Cultural Values

Role of Cultural Values

Cultural universalism asserts that all human beings create culture in response to survival needs. Only humans rely on culture rather than instinct to ensure survival of their kind. What seems unique to humanity is the capacity to create culture. Cultural relativism informs us that each culture possesses its own particular traditions, values, and ideals. Judgments of what is right or wrong, good or bad, acceptable or taboo are based on particular cultural values. Values underlie preferences, guide choices, and indicate what is worthwhile in life. Values help define the character of a culture, but they usually do not provide a specific course of action. Values generally prescribe what one “should” do but not how to do it. Because values offer viewpoints about ideals, goals, and behaviors, they serve as standards for social life. All groups, regardless of size, have their own values, norms, and sanctions.

Although it may seem obvious that values are rooted in the culture from which they originate, this has not always been the way values have been operationalized. [Page 1096]For many years in the United States, the fundamental values of White European American males were often accepted as universal rather than culturally specific. Deviations from mainstream values were labeled as abnormal and inferior rather than merely different. Psychologist Gilbert Wrenn challenged the notion that White European American culture was universal by writing about the “culturally encapsulated counselor,” and the multicultural counseling movement has expanded the notion of culturally bound values.

Formation of Cultural Values

Cultural values are formed through environmental adaptations, historical factors, social and economic evolution, and contact with other groups. Individuals develop cultural perceptual patterns that determine which stimuli reach their awareness. These cultural perceptual patterns also determine judgments of people, objects, and events. When the individual or society prioritizes a set of values (usually of the ethical or doctrinal categories), a value system is formed.

Values dictate what is important. They serve as a guide for the ideals and behavior of members of a culture. As guided by its values, culture can be seen as a dynamic system of symbols and meanings that involves an ongoing, dialectic process where past experience influences meanings, which in turn affects future experience, which in turn affects subsequent meaning. Cultural values provide patterns of living and prescribe rules and models for attitude and conduct.

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