Wayne Pilcher

Values in Psychology Wayne Pilcher

Life's challenges are meant to be faced head-on - with the tools that help to overcome personal problems and ongoing stresses. But to do that requires self-understanding. How do values relate to psychology? Psychology is the study of the human mind and how it relates to behavior and emotional responses. Values are those things that satisfy our basic needs, such as food and shelter, and spiritual needs, such as friendships and happiness. We use our mind and our actions to create values in life. Not using our mind effectively limits our ability to create our values. Our emotions reflect our value system. We have pleasurable emotions for those things we value. We have painful emotions for things that harm our values. We have a conscious rational mind; we have free will; we have memory; as living creatures, we experience pleasure and pain. We experience emotions and as locomotive beings, we act in the world. Understanding these and how they interact is at the root of understanding ourselves.