---
title: Personal Values
tags:
  - topic/individualism
  - type/encyclopedia-entry
---
# Personal Values

Personal values are subjective preferences for behavior
that affect one's decisions in ways that an objective analysis could not predict.

> [!example]
> People are more likely to return a wallet
> with more cash than less.

Personal values are the difference between one's normative and descriptive [[utility]].

Maintaining strong personal values aids decision-making
by allowing one to trivialize problems
that may be overwhelmingly complex when analyzed objectively.

For example:

For an unbiased individual,
to calculate the utility of a second bowl of ice cream---
to determine its relative benefit compared to its harm---
requires a thorough understanding and accurate quantization of their
* recent and future physical activity
* fitness goals
* preference for ice cream relative to other desert options
* natural tendency to form unhealthy habits
among many other factors.

For an individual who strongly values their health and physical fitness,
the knowledge that they would be acting in violation of those values
skews the calculation so far to the negative
that internal debate is unnecessary.

Frequently, individuals are capable of effectively rationalizing their values
(it's not difficult to imagine that, all variables considered,
the objective utility of the additional ice cream is negative for most people).
In this way they are behavioral [[heuristics]]:
subjective utility

***

_Having_ a value, simply acknowledging that some behavior is good,
requires no effort, and has no perceivable effect on the person.
Everyone _has_ dozens of values.

_Maintaining_ a value means acting according to it so often
that doing so is instinctive.

***

Personal values, as commonly described,
tend towards benevolence (charity, family)
or at least individual good[^1] (health, physical fitness),
but like habits, people maintain bad values as often or more.

[^1]: "good" is a **societal** value,
    a common value that individuals are expected to maintain.

Angry, wasteful, and unhygienic people
maintain bad values that cause them to act the way they do,
contrary to their own objective interest.
