A Scientific Measure of Emotional Values
Total Health Breakthroughs
September 26, 2007
By Dr. Douglas Ramm
A little more than 10 years ago, psychologists who work in American universities began offering advice on how to enhance emotional well-being. Virtually all of these professors maintain that the most reliable method for increasing happiness, contentment and satisfaction with life consists of making changes in the way we look at the world. They believe that cultivating a positive attitude, developing a sense of gratitude and maintaining a sense of optimism are all we can do to achieve and maintain emotional well-being.
Nonsense. Those who attempt to enhance their emotional well-being with this approach will end up sadly disappointed. It will not get them where they want to go.
As a practicing clinical psychologist, I am convinced that emotions are always a matter of how we are affected by the things, people and events we encounter in daily life. Looking at what the ivory tower psychologists were telling the public, I saw clearly that real science was needed to discover which things, interpersonal events and conditions of daily life actually contribute to emotional well-being.
I conducted rigorous, scientific research to discover which of these actually make a difference in our overall emotional well-being. It began with a review of what scores of researchers have discovered over nearly 50 years of research into happiness, contentment and satisfaction with life. This research revealed that there are a number of things that are correlated with subjective reports of emotional well-being, irrespective of the gender, race or ethnicity of the person making that report. Since these have natural, intrinsic or inherent worth, we refer to these things as values.
Next, I designed a method to determine which of these values actually have an impact on whether a person is happy, content and satisfied with life. The results of my research revealed that there are 10 values that actually make a difference in terms of whether and to what degree an individual is able to find and hold onto emotional well-being.
Since the following values are the ones that determine real and lasting emotional well-being, I call them the 10 Core Values:
1. Meaningful material objects are the necessities of life, as well as those tangible entities that contribute to a person's contentment and satisfaction in living.
2. Money is cash, credit, stocks, bonds, coupons, insurance benefits or any other object that can be used as a medium of exchange.
3. Affirmation is the experience of being recognized as an adequate, competent, acceptable, desirable and/or lovable human being.
4. Companionship is the experience we have when we share concerns, interests and activities with people whose company we enjoy.
5. Intimacy occurs in relationships that already involve affirmation and companionship. They are where we can also share thoughts, emotions and experiences that could be embarrassing or lead to ridicule or rejection, but the other person in the relationship continues to remain affirming.
6. Health is the state of physical and mental well-being, which is characterized by the absence of disease, disability and pain.
7. A rewarding occupation is one where we enjoy the tasks involved, are competent at performing those tasks and experience a sense of accomplishment from a job well done.
8. Rewarding recreation is a sense of renewal obtained from an activity pursued for the mere joy or pleasure it provides and which allows us to return to the tasks of living refreshed and renewed.
9. Freedom is the ability to do what we want to do when we want to do it. It includes liberty as well as the ability to think freely, to express our own ideas and to initiate courses of action without the fear that engaging in personally fulfilling behavior will prompt some unjustified verbal or physical aggression in response.
10. Security is physical safety as well as confidence in our ability to obtain or maintain the other nine core values.
Once I determined that these 10 core values are the ones that actually make a difference in terms of whether and to what degree we are happy, content and satisfied with life, I designed the General Inventory of Life Satisfaction (GILS) as a means of measuring an individual’s overall level of emotional well-being. A validation study done in collaboration with a professor from Penn State University confirmed that this is about as accurate a means of measuring emotional well-being as an IQ test is in measuring a person’s level of intelligence
If you would like to see where you stand with respect to each of the 10 core values as well as your overall emotional well-being, go to my website and respond to this online questionnaire. If you are interested in preserving your responses, print a hard copy of your answers to the GILS survey before clicking on the next page, where your Global Estimate of Life Satisfaction (GELS) score will be computed. Then, print a hard copy of your GELS score before exiting the website, because a permanent record of your responses is not kept at that website.
If your GELS scores indicate that you are less than fully satisfied, you will benefit from future editions of this newsletter, where I will show you how to use your responses to the GELS as the foundation for personal strategic planning. You will learn how to use this instrument as a means of devising plans of action that can enhance your overall emotional well-being. If your GELS score shows that you are already experiencing a fairly high level of emotional well-being, you can use future articles to learn what you need to know and what you need to do in order to maintain this optimal quality of life.
Ed. Note: Dr. Douglas Ramm is a psychologist, philosopher, author and leading researcher in the field of emotional well-being, contentment and life satisfaction. He has appeared on numerous radio and television talk shows where he shares insights for enhancing quality of life.]
A little more than 10 years ago, psychologists who work in American universities began offering advice on how to enhance emotional well-being. Virtually all of these professors maintain that the most reliable method for increasing happiness, contentment and satisfaction with life consists of making changes in the way we look at the world. They believe that cultivating a positive attitude, developing a sense of gratitude and maintaining a sense of optimism are all we can do to achieve and maintain emotional well-being.
Nonsense. Those who attempt to enhance their emotional well-being with this approach will end up sadly disappointed. It will not get them where they want to go.
As a practicing clinical psychologist, I am convinced that emotions are always a matter of how we are affected by the things, people and events we encounter in daily life. Looking at what the ivory tower psychologists were telling the public, I saw clearly that real science was needed to discover which things, interpersonal events and conditions of daily life actually contribute to emotional well-being.
I conducted rigorous, scientific research to discover which of these actually make a difference in our overall emotional well-being. It began with a review of what scores of researchers have discovered over nearly 50 years of research into happiness, contentment and satisfaction with life. This research revealed that there are a number of things that are correlated with subjective reports of emotional well-being, irrespective of the gender, race or ethnicity of the person making that report. Since these have natural, intrinsic or inherent worth, we refer to these things as values.
Next, I designed a method to determine which of these values actually have an impact on whether a person is happy, content and satisfied with life. The results of my research revealed that there are 10 values that actually make a difference in terms of whether and to what degree an individual is able to find and hold onto emotional well-being.
Since the following values are the ones that determine real and lasting emotional well-being, I call them the 10 Core Values:
1. Meaningful material objects are the necessities of life, as well as those tangible entities that contribute to a person's contentment and satisfaction in living.
2. Money is cash, credit, stocks, bonds, coupons, insurance benefits or any other object that can be used as a medium of exchange.
3. Affirmation is the experience of being recognized as an adequate, competent, acceptable, desirable and/or lovable human being.
4. Companionship is the experience we have when we share concerns, interests and activities with people whose company we enjoy.
5. Intimacy occurs in relationships that already involve affirmation and companionship. They are where we can also share thoughts, emotions and experiences that could be embarrassing or lead to ridicule or rejection, but the other person in the relationship continues to remain affirming.
6. Health is the state of physical and mental well-being, which is characterized by the absence of disease, disability and pain.
7. A rewarding occupation is one where we enjoy the tasks involved, are competent at performing those tasks and experience a sense of accomplishment from a job well done.
8. Rewarding recreation is a sense of renewal obtained from an activity pursued for the mere joy or pleasure it provides and which allows us to return to the tasks of living refreshed and renewed.
9. Freedom is the ability to do what we want to do when we want to do it. It includes liberty as well as the ability to think freely, to express our own ideas and to initiate courses of action without the fear that engaging in personally fulfilling behavior will prompt some unjustified verbal or physical aggression in response.
10. Security is physical safety as well as confidence in our ability to obtain or maintain the other nine core values.
Once I determined that these 10 core values are the ones that actually make a difference in terms of whether and to what degree we are happy, content and satisfied with life, I designed the General Inventory of Life Satisfaction (GILS) as a means of measuring an individual’s overall level of emotional well-being. A validation study done in collaboration with a professor from Penn State University confirmed that this is about as accurate a means of measuring emotional well-being as an IQ test is in measuring a person’s level of intelligence
If you would like to see where you stand with respect to each of the 10 core values as well as your overall emotional well-being, go to my website and respond to this online questionnaire. If you are interested in preserving your responses, print a hard copy of your answers to the GILS survey before clicking on the next page, where your Global Estimate of Life Satisfaction (GELS) score will be computed. Then, print a hard copy of your GELS score before exiting the website, because a permanent record of your responses is not kept at that website.
If your GELS scores indicate that you are less than fully satisfied, you will benefit from future editions of this newsletter, where I will show you how to use your responses to the GELS as the foundation for personal strategic planning. You will learn how to use this instrument as a means of devising plans of action that can enhance your overall emotional well-being. If your GELS score shows that you are already experiencing a fairly high level of emotional well-being, you can use future articles to learn what you need to know and what you need to do in order to maintain this optimal quality of life.
Ed. Note: Dr. Douglas Ramm is a psychologist, philosopher, author and leading researcher in the field of emotional well-being, contentment and life satisfaction. He has appeared on numerous radio and television talk shows where he shares insights for enhancing quality of life.]