"The Tail Wags the Dog" - when our values become a liability

Values are a major source of contention and conflict. Like beliefs, their influence is more like an undercurrent in the sea - we often fail to notice them until we are at their mercy. Often the first we know of them is when we have an affective or defensive reaction to their violation, and even then we may not be able to clearly articulate which of our values has been violated. 

Values, like beliefs, are fundamental concepts that guide and motivate our behaviour. They are usually buried in our subconscious and not readily accessible to the conscious mind. They influence us whether we are conscious of them or not. They cannot be observed by others but can be disclosed if and when raised to individual or collective consciousness. They can often be inferred from observed behaviour. 

We can choose our values, but when we are not conscious of them they are less open to change.When our values are conscious they are less likely to lead to intractable conflict or relationship breakdown.

Awareness, clarification and appreciation of our own and others values is a critical capability for resolving and transforming conflict. For example, appreciating which values are in conflict depersonalises the conflict and enables protagonists to work jointly on the value conflict rather than being driven by them into destructive ways of relating. Lack of consciousness of our values is a liability in conflict.

A values perspective on conflict can add enormously to our conflict toolkit and enables us to get to the generative factors rather than just dealing with surface symptoms or trying to manage or manipulate outcomes and consequences. These generative factors relate to primal energies, motivations and identity that can provoke defensive or even violent reaction and relationship breakdown when threatened - especially when protagonists are unconscious of the values with which they are identified. 

Values consciousness and choice: Values define what people think is important - sometimes stated in the form of goals or motivations that shape their behaviour. People may be able to articulate what these values are and may behave consistently with their stated values. It is equally common that individuals are not conscious of their values, cannot express them, or do not behave in a way that is congruent with their stated or espoused values. Such inability or incongruence amplifies and exacerbates the challenge of recognising, acknowledging and dealing constructively with differences we encounter in conflicts. 

Our values are assimilated through our upbringing, our social conditioning and our culture. We are enveloped in them in the form of rules, morals and social norms before we even realise we have a choice about which ones we wish to live by. When we are young it is often a matter of compliance with the enforced values of school and community, of fitting in; the price of belonging. When we are older they are so ingrained we often take them for granted and assume they are the only right way to be and tacitly accept or unconsciously live them out. It is often through conflict with peers, parents or teachers and through encountering others who hold different values from our own that we begin to question the conventional or majority value that we may feel pressured to adopt.

For those immersed in the conventional values of the majority culture (and that includes most of us), it is difficult to see the value currents that move us - perhaps the fish knows it lives in water only when it has been taken out of it. Likewise, we need to get outside the monocultures of the families, institutions or communities in which we are immersed.  In doing so, we can get some perspective on and become conscious of the values we hold as well as the possibility (and even the benefits) of living by a different, possibly opposing set of values. Support for such development is often lacking in our schools and institutions that are often more concerned with promoting their own.

We often discover the values we identity with by reaction against those with which we disagree, through being repelled by or rejecting opposing values held by others. It is only when we unpack what we "are against" that we become more conscious of what we are for, i.e. the values that we wish to hold or actually live by. This can be further complicated when we discover on reflection that we only hold the values we live by because of peer pressure and, given freedom and deliberation, we might have chosen very different ones. Such is the importance of value consciousness - clarification and personal choice of one's values - that it is difficult to sort out some certain conflicts until protagonists have developed the capability to be aware of them. 

Understanding our values: Values drive our decision-making and cause us to summon up energy to preserve what we believe in or what we want to defend. As such they can be principal determinants of behaviour even if we are not conscious of them. They can be inferred from our behaviour and the choices we make - as when we say "actions speak louder than words". They can help us understand motivations that run deep - sometimes resting at the heart of who we are - our psychological or social identity. Any threat to these triggers a reactive defensive response as if survival depended on it. 

Our values reflect what we believe are desirable end-states, abstract goals or behaviours, and they transcend specific situations. They can be expressed as cognitive representations of what is desired; for example wealth, fairness or winning. They serve as standards for explaining the behaviour of self and others and for justifying choices or actions as legitimate or worthy.  

Dick McCann defines values as "enduring beliefs that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct (instrumental values) or end-state of existence (terminal values)".  The distinction is important in conflicts.

Terminal Values are idealised end-states (e.g. "an exciting life", freedom, peace, justice). Maslow called these values "meta-motivation" in his theory of needs.  He saw them as being related to personal needs such as survival, safety and affiliation but viewed them as transpersonal; transcending personal needs even to the point, for example, of putting ones personal safety or even survival at risk to advocate and live by them. Here, the distinction between personal needs and transpersonal values as driving forces of behaviour is useful and the latter is usually more highly prized by the collective or community, as reflecting altruism over self-interest.

Instrumental Values relate to the means rather than the end as in the "end justifies the means" - i.e how we do or achieve something reflects the value of the end result. Instrumental values therefore are modes of socially desirable or undesirable conduct (e.g. ambitious, helpful). Terminal and instrumental values are closely interlinked. We can often find agreement on one but not the other in conflict situations which if confused make resolution or progress all the more difficult. For example we might be hold a shared vision but fail to recognise this if we cannot appreciate our conflict is about "how" it is to be achieved. Or we might disassociate ourselves from an outcome that we value if we saw that it was achieved, for example, by the use of force or through deception.

Value hierarchies:

Values have a cognitive component that enables us articulate and order them into a hierarchy that reflects their importance to us as guiding principles.

Our own values are sometimes in conflict with one another. For example, we may have to choose between honesty and being harmless or not damaging others, between being open and transparent or gaining competitive advantage. Such choices need consideration of ones values in advance if we are to be able to make wise and congruent choices in the moment. When ordered by importance relative to others, our values form a system of  priorities that helps resolve inner conflicts as well as outer ones and guide our selection of people, behaviours and events. How we manage internal value conflicts is often hidden or unconscious, but the outcomes may not be and can lead to giving double messages or incongruence thereby creating distrust.

Values and maturity: We tend to regard the ability to consciously contain and resolve inner conflicts as an indicator of maturity and even more so when they are resolved in favour of higher transpersonal values and in favour of the collective. Society tends to regard those who can articulate their values more highly than those who cannot; it regards those who act consistently with their stated values more highly than those who do not; and it prizes those whose values align with the dominant norms and culture. Those who are conscious of and live by their chosen and prioritised values, where these are also in favour of others are considered to be more mature or as having reached a higher developmental level even if these run counter to the prevailing value system.

As can be seen from the above discussion working with values can be confusing and complex. Is it any wonder then that they can generate such intractable conflict between parties whether interpersonal or international? Add imbalance of power to conditioned or unconscious values driven by self-interest and you have a potent cocktail, which leads to marginalisation, oppression and destructive conflict. We must begin to raise consciousness and decommission this deadly cocktail.

A values consciousness helps us recognise the conflicts of value being acted out in our lives on a daily basis, e.g. in tensions between individual freedom and collective responsibility, between enforced compliance and self-empowerment, between loyalty to the past and innovation and change. Many are resolved both in personal and international relations by the more powerful imposing their values on the less powerful, often with disastrous consequences, triggering renewed cycles of revenge and retaliation.

We have a choice whether to be at the mercy of our values or master of them. When there is consciousness of the values underpinning our beliefs and behaviour we can choose the values that guide our behaviour, rather than simply complying with the dominant norms, or being driven by our survival instincts.  If we equally recognise and accommodate the values of others we will be well on the way to more democratic ways of relating and to resolving and transforming conflict in a more constructive fashion.  We will explore ways of developing these capabilities in a further article.

Some Questions for exploring values

• Select a recurring conflict that continues to have an unsatisfactory outcome.
• What is important to you that is at risk or being violated?
• What is it about the other's behaviour or actions that offends or irritates you?
• How would you describe the conflict in terms of opposing value positions?
• Are these instrumental or terminal values that are in conflict?
• What is different about these opposing value positions and how are they in conflict?
• Are there several values in contention here and if so what is the order of importance to each side?
• What is the impact of these different value positions on protagonists?
• What in principle is valuable about each position when viewed in isolation from the conflict with which you are concerned?
• What rules or behaviour would be consistent with each of the value positions?
• Are values and behaviours congruent and if not why and what is the impact on the conflict?
• What have you discovered about what is important to you and others and how you communicate it to each other?
• How has your understanding of the conflict changed from answering these questions?
• What possibilities or options are created as a result of any new understanding?