The Hidden Science of Human Values | A Conversation with Ruth Taylor

I think illiteracy in values gives you an opportunity to reflect on, do I have to make this decision in this way? Is there another way I could be making this decision which feels more in alignment with the world that I want to live in and the priorities that I want people to have, versus I just have to do this thing in this moment in time because of external constraints. Hey everyone, I'm Shane Leaning. Welcome to Education Leaders, the chat topping leadership podcast for school leaders just like you.

As an organizational coach, I've helped thousands of leaders worldwide lead with greater confidence, make better decisions, and create winning teams. On this show, we explore some of the strategies that are going to help you achieve your goals and transform your leadership practice. Now, before we jump into this amazing conversation, I'm really excited this episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association. Stay tuned to learn more.

Now, I've been really excited about this episode. My guest today is Ruth Taylor. Ruth specializes in the process of narrative change. She's got a particular interest in values led transformation.

She splits the time between Common Cause Foundation, an organization I absolutely love, and some freelance narrative strategy work, looking particularly at creating the conditions for systemic transformation. Ruth is super experienced with campaigning, public engagement, and I came across her in this wonderful Values 101 course that I completed with the Common Cause Foundation, a cracking course. I recommend you check it out. I'll leave a link in the show notes.

And as expected, this conversation challenged my thinking about values in ways that I did not expect. And I know it's going to do the same for you. So let's jump straight in. At Common Cause, we draw heavily on a body of social psychology research into values, the human values that we all hold that shape our lives, that help us make decisions about how we're going to behave and what we think, how we're going to interact with other human beings and with the non-human world.

And there's decades of research that inform this study. There's numerous sort of frameworks, if you like, that are used in research to help you to understand people's values across the world. And the most widely used is something called the Schwartz Values Framework. Charlum Schwartz was a social psychologist, really pioneered this sort of study into values.

His framework can be sort of imagined like a map. It's a map of values and it shows what's called a structure. So it shows how different values relate to one another. It shows how different values can be complementary to one another and how some of them can be what we call antagonistic.

So it has 58 values on it. Those 58 values have been selected because they draw on what we need to survive as human beings, as kind of biological organisms. Also, what we require to function as societies, well, to kind of have social interaction and to consider the welfare needs of people in communities. So it has 58 values on it and they're split into 10 different groups.

So groupings of similar values on the map. And the structure shows this sort of relationship. So we sometimes use the imagery of a balloon in someone's head. So if certain values are what's called primed, so if our attention is drawn to a particular value, often very subtly, 99.9% of the time unconsciously,

you can think of it as a kind of balloon inflating in your head. And there's one sort of set of values, balloons in your head. Another set of values, sort of the balloon shrinks. So there's this push and pull effect between different values.

And that indicates that some values have intention with one another. It's really difficult to place priority on all values at the same time. We sort of have to pick and choose. And that's what the map shows.

I love this. And I think what struck me first, and I think a lot of school leaders listening will think this. Often schools have a value proposition that they say, these are our school values. Usually it's like four or five.

So when I first approached the work that you were doing with Common Cause and I did a great course with you, very fortunate to do that. I was thinking in my head of like my old school, like they kind of said, our school is about integrity, respect, a couple of these things. And I was surprised to see such a diverse range. 58, I thought, really? 58.

But they actually, I think they go a little bit beyond what most people expect a value to be, right? 100%, yeah. So often in like everyday language, when you hear the word values, you either think of those sort of usually fairly generalised statements that a school could have or businesses often have that live on the website and maybe they're printed up on a notice board somewhere in the building. Or we think of, you know, if I were to say, you know, Shane's got great values, you would have a sort of shortcut in your brain already about what I might be talking about.

You know, someone who's kind and honest and responsible, etc. And so that's the sort of shortcut language, if you like, that we have for when we hear the word values. In social psychology, there's a more definitive kind of explanation that we use. So in social psychology, values are defined as the principles or standards that we each live by that help guide and inform our thoughts, our attitudes, our actions, and they sort of help us to navigate this complicated world that we live in.

And so, yes, they do include things like honesty and kindness and the values that we might initially consider, but they also include values like wealth and power and status and excitement and things like that. So values that maybe we wouldn't necessarily assume off the bat, but in our framework, in the map that we draw, they're there too. This is where it's really powerful for me because it's showing the diversity of values, I guess, that we draw on at different points. And actually, awareness of those is super important rather than just kind of this simpler definition of aspirational values, seeing values as a part of who we are and how we operate, and therefore looking around this map, which maybe we can get a copy and we can link to in the show notes.

That would be good so people can see this. I mean, could you talk through a little bit then about a couple of those values? And I'm particularly interested about those links you mentioned, about some of them are really complementary, some of them conflict with each other. Can you talk a bit to that?

Yeah, so the map itself, it kind of looks like a random scattering of values on this blank bit of paper. And that's not the case. The positionality of each of the values is drawing on a huge body of data and data sets. And so what the map shows visually is this relationship between different values.

So if two values are close together on the map, we refer to them as complementary. And what that means is that it's easy for me, say, to place importance on two values that are close together at the same time. So I can be making a decision that's kind of informed by both of those values. So for example, on the map, creativity and curiosity are quite close together.

You can intuitively feel how, yeah, those things, they feel complementary to one another. Whereas when two values are far apart from one another on the map, we describe them as being antagonistic. It's really hard to place priority on both of those values at the same time. We sort of have to make a choice between them.

It isn't to say that it's completely impossible to do so. It's just psychologically hard. And what the research has shown over years and years and years is that on the whole human beings, we don't tend to be able to do this. So on the map, for example, some of them that are far apart from one another feel quite obvious.

So a value of moderation is far apart from a value of self-indulgence. And again, intuitively, you can kind of see how those two things would be made me hard to prioritize at the same moment in time. Whereas others are maybe less obvious. So a value of influence, a desire to be influential in the world is far apart from a value of equality, wanting to ensure that everybody is able to have equal proportion, to live successfully on our planet.

So maybe those don't immediately feel that they would be antagonistic to one another. But what the research shows is that over years and years of study, it seems like that kind of distinction is there. That makes a lot of sense. And I guess, could you use such a map to almost start to break down your situations and your thinking to look at maybe where you're thinking at the minute and like where you're sitting at the map?

And I'm almost imagining in the interactions a leader or anyone might make through their life might just sometimes almost follow the map sometimes in different directions, right? It's not that we all just live in one place. Absolutely not. We have all of the values.

This is another sort of misconception, I think, that we seem to think that we're born with a kind of set of values and say we have 10 really important values to us. And those are the values that we hold for our lives and we don't draw on others. And human beings are just far more complicated than that. We have all of these values to a certain extent.

We tend to use the kind of imagery of dancing in different parts of the map. So some parts of the map, we will spend more time in than others. And that's because of the way that we've been brought up, our education experiences, things like the political context that we've grown up in, whether we've been in a religious household, not in a religious household, et cetera, et cetera, all of the kind of things that form us as human beings in the early stages of our lives. Those inform the values that we tend to gravitate more towards.

But regardless of what those values are, we do draw on a huge range in our day-to-day lives. And we need to function well as human beings in responding to the kind of world around us. Some are more important than others, but we do have a really broad range. And so it's important to notice when you're drawing on different values, maybe values that you on the surface wish you didn't draw on as much as you do.

Sometimes that can be a really powerful way of shifting your behavior or becoming more cognizant of what you're up to. I actually found that exact thing for me when I first learned about this. I remember you were talking about different times in your life where different values might be more difficult to access. And I certainly resonated with talking about maybe when you are not so financially secure.

So when you're in that moment, you might want to live some of those values that we talked about earlier. But actually, if you need to get money, then you're gonna be drawn to some other parts of the map. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's where you're at.

No, exactly. I think it's really important to stress that no values are sort of bad values in and of themselves. It's hard not to pass a kind of values judgment on the values, if you like. But they do have a place and they're all kind of air quotes natural to a certain extent.

They're part of who we are as creatures of the world. So they all have a place. Where things become more complicated is we each hold personal values, but we also are part of communities. We're part of cultures that prioritize particular values and subtly remind us that what you should really be putting importance on is X, Y, Z.

Now, when those are out of balance, I think we find ourselves coming up against challenges. So what we advocate for at Common Cause and what really is strongly seen in lots of indigenous wisdom traditions is this sense that the kind of modern Western world has this priority, has a real focus on what we would call extrinsic values. So values like wealth and influence and power. And those are far apart from more what we would call intrinsic values on the map.

So things like justice, protecting the environment, equality, love for your neighbor, et cetera. Those are far apart from one another. So it's hard to prioritize both at the same time. And so I think what we find is that for individuals, there are times in your life when you need to be prioritizing wealth.

For example, when you're worried about how you're gonna feed your kids, and to eat your home, et cetera, et cetera. And that doesn't make you a bad person in any way at all. It's a very understandable and relatable situation for lots and lots of people. But when a culture is over prioritizing those particular values, we find ourselves in issues of kind of huge inequality between the richest and the poorest, huge extraction and domination of our natural world, et cetera.

That's, I think, where we sort of stride into troubling waters. That makes a lot of sense. I think that's a really useful distinction, thinking on the cultural level, on the personal level. It's not the same, because the impact is that much greater and has that much influence.

So you mentioned there's extrinsic values, competition or status, and then there's intrinsic values as well. So a lot of the work I do with schools is on change management. So they're trying to change things. They're trying to bring things through.

And a lot of the time in that, you might be drawing on a lot of those extrinsic areas, actually, on the map to kind of get quick things done. I wonder, in your mind, is there a trade-off that you have when you're thinking about appealing to these extrinsic values to achieve some of those short-term goals? So what the research shows is that when we as human beings are able to place more priority on intrinsic values, so values like equality and justice, protecting the environment, even things like freedom and creativity, there's lots of kind of good outcomes. So we report higher levels of wellbeing, so we're happier as individual people.

We feel closer to those around us, so we have better relationships with other human beings kind of within our community. We're more likely to engage in civic participation, so like voting or volunteering, and we're more likely to show enduring support for social and environmental policies. So it seems like trying to strengthen intrinsic values has lots of immediate and longer-term positive implications. Now, as I was sort of saying before, we live in a culture that wants us to prioritise more extrinsic values.

It wants us to be feeling insecure, so we're buying the latest beauty products, or going on the latest fan diet, or we're booking the latest holiday because we're so exhausted from the constant slog of our working lives, or whatever it might be. We're constantly trying to assert ourselves and make ourselves seem worthy in our kind of capitalistic culture. And so in those sort of situations, when we're taking decisions in our workplaces, schools absolutely being one of those places, we can feel that we need to prioritise certain things over others. And sometimes that is a legitimate concern.

You're thinking, I need to save money, I've got to cut costs somehow. And so you make decisions being motivated by an extrinsic value of wealth. I think illiteracy in values gives you an opportunity to reflect on, do I have to make this decision in this way? Is there another way I could be making this decision which feels more in alignment with the world that I want to live in and the priorities that I want people to have, versus I just have to do this thing in this moment in time because of external constraints.

I think it just allows you a bit more processing time and an ability to really be intentional with the way that you work and not accidentally be strengthening further a particular set of values that are leading to the challenges that we're facing in the first place. I love that because it's framed as, not here's this guide and follow this, do these things. It's actually a framework to help you reflect and to ask some really powerful questions of yourself that might just challenge your thinking or guide your thinking or make you look from a slightly different perspective on how you're leading or how you're acting in a certain situation. Absolutely, I think the world is far more complicated than any sort of five step plan to change it.

It just is. And I think we want our work to reflect that, that there's no sort of one step process here to solve all your problems. It's probably not realistic. This episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association.

Now I've been working with the ICA for quite a few years but they've been around for 30 years and they've been around championing quality, unlocking potential and improving learning in international schools right around the world. I really, really love that at their core is a model for improving learning. And this model is focused on the learning experience and they have tons of great curriculum materials, PD resources and even an accreditation pathway for schools just like yours. So if you're interested and I really do recommend you check them out, head over to internationalcurriculum.com.

I'm really interested to ask you something that I got really super giddy and geeky about when I first heard about it. And it's how we perceive these values for ourselves and in others. And you've talked about this values perception gap. I would love you to talk through that because this is absolutely fascinating to me.

Yeah, it's a really interesting area of study and there's a growing area really. There's more and more research being done on this. So the data is booming and becoming richer every year, which is brilliant to see. So the values perception gap is a concept of exploring how we perceive the values of other people.

So research has shown that 74% of people and this is data that relates to the UK population. But there is data that exists for other populations. And as I said, this is a growing area of study. So if it doesn't exist for your country yet, it is likely to in the coming years.

So 74% of people in the UK place a higher importance on intrinsic values than on extrinsic values. So they prioritize things like equality more than they prioritize things like power. And this is really similar to other datasets. We have data on 89 countries and that finding of a higher importance on intrinsic values than on extrinsic values is the case for 88 of those 89 countries.

So it's a pretty solid finding that seems to be replicated across the world. And that doesn't matter. It didn't matter whether somebody was economically richer or poorer, whether they were young or old or male or female or liberal or conservative voting or for the UK context, whether they voted leave or remain in the Brexit referendum. That finding sort of stayed the same regardless.

More people placing more importance on intrinsic values than extrinsic values. Where things get interesting. Well, I think that's interesting in and of itself but where it gets more interesting is that when we're asked to consider the values of other people we tend to get it quite spectacularly wrong. So we overestimate the importance that other people place on extrinsic values.

So we generally have this feeling of like I care or I'm motivated intrinsically. I really care about the health and wellbeing of people and planet. And we extend that to sort of our immediate loved ones as well to people we know really well. But then we seem to fall into this myth or this kind of narrative of like, but everybody else is really motivated by their ego or their self-interest or their kind of want to succeed or to dominate over others.

So this kind of misjudgment is really stark and we particularly misjudge the importance that people place on what we call universalism values which is a subset of intrinsic values. So universalism is the understanding, the appreciation the protection of the welfare of people and nature that we are likely to never come into contact with. There are people that maybe speak a different language to us, live in a really different part of the world to us follow a different faith to us, have a different skin color, whatever it might be and the kind of non-human world. And of course we could also separate this out from our sort of living time.

So people and life that is going to be on this planet in six generations time. We can feel a connection to them even though we're separated through time and space. So those are universalism values which are a subset of intrinsic values. And we seem to get those particularly wrong.

We really misjudge how much people place importance on those. But why I think this is so interesting is because it filters in to how we design our world. So how we design our schools, how we run our classrooms, et cetera. Because if we think that people are motivated by selfish interests, we ourselves might feel that we can't publicly act in line with our intrinsic motivations.

Cause we sort of fear this sense of like, oh, I'm the odd one out. Or at least we're not going to want to talk publicly about those motivations. And ultimately that further sort of strengthens that misperception that other people are more self-interested than they are. So we sort of get into this self-fulfilling prophecy, this kind of virtuous circle that we can't really break out of.

And that has a knock on effect. If you think other people hold different values to you you're perhaps more likely to vote in politicians who are talking about cracking down on benefit sheets or whatever it might be. So it has a real world impact on the way that we sort of manage our time together on this planet. I'm really imagining in a school setting specifically thinking about managing a large team of teachers.

In fact, if you had the idea that I'm motivated this way but they're motivated a different way, the decisions you're going to make for them, gosh, it's quite upsetting to think that we all have this kind of feeling that we think we are more intrinsically motivated than others and others are more extrinsically motivated. And I wonder how that would change the way a manager, for example, looks at a performance management, for example, of staff or looks at motivation or professional development of the people who work for them. Definitely. One I see a lot in the sort of social and environmental space in schools is this sort of desire to try to motivate young people to engage in a campaign or some sort of project, a local park project or a beach cleaner for whatever it might be through the use of competition and prizes, which is assuming that they are more motivated by the status that comes with winning a competition, being the winner or the prize.

You know, there's sort of either there's a voucher or whatever it might be that you're more motivated extrinsically than you are intrinsically by your more innate care for the natural world. And what that does is it one, it makes it less likely that people are actually going to engage, but two, it sends this subtle message to all of those young people that what they should care about is a competition and a prize and not the environment, and that their fellow pupils are more likely to be engaged extrinsically than they are intrinsically. So it sends a subtle message about like human nature is actually more kind of focused on prizes and competition and winning and status and ego than it actually is. And that has an effect for your whole life and how you go on to live.

So I always find that comes up so often that you see that kind of setup to try to encourage kids to get involved in like a social and environmental change project. I really love that as a teacher thinking about, for example, even like a lot of schools talk about behavior at the minute and thinking about how to improve behavior. And we might be talking about intrinsic and extrinsic, like actions rather than values, but about motivating students. I've certainly reflected a lot since learning about this perception gap and learning that, do you know what?

Most of us are motivated intrinsically. How can I use that to kind of then put myself in the student's position and go, well, how would we work with that and with that knowledge? Because I still think it's hard to let go of extrinsic, because often sometimes extrinsic works short term quickly as well, doesn't it, right? So it's quick wins.

Yeah, it can do. Often if your measure of success is like an immediate thing, then yeah, they absolutely can galvanize. It's not to say that they aren't motivating to people. So in that example I just gave of trying to encourage engagement in like a beach cleanup through the use of a competition or a prize or whatever.

That can be galvanizing, of course it can. It could be the reason that somebody engages, but the difference is that the chances become less that they are going to continue that behavior over time or that that sparked a love for nature for them that they can experience in lots of different parts of their lives outside of school, both now and into their adult future, that becomes less likely. And so yeah, when you're thinking about your immediate success, you can be like, children engaged in activity tick. It shows that competitions or prizes work.

But is that really what we want? Or is there something kind of deeper and more long-term that we should be seeking? What would it look like to try and plant that seed of a connection and a love for our natural world that goes way beyond your school years? That's probably not motivated by a competition or a prize.

I like that. And that can only start if you're asking of yourself, what is the value here that I'm wanting to nurture really? And therefore using that as your starting point rather than what is the outcome I'm wanting to achieve. I'm not just wanting them to participate in this beach cleaning activity.

I'm wanting them to really nurture that value of the universalism, of feeling that this is important and that they might want to do that. I wonder to kind of round off this conversation, is this a change that you could think that a school leader might be able to make tomorrow to start to align their practices with the values that they want to nurture? It's such a good question. And to be honest, I love that phrase that you just used about what is the value I'm wanting to nurture.

It's a really powerful question and one that we probably don't hold in the forefront of our mind very often. So I think firstly, just even having that, it's at the forefront of your mind as you're designing your classes, as you're designing the processes by which your school runs and is in operation. I think that's really powerful. I can imagine that some people feel that sense of, you know, well, I don't want to manipulate someone's values.

I don't want, you know, who am I to say that the right values to have are X, Y, Z? And I totally understand that feeling. At the same time, you will be engaging values in your pupils, in your staff, in anyone you come into contact with. By the way that you're speaking, by the way that you're showing up, by the kind of processes and structures that you are creating, you will be strengthening and reinforcing values.

You can't help it. And so really the question is you have a choice as to which values you wish to strengthen. And so often, because we are the products of the culture in which we're all part of, we tend to reinforce more extrinsic values because they feel like the norm. And we can sort of purposefully decide actually, you know, with intention that we believe that the happiness of those individual pupils, the staff is going to increase if we prioritize more intrinsic values as is the happiness and health of our planet as a whole.

And so there's something about intentionally just owning that and then asking yourself that question, what values am I wanting to nurture in this situation? You know, starting small, I think can be really powerful. What is in your gift to do? What do you have responsibility over within your school setting?

Remembering that values can fade often in very subtle ways. So just taking a moment as you're designing a class, as you're designing a lesson plan, or as you're working out the latest sort of policy for a particular group of teachers, et cetera, what does this say from a values point of view? What values am I strengthening here? And making that a habit, keep bringing that into your day-to-day work is really powerful.

I also really recommend speaking more about your values to your colleagues. You know, what brought you to being a teacher? Let me share that story of mine. Let me hear your stories.

What attracted you to this is a profession. I would imagine that the vast majority of people are going to have an intrinsic reason for that. And also doing that with children, helping them to understand that we all have these values, this is what values are, the fact that most of us prioritise intrinsic values over extrinsic ones, giving them experiences of that in real life, helping them to reflect on their own values. I think that's really powerful.

There's research that shows that just even having the space to think about our own values primes or strengthens our intrinsic values. So even just that as an exercise, I think, can be really powerful. And there are tools and things that you can use to help you have those conversations work. This conversation with Ruth really opened my eyes to how we might be getting values completely wrong in our school.

The idea that three-quarters of people actually prioritise intrinsic values like equality over extrinsic ones like wealth completely challenges how many of us approach motivation and change. What struck me the most was Ruth's point about the values perception gap. We consistently overestimate how much others are motivated by status and competition when actually they're probably just like us, caring more about fairness and connection. But that misjudgment, it shapes everything from how we design our PD to how we even try to motivate our students.

I loved Ruth's practical advice on asking yourself what values am I wanting to nurture before designing an initiative? It's such a simple shift, but it's one that changes your entire approach from focusing purely on outcomes to thinking about the deeper principles you're enforcing. I am definitely gonna be more intentional about talking values with the teams I work with and asking some of those deeper questions about what originally drew us to education because we know it's not just a salary. You can find Ruth's work in her newsletter Culture Soup by using the links in the show notes and the Common Cause Foundation Values Map is also linked there, I recommend having a look.

Education Leaders is hosted by me, Shane Leaning, thanks to the show editor Pete McGill and for the original music by Guillermo Silva. And thank you so, so much for tuning in today. If we don't speak before, I'll see you here next week. If you wanna learn more about the brilliant work from the International Curriculum Association, head to internationalcurriculum.com.