Protecting Protected Values

In the Hoch text, based on Irwin and Baron's discussions on Protected Values (PV) (pgs.251 ff.), reflect on three of your major protected values, support those values with at least three major beliefs and show the pros and cons of each belief in terms of trade-offs you are willing to make to support or not support that belief. How do these Protected Values potentially affect your own decision making? Do you feel as strongly about them as you did when you began this exercise?

Irwin and Baron’s discussion in Hoch (2001) highlights an often-understated aspect of values, especially when considered in public policy terms.  They state that the “cost benefit” analysis can be challenging to determine how relative importance can be assigned to PV.  Sowell (2015) confirms this notion that values are not simply “put” upon items or objects, that in fact a cost does exist when determining relative importance.  The amount needed to obtain education, training, resources needed to achieve competence or success does require acknowledgement in any decision. 

That being said, some items are simply priceless and are worth certain expenditures when needed.  I would do anything to protect the lives of my family, including giving of mine if their survival can be ensured.  In the public domain, when I hear about certain subjects as child or human trafficking, I believe every cent expended is worthwhile and necessary to protect innocent life. Although such efforts are often seen in budgetary terms to properly fund law enforcement and prosecution of these crimes, it would seem that that the rescue of young persons from trafficking deserves our very best resources. These may be examples of PV that are independent of consequences.

A PV that we have tried to enact and preach is that of consistency and follow through with our children when it comes to household rules.  Children are very smart and observant, thus finding an apparent weakness or contradiction with house rules seems to be their gift.  We have found that consistency and follow through, meaning if we threaten to “take something away” due to non-compliance, then we actually have to “take it away” for there to be any weight to our word.  At the same time, when we are silent on other matters, or omission as stated in Hoch (2001), there’s an inherent bias to comment on action rather than inaction.  It’s a very fine line to comment on somethings, but one must be careful not to make life just correction after correction, as children may view mom and dad as just always criticizing or never supportive.  Although the term trade-off may not be fully accurate, I would say this PV requires discretion on when to apply. 

I think this exercise was helpful in identifying what would consist of PV’s and then understanding the reasoning behind how PV’s can evolve.  It has made me more conscious of what I would consider a PV vs what I would be willing to compromise on. 

Hoch, S. J., Kunreuther, H., & Gunther, R. E. (2001). Wharton on making decisions (1st ed.). New York: Wiley

Sowell, T. (2015). BASIC ECONOMICS: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy. New York, NY: BASIC Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group.