Remember Your Ideals

"Pressure and attacks will veer you off from the person you want to be. Remember your ideals and principles."
(from my tweets, 2015)

Values came up again and again in my tweets. Early in 2015, I wrote: "One thing about me is that I conceived and stuck to my values. If something was leading me off of them, I didn't do it." That May, I warned: "Be careful that life doesn't make you jaded and you lose your ideals." And the day after the tweet above, I added: "It is about the person you become under pressure, not the person you are when there is no pressure."

Most of us know what we value when life is calm. The harder question is whether we remember it when we're stressed, criticized or tempted. Research suggests that simply reminding ourselves of what matters most can make a real difference, both to how we handle pressure and to how happy we are.

Values protect us under stress

In 2005, David Creswell, Shelley Taylor and colleagues at UCLA brought people into the lab for a famously stressful task: giving a speech and doing mental arithmetic in front of unfriendly evaluators.

Beforehand, some participants wrote about a value that mattered deeply to them, such as relationships, creativity or religion. Others wrote about a value that wasn't important to them. Those who reflected on their important values showed smaller increases in cortisol, a stress hormone, during the task.

Remembering what you care about didn't make the situation easier. It seemed to make it less threatening.

A short reminder can have lasting effects

Geoffrey Cohen and his colleagues have studied this kind of "values affirmation" in schools. In a 2006 study published in Science, seventh graders spent about fifteen minutes writing about values that mattered to them, like family, friends or music. A comparison group wrote about values that didn't matter to them.

For Black students, who faced negative stereotypes about academic ability, the exercise improved grades over the rest of the term and narrowed the racial achievement gap in those classrooms. Later work by Cohen and David Sherman suggested that affirming values helps people see a threat in a wider perspective. One bad grade, one harsh comment, one setback becomes just one part of a larger life, not a verdict on who you are.

Goals that match your values feel better

Living by your values also seems to affect happiness directly. Psychologists Kennon Sheldon and Andrew Elliot studied what they called self-concordant goals: goals that come from your genuine interests and values, rather than from pressure, guilt or trying to please others.

In their 1999 studies, people pursuing self-concordant goals put in more sustained effort, made more progress, and felt greater well-being when they reached them. Goals pursued for the "wrong" reasons were easier to abandon and less satisfying to achieve.

That's close to my tweet about becoming "the person you originally had in your mind." Success that comes from your own ideals tends to feel like yours.

What the philosophers said

Few people have held to their principles under more pressure than Socrates. In Plato's Gorgias, Socrates makes a claim that shocks the people he's talking to: it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.

Later, at his trial, as Plato describes it in the Apology, Socrates told the jury that even if they offered to let him go on the condition that he stop questioning people about how to live, he would refuse. He was sentenced to death. Few of us will ever face that kind of test. But his example makes the point vividly: our principles mean the most when it costs something to keep them.

Some honest caveats

Values-affirmation studies have produced mixed results when repeated. Some large school studies found smaller effects than the original research, and the benefits seem to depend on context. Lab stress studies are short, and reduced cortisol in the lab doesn't guarantee better outcomes in real life.

There's also a risk in clinging too rigidly to principles. Sometimes changing your mind is the wise thing to do. The goal isn't stubbornness. It's making sure that when you change course, it's because you've thought it through, not because pressure pushed you there.

How to remember your ideals

• Write down your top values. Pick two or three that matter most to you, and write a few sentences about why.
• Revisit them before hard moments. Before a difficult conversation, interview or decision, take five minutes to reread what you wrote.
• Check your goals. Ask whether each major goal comes from your own values or from outside pressure.
• Notice when you're being pushed. When criticism or stress makes you want to act out of character, pause and ask what your ideals would have you do.
• Remember the person you set out to be. As I tweeted, don't let life make you jaded.

Today's reflection

What are the two or three ideals you most want to live by? When was the last time pressure pushed you away from them, and what would help you remember them next time?

Sources

• Cohen, G. L., Garcia, J., Apfel, N., & Master, A. (2006). Reducing the racial achievement gap: A social-psychological intervention. Science, 313(5791), 1307–1310.
• Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 333–371.
• Creswell, J. D., Welch, W. T., Taylor, S. E., Sherman, D. K., Gruenewald, T. L., & Mann, T. (2005). Affirmation of personal values buffers neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses. Psychological Science, 16(11), 846–851.
• Plato. Apology.
• Plato. Gorgias, 469c.
• Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 482–497.