Dr Joffrey Fuhrer

I am a researcher dedicated to questions that touch us all: What makes our lives meaningful? What constitutes the key ingredients of our well-being? I like to call myself a psychosopher, as I mix scientific psychology rigor and philosophical depth in my work, because these big questions need both.

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Do the values we strive for have an impact on our mental well-being?

The short answer is yes, but the more interesting answer is that it depends on the cultural and political context!

First, a few words about what values are when studied scientifically. According to Schwartz's influential theory, ten basic human values can be organized along two dimensions: openness to change versus conservation, and self-enhancement versus self-transcendence.

Openness to change includes values such as self-direction, stimulation, and hedonism, whereas conservation includes security, conformity, and tradition. Self-enhancement includes achievement and power, whereas self-transcendence includes benevolence and universalism. Overall, these values reflect our motivational goals and appear to be remarkably consistent across different cultures.

In a fascinating study spanning 32 European national samples, Sortheix and Schwartz found that cultural egalitarianism moderates the relationship between value orientations and subjective well-being. More specifically, they found that in less egalitarian contexts, openness-to-change values (hedonism, stimulation, and self-direction) are more positively associated with well-being, whereas conservation values (security, conformity, and tradition) are more negatively associated with it. Self-enhancement values also become relatively more beneficial, with achievement showing a stronger positive association with well-being and power a weaker negative one. In contrast, self-transcendence values (benevolence and universalism) become less positively associated with well-being.

These findings suggest that the psychological benefits of pursuing particular values are not universal, but partly depend on the social and cultural environments in which we live. This is quite intuitive when we think about it. For example, in a less egalitarian society, valuing and striving for benevolent or universalistic goals, such as fighting for minorities or against corruption, may conflict with the hierarchical structure of society, potentially backfiring and taking a toll on one's well-being. Interestingly, this does not necessarily mean that these values are less meaningful to pursue, but that is another story.

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— Joffrey Fuhrer

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