family time % ▪ Quantify! Even the tricky stuff.

 Do the numbers you came up with hold weight for you?  Could you be measuring things in a more meaningful way?  $/hour vs. $/month (COMPENSATION)  % time on the ice vs. number of attempted shots (GAME INVOLVEMENT)  # of expressions of emotional support/month vs. # acts of kindness per week (MATURE LOVE)

 Make sure you aren’t representing a value more than once in your decision table  “Quality of Life” / “Social Connections” / “Partying”  “Tangible results” vs. “Contribution to society”  Construct a value tree  Stimulates creative thought  Completeness  Clarifies relationships among values  Non- redundancy

 When values are independent, we don’t have to think about them at the same time.  When they aren’t, we do =(

 Quality and duration of a state ▪ Quality of life AND Length of life ▪ Use quality of life as a value, then use duration to assess importance  Quality and probability of a state ▪ Job desirability AND Probability of getting the job ▪ Use desirability as value and use probability for importance  Fairness in social situations ▪ Create a fairness value to think about: ▪ Consequences to yourself ▪ Consequences to others ▪ Differences between self and other consequences

 Gotta get in the right frame of mind  Think of comparable cases  Attributes  Measures  Zero Points

 Weigh costs and benefits over time  Duration of impact is really important

 Use scales with real units

 All about reference points  Sorrow and difficulty lower the bar  Simple things enable us to better appreciate life  E.g. – losing a limb  Good fortune/comfort raises the reference point  Comforts which used to give us pleasure are needed to remain neutral or avoid pain  Cost to pleasure and benefit in pain  Moving up is NOT as important as moving down