You might feel pulled toward environmental causes, but you're not sure if it's genuine conviction or something you've absorbed from the people around you. You're wondering whether environment actually ranks among your core values, or if you're confusing aspiration with authenticity.
Who This Is For
This is for someone who suspects there's a gap between their stated values and their lived choices. You talk about caring for the environment, but you haven't made meaningful changes. You feel the pull intellectually, but it doesn't seem to drive your decisions the way other things do. You're ready to stop assuming and start knowing.
This is also for people who are genuinely uncertain whether environmental protection sits at the center of what matters to them, or whether it's positioned elsewhere in their value structure. Schwartz's research on basic human values, developed across 80 countries and replicated hundreds of times, shows that values are not ranked equally. Some guide your life; others matter less. You want clarity on which one this is.
This is not for people who already live their environmental values consistently and feel no tension. If your choices align with your stated commitment, you've already answered the question. This is also not for people who feel certain they don't care about the environment and are not bothered by that indifference. The work here is for people stuck in ambiguity.
What You Will Discover
Once you know your actual core values, you stop wasting energy defending beliefs that don't belong to you. If environment ranks low, you stop feeling guilty for not living like an environmentalist. If it ranks high, you stop wondering why you're willing to change your behavior in ways you resist for other causes. You get to stop performing for an imagined audience and start making choices that feel true to you.
You'll also understand why environment sits where it does in your hierarchy. Schwartz's circumplex model shows that values adjacent in the circle are compatible—they pull you in the same direction. Values opposite each other create genuine tension. If you value self-direction and novelty, environmental commitments that require constraint feel at odds with what drives you. That's not a moral failing. That's information. Knowing this means you can either accept the trade-off consciously or stop pretending it doesn't exist.
Common Reasons People Wait
The first objection is usually that you need more time to figure it out on your own. You think clarity will come if you sit with it long enough. In practice, most people don't sit with it—they just keep cycling between guilt and avoidance. The assessment surfaces what you already know but haven't articulated. It doesn't take more time. It compresses the thinking you'd do anyway into something concrete.
The second reason is fear of the answer. If environment ranks high, you're committing to change. If it ranks low, you're admitting something you think you should care about doesn't actually matter to you. Both feel risky. But the risk of not knowing is that you keep living fractured—performing one set of values and living another. You already know which costs more.
The third is skepticism that a tool can tell you something this important about yourself. Fair. But a well-designed assessment doesn't tell you something you don't know. It organizes what you know into a pattern you can see. Schwartz's framework has been tested across cultures and decades. It's not infallible, but it's grounded in one of the most established frameworks in psychology.
Next Step
The My Values assessment surfaces your core values, ranks them, and shows you where you're living them and where you're not. One conversation with your actual values, not the ones you think you should have.
How do I know if I'm just pretending to care about the environment?
Watch what you choose when nobody's watching and there's no cost to choosing differently. If you consistently choose comfort or convenience over environmental action, even when it would be easy not to, that tells you something. You also notice what you feel willing to sacrifice for other causes. If you'd change your behavior for fairness or family stability but resist it for the environment, that's meaningful data about where environmental protection actually sits in your hierarchy.
Can environment be a core value if I don't do much about it?
Yes, but with a caveat. Schwartz distinguishes between values you hold and values you live. You might genuinely value environmental protection but prioritize career or security higher, so when the two conflict, security wins. That's not hypocrisy—that's honest hierarchy. The problem comes when you claim environment is your top value but then ignore it when it matters. That gap is what creates guilt and fracture.
What if I only care about the environment because of my social group?
That's possible and common. Values are partly shaped by your environment and the people you're close to. But there's a difference between "shaped by" and "imposed by." The assessment helps you separate inherited values from core values. If environment only matters because your community expects it, you'll notice that it ranks low when you're being honest with yourself about what actually drives your choices.
Does my age or generation affect whether environment is a core value?
Environment might be more visible or discussed in certain generations, but that doesn't make it more of a core value for you personally. Younger people may have more exposure to environmental messaging, but that doesn't mean it ranks higher in their actual value hierarchy. Schwartz's research shows that while societal priorities shift, the way individual people organize their values stays relatively stable across cultures and age groups.