Where Do Values Come From?

MAUGHAN: I mean, it makes sense, but doesn’t make sense. 

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DUCKWORTH: I’m Angela Duckworth.

MAUGHAN: I’m Mike Maughan.

DUCKWORTH + MAUGHAN: And you’re listening to No Stupid Questions.

Today on the show: what are “values,” really?

MAUGHAN: Do you vibe with being a mobster or do you vibe with caring about the world? 

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DUCKWORTH: Mike, we have a question from someone named Matt Farmer.

MAUGHAN: Well, hello, Matt Farmer.

DUCKWORTH: 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.” This question is actually, I think, a big and important one. I’ve at least devoted, mmm, 10 percent, 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 —.

MAUGHAN: Oh, I thought you were going to say, since you, unlike me, have no values. I’m kidding. I’m kidding.

DUCKWORTH: No values jokes, very serious. No, but I actually do wonder about this perennial question. I remember talking to Erika James about this. She’s the Dean of the Wharton School of Business, and she is therefore, in some ways, my boss. and Erika 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.

MAUGHAN: So, when Erika 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!”

DUCKWORTH: Remember they had it in — because, you know, people eat in their cars all the time — do you remember the salads that came in, like, a drinking cup? I think it was just so it would fit in the cupholder.

MAUGHAN: I mean, it makes sense, but doesn’t make sense. 

DUCKWORTH: This was a brief experiment. But yes, I do remember when McDonald’s kind of leaned more healthy.

MAUGHAN: Right, which again, like, do whatever, but that’s not why people go to McDonald’s, I would say. 

DUCKWORTH: That’s not why people are going to McDonald’s. 

MAUGHAN: 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 —. 

DUCKWORTH: 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.

MAUGHAN: There is, yes.

DUCKWORTH: It’s like an atrium-cum-foyer-cum-basketball court, where I guess you could, I don’t know, play pick up. But I think TACOS is written or painted right there as the first thing you see when you walk in. Is that right?

MAUGHAN: 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.

DUCKWORTH: Okay, now, what do they stand for?

MAUGHAN: “Transparency, all in, customer-obsessed, one team, and scrappy.”

DUCKWORTH: Oh, I remember the “scrappy” because I thought I would have done “grit.” But then, that would be like, TACOG.

MAUGHAN: TACOG.

DUCKWORTH: And then you were like, “Let’s go with TACOS.”

MAUGHAN: 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, 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.

DUCKWORTH: 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. 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 ten 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. So, I’ll tell you that the way Shalom Schwartz, and now other scientists, define values is really as a kind of goal.

MAUGHAN: So, they are aspirational, in that sense.

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, because a goal is a desired future state. 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. So, there are these ten values. And the important thing is that everybody values all ten 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 ten 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 going to 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 Maughan 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 Maughan. 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?

MAUGHAN: 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.”

DUCKWORTH: That is a strange thing to say to your friends.

MAUGHAN: Or, “I’m fine if I’m hiking in the woods and a cougar” — because people are 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.

DUCKWORTH: 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 hedonism, stimulation, self-direction. I will say that these are all toward the end of the spectrum for Schwartz of “openness to change.” Now we 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.” 

MAUGHAN: So, personality is today. Values are what I hope to become.

DUCKWORTH: 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? 

MAUGHAN: 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.

DUCKWORTH: Conformity? 

MAUGHAN: Yes! This idea of self-discipline, obedience, politeness. That was really important. And it’s not like I don’t value those things.

DUCKWORTH: Well, maybe you do!

MAUGHAN: I think it’s almost like I’ve tried to break away from them. Again, I honor my parents. I’m not saying that. But if I’m moving from one scale to another, I think conform —

DUCKWORTH: 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. So, with conformity, when you were growing up, is that part of the way you were raised?

MAUGHAN: A hundred percent.

DUCKWORTH: And maybe you feel a little bit of rebelliousness against it, maybe.

MAUGHAN: 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.

DUCKWORTH: Mm, fair. That sounds like somebody who values openness to change.

MAUGHAN: Which is why maybe stimulation or some of these others are so high on my either list or aspirational list.

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, well, I’m not going to make you choose yet, because I haven’t given you the deck of cards. But 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.

MAUGHAN: And tradition, I will say, is huge in my family. Like, holidays are — at least growing up, were like a well-scripted play.

DUCKWORTH: 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.

MAUGHAN: Sounds universal.

DUCKWORTH: 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?

MAUGHAN: That’s such a great setup. Do you vibe with being a mobster or do you vibe with caring about the world?

DUCKWORTH: Don Corleone or world peace?

MAUGHAN: Well, aspirationally I want to vibe with both. I think benevolence resonates, because, again, the words you used — “helpfulness, honesty, loyalty, responsibility, forgiveness, et cetera” — those resonate very strongly.

DUCKWORTH: 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. 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, like, 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. So, we started off with these values that were about openness to change — like, self-direction, stimulation, hedonism. And 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 ten. So Mike, what are the highest cards in your deck of cards of values?

MAUGHAN: 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.

DUCKWORTH: Wait, you didn’t name achievement. That’s interesting. 

MAUGHAN: Here’s where I, I wonder — now I’m, like, self-analyzing and some psychologist or therapist listening 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.

DUCKWORTH: Oh, interesting! So, Mike, I think whether we stack 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@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 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.

DUCKWORTH: “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!”

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Now, back to Mike and Angela’s conversation about values.

DUCKWORTH: 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 of our 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 Theresa. 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 with different values, but I have to believe that, like, so much of this is familial.

MAUGHAN: Oh, I, 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?

DUCKWORTH: I was thinking I had, and now I was thinking, no, I’m thinking of some actress.

MAUGHAN: 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, you know, financially-underprivileged backgrounds, and whatnot, and we’re about to go to a game, and I get a phone call from our main, um, 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 courtside 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, “Because I don’t know who it is.” I’m, like, officially old now.

DUCKWORTH: “Because I have no idea who this person is.”

MAUGHAN: 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 a word — it was the cutest thing I’ve seen. Anyway, a friend then tells me about an Olivia Rodrigo song called “hope ur okay.” And I loved it so much, it became my most-listened-to song on Spotify that year, 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. “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 ’cause 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.

DUCKWORTH: 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 grew 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 deck. 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. 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 there are rules? I mean, I don’t know, is that something that you really want to shed?

MAUGHAN: 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 —.

DUCKWORTH: It’s like in-group versus out-group.

MAUGHAN: Yeah! You can gather with people who are just 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. Eighty percent of Americans deemed tolerance as an important value four years ago. That’s fallen to 58 percent. So, those don’t fit within Schwartz’s categorization, which are maybe more stable, but these things change.

DUCKWORTH: You know, the idea of a universal classification of values is that 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.

MAUGHAN: 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 toward stimulation as my approach motivation. But let me give you an example of where conformity may be applied negatively in my — 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 Maughan home has flames leaping from the ceiling. The next day we, we have to go move in with my grandparents and we’re there, but then my aunt and uncle who live in Washington D.C. 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, 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 going to 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, 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 want to 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.

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, you don’t want to be an obligation, so you wanted to bend to what they needed.

MAUGHAN: 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. So, that’s this negative side of values, but I don’t think that’s gone away. I think I still sometimes over-index. So, to your point, maybe it doesn’t change as much as we hope.

DUCKWORTH: Alright. There is the most interesting research on conformity and, this 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, um, 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 climatic 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 Talhelm did was — he did all these studies that were observational that substantiated his view. For example, he went to Starbuckses in the south and, and the north, and he observed that in the Starbuckses in the North, people were more likely to be sitting alone. And in the southern part of China at Starbucks people are 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, like, they would just squeeze through the little cavity as opposed to, like, 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.

MAUGHAN: Oh, I buy it 100 percent.

DUCKWORTH: You’re like take me out to Starbucks. I was going to say like, how skeptical — are you kind of like, “Come on”?

MAUGHAN: 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, I buy it.

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, you can poke holes at, like, individual things, but the general thesis, you’re like, “Oh, of course.”

MAUGHAN: 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.

DUCKWORTH: 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?

MAUGHAN: Well, I said benevolence and conformity.

DUCKWORTH: 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?

MAUGHAN: Absolutely. I mean, I — not in the terms of “benevolence,” but I think all the time about the importance of being kind, of being helpful to other people.

DUCKWORTH: Alright, 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.” And 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, null results, frustration, etc. And I would think to myself, and I would even say to myself under my breath, “I am a nice person. I am a nice person.”

MAUGHAN: I thought you were going to say you thought about, like, “I need to go serve somebody. I need to go drop off cookies. I need to —.”

DUCKWORTH: 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’ve 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.” Like, 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 Maughan, 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 percent.” Like, how skeptical or not are you of values affirmation?

MAUGHAN: Look I’m going to go all in on this one too. I think that I’m probably not going to 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.

DUCKWORTH: Well, let me say this, Mike Maughan: 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.

Anderson CUBILLOS: The only company that he had was a cat and a radio. 

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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 consumer is looking for from McDonald’s.” However, many McDonald’s franchises in other countries continue to offer salads.

Also, Angela refers to psychologist Shalom Shwartz’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 polling 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.

Anderson CUBILLOS: 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, he was living in the middle of the jungle for 22 years. The only company that he had was a cat and a radio.

Christine CAYOL: Hi, I’m Christine from French Polynesia. I’m managing a small hotel on a very tiny private island in the South Pacific. I’m leaving this island only, like, four hours per month to run some errands 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 listener Anderson Cubillos and Christine Cayol. 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@Freakonomics.com, and you might hear your voice on the show!

Coming up on No Stupid Questions: Why is it so hard for people to let go of power?

MAUGHAN: Howard Schultz has gone back as C.E.O. of Starbucks three different times now.

That’s coming up on No Stupid Questions.

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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 Lyric Bowditch is our production associate. This episode was mixed by Eleanor Osborne and Greg Rippin. We had research assistance from Daniel Moritz-Rabson. Our theme song was composed by Luis Guerra. You can follow us on Twitter @NSQ_Show and on Facebook @NSQShow. If you have a question for a future episode, please email it to NSQ@Freakonomics.com. To learn more, or to read episode transcripts, visit Freakonomics.com/NSQ. Thanks for listening!

DUCKWORTH: Seriously, I was like the shrimpiest, least-athletic kid.