No Stupid Questions - 205. Where Do Values Come From?

Episode Date: July 28, 2024

Do you get your principles from your parents — or in spite of them? Is there anything wrong with valuing conformity? And why doesn’t McDonald’s sell salads?  SOURCES:Erika James, dean of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.Olivia Rodrigo, singer-songwriter.Shalom Schwartz, professor emeritus of psychology at the Hebrew ‎‎University of Jerusalem.Thomas Talhelm, professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. RESOURCES:"Measuring Trends in Americans' Personal Values," by Frank Newport (Gallup, 2023)."America Pulls Back From Values That Once Defined It, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds," by Aaron Zitner (The Wall Street Journal, 2023)."What Really Happened To McDonald's McSalad Shakers," by Colin McCandless (Mashed, 2023)."Personal Values Across Cultures," by Lilach Sagiv and Shalom H. Schwartz (Annual Review of Psychology, 2022)."Moving Chairs in Starbucks: Observational Studies Find Rice-Wheat Cultural Differences in Daily Life in China," by Thomas Talhelm, Xuemin Zhang, and Shigehiro Oishi (Science Advances, 2018)."Large-Scale Psychological Differences Within China Explained by Rice Versus Wheat Agriculture," by Thomas Talhelm, Xuemin Zhang, Shigehiro Oishi, Shinobu Kitayama, et al. (Science, 2014)."An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values," by Shalom Schwartz (Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2012).The Short Schwartz’s Value Survey, from "Measuring values with the Short Schwartz's Value Survey," by Marjaana Lindeman and Markku Verkasalo (Journal of Personality Assessment, 2005). EXTRAS:"Should You Get Out of Your Comfort Zone?" by No Stupid Questions (2024)."How Sinful Are 'No Stupid Questions' Listeners?" by No Stupid Questions (2023)."hope ur ok," song by Olivia Rodrigo (Sour, 2021).

I mean, it makes sense, but doesn't make sense. I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm Mike Maughan. And you're listening to No Stupid Questions. Today on the show, what are values, really? Do you vibe with being a mobster, or do you vibe with caring about the world. Music Mike, we have a question from someone named Matt Farmer. Well, hello, Matt Farmer.

And he writes, one aspect of psychology that comes up frequently in your episodes, but which I almost never hear defined directly, is values. What even are values in the first place? Where do they come from? How are they different from attitudes or personality traits? These seem like big and important questions. Interesting. This question is actually, I think, a big and important one. I've at least devoted 10%, maybe about that, of my teaching to the science of values, because

when you talk about grit, the question of values, I think is like pretty much front and center. But since you, Mike, unlike me, have actually worked in the real world. Oh, I thought you were going to say since you, unlike me, have no values. No, no, then I would say, well. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. No values jokes, very serious. No, but I actually do wonder about this perennial question.

I remember talking to Erica James about this. She's the Dean of the Wharton School of Business, and she is therefore, some ways my boss. And Erica said something that surprised me. She was just like, you know, I don't really respect and admire much the practice of naming your core values and putting it on the wall of your team room or your company or the back of your sweatshirt or whatever because I have seen over and over again the hypocrisy, like the obvious yawning gap between

what people say are their values and anything that they do in their own lives. So I wonder how you feel about that because you've, well, you're living this, I guess, more than I am. I'm just an academic. So when Erica James is talking about her maybe suspicion of values, I think it's the misalignment, it sounds like, between what you do and what you say you will do. We did take time at Qualtrics to define our values, and part of it's acknowledging who you already are. I think everyone will remember, there was a brief period of time

where McDonald's started selling salads and like advocating that they sold salads and everyone was like, guys. Remember they had it in, cause you know people eat in their cars all the time. Do you remember the salads that came in like a drinking cup? No. I think it was just so it would fit in the cup holder.

I mean, it makes sense, but doesn't make sense. This was a brief experiment, but yes, I do remember when McDonald's kind of leaned more healthy. Right, which again, like do whatever, but that's not why people go to McDonald's, I would say. That's not why people are going to McDonald's. And so part of it was like, how do we capture the best of who we are? You want it to be aspirational, but also acknowledge like this is the group

and you can't pretend to be something you're completely not. Then there's just massive misalignment between who you are and what your values say. So we ultimately came up with what we call tacos, transparency. Oh wait, I know this one. I can't tell you what every letter in the acronym means, but correct me if I'm wrong.

In like Qualtrics headquarters, when you walk in, first of all, I think there's a basketball court. There is, yes. It's like an atrium come for your come basketball court where I guess you could, I don't know, play pickup. But I think tacos is written or painted right there as the first thing you see when you walk in. is that right? Yeah, there are five pillars right as you walk in surrounding the basketball court,

and on them in metal are these five things spelling tacos. Okay, well now what do they stand for? Transparency, all in, customer obsessed, one team, and Scrappy. Oh, I remember the Scrappy because I thought I would have done grit. But then that would be like taco taco. And then you were like, let's go with tacos. But I think it was in part an encapsulation of who we are. And it's sort of, hey, here's where we're going.

But it's this idea as well of that's how we hire, for example, because the people who are going to thrive in this environment are people who embody tacos, right? So it's not trying to change people and make them fit into our culture or fit into our values, but rather, let's find an alignment. And that's, I think, how we have maybe overcome what Erika James worried so much about or what made her cynical toward company values. So there's actually a long scientific history of values

and what values are held commonly across cultures. So let me tell you about this guy named Shalom Schwartz. Okay. I think Shalom is 88 years old now and he has spent his entire career as a psychologist studying values. And now it is so established what he believes are the 10 universal values that I don't know a single scientific article that has seriously contested this because now there's like a

mountain of data. Sheesh. So I'll tell you that the way Shalom Schwartz and now other scientists define values is really as a kind of goal. So they are aspirational in that sense. Yeah, because a goal is a desired future state. Right. But in this case, it's aspirational in the broadest

and most abstract sense. So unlike going to the gym or getting promoted, a value is a goal that you may never achieve entirely, but it's a goal in that it defines a direction that you want to move in. Interesting. So there are these 10 values, and the important thing is that everybody values

all 10 of these things, at least some. I mean, there's nothing on that list where you're like, I don't care at all. Like, these are the 10 universal values, and I am going to name them for you. And then I'm going to ask you which are the most important to you. And in some ways, that's all you have to know, right? Because your own values are your North Star. And I'm also going to tell you them in a certain order,

because one of the things that Shalom Schwartz discovered that makes the whole darn thing easier to keep in your head is that they are Kind of like grouped into four families. So first I'm gonna give you values from the Shalom Schwartz world values survey that are Values that I actually don't think are going to resonate that much. But let me start off with values like hedonism. And hedonism is defined as, you know, gratification of desires, enjoyment in life, self-indulgence. So that's one. And another one that I don't think is very Mike Mon is stimulation.

Stimulation is valuing daring a varied and challenging life, valuing an exciting life. And actually, now that I think about it, maybe it does sound like Mike Bond. Do you have a visceral kind of like, oh my gosh, if I choose just a couple of things to say about my values and who I am as a person, I might choose one or both of those. Like, do those vibe with you? I will say this about stimulation. I actually find that to be very aspirational for myself because as you described it, a daring, challenging, varied, exciting life. Yeah, that's exactly what I want. In fact, this is such a weird thing to say, but I've always said to my friends,

I'm fine dying by a shark attack. That is a strange thing to say, but I've always said to my friends, I'm fine dying by a shark attack. That is a strange thing to say to your friends. Or I'm fine if I'm hiking in the woods and a cougar, because people like don't hike alone. But like, I'm okay if I die in the pursuit of living my life. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I want to die by shark attack. I don't want to be attacked by a cougar while hiking. But I would rather that than never hike because I'm afraid of a cougar.

So the idea of stimulation and a varied life, are you kidding me? That's the thing I long for the most. I love having wide variety to what I do, who I interact with, what I get to work on. That's amazing. So you're reminding me there's a third one that I should mention called self-direction. And that is explained as creativity, freedom, curiosity, independence, choosing one's own goals. So we talked about heenism, stimulation, self-direction.

I will say that these are all toward the end of the spectrum for Schwartz of openness to change. Interesting. Now, we've talked about big five openness to experience, which is a personality dimension. And one of the things that I want to say to Matt in his question of like, what are values really and how are they different from personality traits is that there is some overlap, but the fundamental difference between personality and values is personality is a description of how you are now, and values does have an

aspirational like how you would like to be. So you could be somebody who values change, but doesn't actually live a life that looks anything like that. So your personality is more a snapshot of who you are at the moment, and your values really are more of a kind of like this, I believe, to be important. So personalities today, values are what I hope to become. Yeah. So let me share with you the values that are the opposite end of the pole of openness to change. Sometimes this is called conservation. So there's openness to change on one dimension, and then there is conservation on the other end. And these would be conformity and security. So conformity, this one is described as obedience,

honoring your parents and elders, believing it's important to be self-disciplined and polite. And then security is explained as valuing national security, family security, social order, cleanliness, and reciprocation of favors. So how do you feel about those values, Mike? Okay, Angela, you've just described them as the opposite of the spectrum. I would say that conformity is inherent in me as to sort of like how I was raised, the culture in which I was surrounded.

Conformity? Yes, this idea of self-discipline, obedience. Oh, wow. Politeness. That was really important. That's so interesting. And it's not like I don't value those things. Well, maybe you do.

I think it's almost like I've tried to break away from them. Again, I honor my parents. I'm not saying that. Oh, interesting. But if I'm moving from one scale to another, I think conformity. And by the way, it's okay to have values at opposite ends of the spectrum. And as I will soon confess, I have values that are seemingly in contradiction, but they're

not. So you can have values anywhere on the spectrum. It's just what tends to go together. Got it. So with conformity, when you were growing up, is that part of the way you were raised? 100%. And maybe you feel a little bit of rebelliousness against it, maybe. I think the older I get, the more I realize that just because that's how it's always been,

that doesn't mean that's how it always needs to be. Fair. That sounds like somebody who values openness to change. Which is why maybe stimulation or some of these others are so high on my either list or aspirational list. Yeah. Well, I'm not going to make you choose yet because I haven't given you the whole deck of cards.

Okay. But there's a third conservation value. Well, I'm not going to make you choose yet because I haven't given you the whole deck of cards. Okay. Okay. There's a third conservation value. So in addition to conformity and security, I forgot to tell you there's tradition. Jason would be so annoyed at me because this has got to be one of his highest values. It's valuing respect for tradition, humbleness, accepting one's portion in life, devotion, and modesty. And mostly I want to say it is respect for tradition.

And tradition, I will say, is huge in my family. Like holidays are, at least growing up, were like a well-scripted play. Mmm. But yeah, those are two poles. Here are some more values, and it is a kind of like north, south, east, west. So this is like another axis, and this axis goes from self-transcendence to self-enhancement. And let me unpack that a little bit by giving you some self-transcendent values, and you can tell me how much they vibe with you. So there is benevolence, and that is described as valuing helpfulness, honesty, forgiveness, loyalty, and responsibility.

And then there's universalism, which is closely related, but it's different enough to have its own name. So universalism is valuing broad-mindedness, beauty of nature and arts, social justice, a world at peace, equality, wisdom, unity with nature, and environmental protection. There's a lot in universalism. Sounds universal. And I'll just say that when I teach this to my own students, I say, look, benevolence is more about how you feel about your close friends and family.

So somebody like Don Corleone, right, the head of the mafia in The Godfather, he would value benevolence even though he was like a gangster, because for his close others, he would do anything. And universalism is more like, I believe in a just world, I believe in all children having enough to eat. It's a much more global universal value set. So how do you vibe with these? That's such a great setup. Do you vibe with being a mobster or do you vibe with caring about the world? Don Corleone or world peace? Well, aspirationally, I want to vibe with both.

I think benevolence resonates because again, the word you used, helpfulness, honesty, loyalty, responsibility, forgiveness, et cetera, those resonate very strongly. I will say that benevolence is much higher for me than maybe any other value. I would probably say benevolence is number one, but it has a close second, so it's hard for me to be too strong about that. But I think it is the case that across cultures, benevolence and universalism are always at the top. So those are self-transcendent because they are not about you.

Right. Now here are the self-enhancing ones. There's power, which is valuing social power, political authority, valuing wealth. And then there's achievement, which is valuing success, capability, ambition, influence on people and events, which sounds a little bit like power, but achievement is really accomplishing things and valuing that. I mean, no surprise, in addition to benevolence, achievement is really high for me. And the reason I say it's okay to be embracing values at different ends of a spectrum is that in individuals, including me, you can find people who have values that aren't on the same end of the spectrum.

In general, there are these correlations, but it doesn't mean that every single person has to have values that are all clustered together. Got it. So we started off with these values that were about openness to change, like self-direction, stimulation, hedonism. Then we talked about the conservation values

of conformity, tradition, and security. And then we talked about self-transcendent values, universalism and benevolence, and then the self-enhancing values of power and achievement. And that's 10. So Mike, what are the highest cards in your deck of cards of values? Right now, I would say like the things that resonate most for, if I just had to say, this is who I am, it's conformity and benevolence. On an aspirational level, I would add stimulation and universalism as sort of the tier I think I'm edging toward as I age.

Wait, you didn't name achievement. That's interesting. Here's where I wonder. Now I'm like self-analyzing and some psychologist or therapist listening to this will be like, hmm, let's call him. I think that my need to achieve comes maybe out of a need to conform, that it's almost like that's how I honor

my parents and my background and show my self-discipline and whatever versus achievement as an end by itself. That's why I picked conformity. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So, Mike, I think whether we stacked our deck of cards in the same order or not, we would love to hear from No Stupid Questions listeners. Mike and I would love to hear about your personal values and how, if at all, has that changed

over time. Record a voice memo in a quiet place with your mouth close to the phone and email us at nsq at Freakonomics.com. Maybe we'll play it on a future episode of the show. And if you like us and want to support us, the very best thing you can do is to tell a friend about No Stupid Questions. You can also spread the word on social media or leave a review in your favorite podcast app. Still to come on No Stupid Questions, Angela has a confession to make. So maybe I can't do all the statistics, and maybe my research hypotheses are stupid, and maybe I can't write a paper, but gosh darn it, I'm a nice person. Now, back to Mike and Angela's conversation about values.

So Mike, when Matt Farmer asks, like, where do they come from? I will say, Matt, nobody knows. Honestly, there's so much research on values and which countries rank higher in this value, like men's values, women's values, values across the lifespan, how stable are your values? But I don't think anybody really knows where they come from. But I will say, Mike, that when you think about your childhood and, you know, your family, because that's where we go to when we think about values, I can only speculate that absolutely

who our mother was, who our father was, and how we were raised. I can only imagine that that has an enormous influence on the order of the cards in the deck, either because you want the same values as your parents or because you're rebelling and you're going in the opposite direction. But when I think of my values, you know, the value of benevolence, I am my mother's daughter. I was raised by the most generous woman in the world. And I am not as generous as she is, but that value has to come from Teresa. And when I think about achievement, that was, you know, my dad, like I am my father's daughter too. So I mean, you can't do random assignment

studies and like, you know, swap people to live in different cultures or different values. But I have to believe that like so much of this is familial. Oh, I mean, that's where I look at all of this. I would also extend it beyond family, though, to kind of the culture in which I was raised. And I think for me, I'm thinking of even a church culture, religiosity around it. And this is a dumb thing I'm just going to share and I don't know how it fits in, but I just thought of it. So there's this artist, I mean, vocal artist, a singer named Olivia Rodrigo.

Now have you heard of her? I was thinking I had, and now I was thinking, no, I'm thinking of some actress. So I'm sitting at a jazz game one day, and I'm sitting with two of our Utah jazz scholars who are these 18, 19-year-old kids who come from financially underprivileged backgrounds and whatnot and were about to go to a game. And I get a phone call from our main sales guy who just says, hey, we just got a phone call from Olivia Rodrigo. She wants to come to the game.

We don't have any additional court side seats. Could we use a couple of yours for her? And I was like, oh, let me see. I've got these two guests. I want to make sure they're taken care of, but let me call you back in a couple of minutes. And I hang up and I said, hey, have you guys ever heard of Olivia Rodrigo? And they both just freak out.

And they're like, how do you say that so casually? And I was like, cause I don't know who it is. I'm like officially old now. Cause I have no idea who this person is. I told them that they could have my seats if she agreed to meet and take a picture with these two young guys. And they are dying, couldn't talk to her,

couldn't say it was the cutest thing I've ever seen. Anyway, the friend then tells me about an Olivia Rodrigo song called Hope You're Okay. And I loved it so much it became my most listened to song on Spotify that year. Wait, what? But here's where I think it fits into values and why I love it so much. I'm just going to read you part of it. Yeah. My middle school friend grew up alone.

She raised her brothers on her own. Her parents hated who she loved. She couldn't wait to go to college. She was tired because she was brought into a world where family was merely blood. Does she know how proud I am she was created with the courage to unlearn all of their hatred?" So, I was raised in a home of immense love and kindness and joy. Like, I was really, really lucky. But I love the concept, especially when it comes to this idea of values, that we can change and grow and learn to value good things despite what the background

was or maybe what our society or culture taught us. I mean, I agree and I disagree. Here's the part where I agree. I think you have some choice. And I also think that if there are terrible things that are valued in your family, like if you grow up in an extremely racist, misogynistic family, it doesn't mean that you are tattooed with racism and misogyny yourself. And also, I agree that people's values change. So when you survey people on their values, like say I torture you and make you rank the deck again,

you know, like in 10 years and then again and then again and then again. I can calculate how similar the rank order is over time. And it never is perfect. So there's no time in life where there isn't some shuffling of the deck and people's values can evolve. But here's where I disagree with you. Values are extremely stable. Like how much does the deck shuffle?

Well, not that much. And actually, values are more stable than personality. So it's not common to talk to somebody and have a really in-depth discussion of their most prized values and then come back in a few years and have them at the bottom of their tech. So I think it's true Mike that you have some choice, but oftentimes those identity defining values are things actually that people don't want to shed. Now note that there's nothing in the list of the Schwartz values. I mean even power, right? Like there's nothing that's really evil. Right. So I think one of the reasons why people

Hold on to their values is that for many people that value of benevolence and honestly that value of achievement I'm proud of those values. I'm guessing that you might be a little more ambivalent about conformity, but I think in some ways Well, let me just ask you like you know are you proud to be somebody who values submitting your individual will to that of the group, of bending a little bit because they're rules? I mean, I don't know, is that something that you really want to shed? I don't know that I want to shed it. And maybe this is where Matt and I need to get some clarity. There are these Schwartz values, but then there are, I think, societal values maybe outside of these primary lists. For example, there's a Gallup survey showing that people value patriotism less, they value religion less, but what people do value more lately is money,

according to Gallup, and they value, and I thought this was super interesting, they value community. Now, I don't know that that's always good, because one might say that in the value of community now, people can gather with- It's like in group versus out group. Yeah, you can gather with people who are just like you, and that's not always good. And then, you know, there's another survey that showed

that people value tolerance way less than they used to. 80% of Americans deemed tolerance as an important value four years ago, that's fallen to 58%. So those don't fit within Schwartz's categorization, which are maybe more stable, but these things change. The idea of a universal classification of values is that there would be a way to figure out,

oh, which of these is really security, and which of these is really there would be a way to like figure out like oh which of these is really Security and which of these is really self-direction and one of the provocative theories when you talk about like well How are we as a culture changing is that in times of need? times of war or times of famine there is this theory that that inclines you to be more conservative and it's in times of abundance and peace and prosperity that you are inclined to have values that are more about openness to change. And a parallel to this is that at the individual level, every human being has a kind of like approach motivation system and an avoidance

motivation system. And one is like, hey, things are really good. I'm going to invest in my relationships. I'm going to read a book I think might challenge my views. I'm going to like go off on this one day adventure that I don't know anything about. So that's an approach orientation. And then there's an avoidance orientation that you also have. And that is the opposite, which is like, I hope that nothing goes wrong. I don't want to screw up. I want to avoid failure. I want to take fewer risks.

And the speculation is that when society is experiencing threat, we retreat to conformity and tradition and security. And when we feel like things are really good, we look forward and we embrace self-direction and stimulation and possibly even hedonism. I don't know. So I think about the politics in this country and similar dynamics are actually going on in other countries where there's a real polarization and there is the emergence of a very strong like ultra conservative group. Like it goes with this theory, right? That like, oh, you know, maybe those people are feeling threatened. Which I think is interesting because as you're describing it though, I look at the idea of

conformity as my avoidance motivation and I look at my draw towards stimulation as my avoidance motivation, and I look at my draw towards stimulation as my approach motivation. But let me give you an example of where conformity may be applied negatively in my life. So when I'm 16 years old, our home catches fire. For the second time, same house catches fire. The entire neighborhood and every fire truck it feels are there as the Mon home flames

leaping from the ceiling. The next day, we have to go move in with my grandparents and we're there, but then my aunt and uncle who live in Washington, DC come into town and they're also staying at my grandparents' house. And I happen to walk into the kitchen and I overhear my uncle and my grandmother talking and my uncle says something like, well, where do you want us to go, mom? And my grandma says something like, well, I don't want to have to choose between my grandchildren. And it hits me that

they're talking about me. And while I think there's plenty of room in the basement for all of us, apparently there's some disagreement. And so out of a desire to be obedient or polite or just not get in the way, I walk into the kitchen and I say, oh, by the way, I'm moving out today. I'm gonna be staying with some friends while my aunt and uncle from Maryland are here. And they're like, oh, you don't have, are you sure that's okay?

And I was like, yeah, no, I'm moving in with friends. What I really did is I had a old car and I slept in the car. And then occasionally I would sneak into the burned down rubble of the house. And in my bedroom, the fire had burned off the ceiling and the roof. And I could lay in my room and sleep on the rug

and stare up through the stars, through the ceiling and the roof. But I didn't wanna be a burden and I didn't know what else to do. And I'm 16 and I'm embarrassed because I don't want to call people and tell them I have nowhere to go. Yeah. You don't want to be an obligation. So you wanted to bend to what they needed.

Yeah. And so I'm literally sleeping in my car or sleeping in the burned down house because I didn't want to burden someone. And so that's this negative side of values, but I don't think that's gone away. I think I still sometimes overindex. So to your point, maybe it doesn't change as much as we hope. All right. There is the most interesting research on conformity and it's kind of like, oh, the

community over the self. This is actually not from Shalom Schwartz. This is from this guy who's at University of Chicago and his name is Thomas Talhelm. So Thomas Talhelm is now a psychologist who lives in the United States, but he was living in China. And most people think of China as a rice eating culture, but in the North, they grow wheat. They actually eat bread. But basically you've got a rice culture in the South and a wheat culture in the North. And rice is incredibly

hard to grow as an individual farmer, especially in the days where there wasn't modern technology. So the idea was because of that kind of arbitrary climactic condition that led to a crop that needed everyone to work together, you developed a culture whose values were about the group over the self. And in the North, where a farmer was more likely to be able to farm their own field, that would lead to a more individualistic, independent culture. And so what Thomas Talheim did was he did all these studies that were observational that substantiated his view. For example, he went to Starbucks in the South and the North,

and he observed that in the Starbucks in the North, people were more likely to be sitting alone. And in the southern part of China at Starbucks, people were more likely to be together. So then he did this very clever study, kind of an experiment, where he would move the chairs in Starbucks, and he moved them so they were like blocking the aisle where people needed to walk past. And he observed that in northern China, the customers of Starbucks were more likely

to move the chair out of the way, and that, he inferred, was a sign that they had individualistic values. Whereas in southern China, people adjusted themselves. They would just squeeze through the little cavity as opposed to moving the chairs. And I don't know if you buy this, so I'd love to hear your outside perspective. But I think this idea that there could be these almost like idiosyncratic, path-dependent trajectories where like one country ends up kind of having a different rank ordering of the cards in the value deck than another.

I don't want to say I don't buy it. I don't want to say I buy it, but like I'm finding that it is at least within the realm of reason. Oh, I buy it 100%. You're like, take me out to Starbucks. I was gonna say like, how skeptical, are you kind of like, come on. I'm skeptical of the Starbucks example a little bit,

I'll be honest, because one could also infer that I move a chair out of a sense of the collective that that's better for everybody to have straight chairs versus just an individual need for me to get through. But I buy- Like you could poke holes at like individual things, but the general thesis, you're like, oh, of course.

Yes. I think it resonates perfectly that the society in which you grew up, even I think linguistics plays a role. I think that the religiosity or not and whatever the primary religion of the area plays a role. I think the schooling system plays a role. I think certainly family and cultural dynamics. Of course, that's going to inform values in a million different ways. And I love the wheat and rice example. So, Mike, coming all the way back to the beginning, I think we've answered the question of what

values are. And I think we've told Matt that nobody really knows where they come from But common sense says our parents our families and at the country level maybe you know historical Differences, I think we've answered the question of how values are not the same thing as personality But one of the things I think we haven't really talked about is the power of values So I want to ask you it sounds like you have maybe more of a comfortable relationship with your Value for was it universalism? Well, I said benevolence and conformity Oh benevolence Okay, so we share the benevolence one right close friends and family. So do you ever think about that?

Like I made you think about like how you would order the cards in your value deck, but do you ever think about how important it is to you to be a helpful person, et cetera? Absolutely. I mean, I have not in the terms of benevolence, but I think all the time about the importance of being kind of being helpful to other people. All right. Well, I'll tell you, and it's almost a confession, it's almost a kind of like, I don't know, I sound crazy, but I'll tell you when I think about being nice. Sometimes I think about it when I'm really stressed.

Like when I was in my first year in the position of an assistant professor, so it was like at the very beginning of my tenure clock, like the clock starts now, you have X number of days to try to come up with path-breaking insights that will get you tenure so you can keep your job. Otherwise, we will fire you. It was really stressful because, like, just at that time when the tenure clock started, it seemed like none of my studies were working out.

When I was in graduate school, everything was great. And then suddenly, when it really mattered, you know, everything was coming up a failure. I would be walking home from the commuter station because I had to take this little train in from the suburbs to Philadelphia. And I got to tell you that on the way home, it would be usually after a day of like no results, frustration, etc. And I would think to myself and I would even say to myself under my breath, I am a nice person.

Oh. I am a nice person. I thought you were gonna say you thought about like, I need to go serve somebody. I need to go drop off cookies. I need to. No. This is why it's a confession. It wasn't like I want to be a nice person.

It's important. I was just affirming that I had that value. And I know we talked about values being aspirational, but in that moment, I was doing something that scientists call values affirmation, which is taking an important personal value and kind of declaring it and owning it and thinking about all the ways in which you already embody it. And for years, I never told anybody about this because it sounds like a crazy person. Like, oh, you would walk home and mutter under your breath,

I'm a nice person, I'm a nice person. But I will tell you that what I now think I was doing was I was shoring up my broken ego. I was like, so maybe I can't do all the statistics, and maybe my research hypotheses are stupid, and maybe I can't write a paper, but gosh darn it, I'm a nice person. And that is actually what a lot of scientists believe to be true, that in times of ego threat, we affirm our values spontaneously. And in fact, Mike Mon, when you look at the random assignment research, because you can

assign people to think about their values and you can assign people to write about their top value for 15 minutes, what you find is that people actually are in a way restored by it. Like they feel more confident and they're less defensive and they're more likely to take risks and challenges and so forth. So I just asked you how skeptical you might be of rice versus wheat culture theory, and you were like, oh, I'm in 100%.

Like how skeptical or not are you of values affirmation? Look, I'm gonna go all in on this one too. I think that I'm probably not gonna mutter to myself along the street, but I do love the idea of taking 15 minutes to write, to explore. I think anytime you do that though, whether it's this or anything else, it clarifies your thinking. It allows you to put into words what you're feeling. And I think that helps crystallize in every way who we are. Well, let me say this, Mike Motton. Mike is a nice

person. Mike is a nice person. Mike is a nice person. Mike is a nice person. Coming up after the break, a fact check of today's episode and stories from our NSQ listeners. The only company that he had was a cat and a radio. And now here's a fact check of today's conversation. McDonald's launched McSalad Shakers, salads packaged in lidded plastic cups, in the year 2000 and discontinued them in 2003. McDonald's USA continued to sell salads in bowls until 2020, when the company removed them from menus entirely. McDonald's USA president Joe Erlinger said, quote,

What our experience has proven is, that's not what the customer is looking for from McDonald's. However, many McDonald's franchises in other countries continue to offer salads. Also, Angela refers to psychologist Shalom Schwartz's survey as the Shalom Schwartz World Values Survey. It's just Schwartz's value survey. The World Values Survey is a different poll, although it now includes items inspired by Schwartz's questionnaire.

That's it for the fact check. Before we wrap today's show, let's hear some thoughts about last week's episode on isolation. Hi, Angela and Mike. I want to share with you a story about my best friend's grandfather. He was missing, and when his family found him him he was living in the middle of the jungle for 22 years. The only company that he had was a cat and a radio. Hi I'm Christine from French Polynesia. I'm managing a small hotel on a very tiny private island hotel on a very tiny private island in the South Pacific. I'm living on this island only like four hours per month to rent some air on another island an hour away. And I've been on this island for three years now and even if I love it and it's in my character, I can

attest that it's very difficult to have no contact with your family. I lack a lot of interactions and just fresh ideas from the outside. That was, respectively, Anderson Kubioss and Christine Kael. Thanks to them and to everyone who shared their stories with us. And remember, we'd love to hear your thoughts on values. Send a voice memo to nsq at Freakonomics.com, and you might hear your voice on the show. Coming up next week on No Stupid Questions, why is it so hard for people to let go of power?

Howard Schultz has gone back as CEO of Starbucks three different times now. That's coming up on No Stupid Questions. No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, People I Mostly Admire, and the Economics of Everyday Things. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. The senior producer of the show is me, Rebecca Lee Douglas,

and Lear Kvoudich is our production associate. This episode was mixed by Eleanor Osborne and Greg Rippon. We had research assistance from Daniel Moritz-Rabson. Our theme song was composed by Luis Guerra. You can follow us on Twitter at NSQ underscore show. If you have a question for a future episode, please email it to nsq at Freakonomics.com. To learn more or to read episode transcripts,

visit Freakonomics.com slash nsq. Thanks for listening. Seriously, I was like the shrimpiest, least athletic kid. The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything. Stitcher.