What Security Values Are
Security values prioritize safety, stability, and protection over uncertainty and risk. When security is one of your core values, you organize decisions around reducing threat, maintaining order, and ensuring predictability. This includes personal safety, social stability, financial security, and the preservation of what you already have. Shalom Schwartz's 1992 research across 80+ countries identified security as one of 10 universal value types,a framework replicated in psychology, organizational behaviour, and cross-cultural studies ever since. In Schwartz's circumplex model, values are arranged in a circle showing which types naturally support each other and which create tension. Security sits next to Conformity and Tradition (they all emphasize stability and order) and directly opposes Openness to Change (which seeks novelty and risk).
How Security Values Operate in Your Life
Security-oriented people make different trades than others. You might choose a predictable job over higher pay with uncertainty. You plan for contingencies others skip. You feel genuine discomfort when plans change or information is incomplete. This isn't caution,it's priority. The feeling underneath this: you notice threats others miss, and you cannot relax until they're addressed. You might describe yourself as someone who "thinks ahead" or "plans for the worst," and that's the security value at work. You're scanning for what could go wrong because stability matters more to you than spontaneity.
In relationships, security values show up as consistency. You remember small commitments and keep them. You may distrust people who are unpredictable or who seem careless with their promises. You want partners and friends who are reliable, who show up the same way repeatedly. This can be your greatest strength in long-term relationships,you build trust through steady presence. It can also mean you struggle with people who are more spontaneous or flexible, interpreting their easygoing nature as a lack of commitment rather than a different priority.
At work, security values drive you toward established roles, known processes, and clear expectations. You're the person who reads the manual. You document decisions. You notice gaps in procedure. In organizations that value innovation over stability, you can appear risk-averse or slow. In organizations that value safety,finance, healthcare, aviation, infrastructure,you are often the person preventing catastrophe. Your preference for the proven path over the experimental one is not a lack of vision. It's a different assignment of weight.
Where Security Values Create Real Tension
The circumplex model shows that security values sit in direct opposition to Openness to Change values. This means if you score high on security, you likely score lower on the desire for novelty, variation, and challenge. This creates a specific kind of friction. You might feel pulled between wanting a life that feels safe and structured, and knowing that growth sometimes requires uncertainty. You might choose the stable option and then resent it for being predictable. You might envy people who travel on a whim or change careers without a safety net, not realizing they are operating under different values, not more courage.
The tension also shows up in relationships with people who value stimulation and autonomy. They may experience your caution as controlling. You may experience their willingness to wing it as reckless. Neither is wrong. You are each prioritizing different things. A partner who values both security and openness has to negotiate this internally,wanting stability and also wanting to try something risky. A partnership where one person prioritizes security and the other prioritizes change requires explicit conversation about which decisions demand certainty and which ones are safe enough to experiment with.
Many people report feeling trapped by their own security values. You know what would feel good,less planning, more spontaneity, taking the unconventional job. But the anxiety of uncertainty is real, not manufactured. Your nervous system is not being dramatic. It is simply reading threat differently than someone with lower security values. Understanding this is the difference between judging yourself for being cautious and recognizing that caution is how you've learned to stay safe.
Recognizing When Security is Running the Show
Security values become a problem when they prevent you from doing things that matter to you. You know this is happening when: you say yes to another year at a job you've stopped enjoying because leaving feels too risky; you stay in a relationship that is stable but cold because you cannot bear the uncertainty of change; you don't pursue something you actually want because the path isn't proven. The pattern keeps running because it has never been named. You make the same risk-averse choice, and each time it makes sense, right up until you realize you've built a life that feels safe but hollow.
Recognizing your security values for what they are,a real priority, not a flaw,creates space to choose consciously. You can build a life that includes both stability and growth. You can move slowly toward change instead of staying frozen. You can trust your need for certainty while also testing whether every threat you perceive is actually real. The My Values assessment surfaces your value priorities, ranks them, and shows you exactly where you are and are not living them,which is the first step to knowing whether your security values are protecting you or limiting you.
What does security mean in Schwartz's value theory?
In Schwartz's framework, security means prioritizing safety, stability, and protection,both personal safety and the preservation of social order and existing systems. It includes financial security, predictability in relationships, and resistance to change that feels threatening. People with high security values tend to make decisions that reduce risk and maintain what is known to work.
What's the difference between security and conformity values?
Security and conformity are adjacent values in Schwartz's circumplex, meaning they often go together but aren't identical. Security is about preventing harm and maintaining stability. Conformity is about following rules and respecting authority to maintain group harmony. You can be security-focused without being conformist,wanting a stable, predictable life that follows your own rules rather than others' rules.
Which values conflict most with security?
In Schwartz's circumplex model, security values are in direct opposition to Openness to Change values, which prioritize novelty, risk, variation, and independent thinking. Someone high in both creates internal tension: you want the stability of a proven path but also the growth and excitement of doing something new. This is why people often feel divided about whether to stay or leave, play it safe or take the chance.
Can security values change, or are they fixed?
Values are relatively stable,they reflect how you've learned to navigate the world,but they are not immutable. Life experience shifts priorities. Someone who felt invincible at 25 may prioritize security more at 45. Someone who played it too safe may consciously choose openness. What changes is usually your awareness of what you value and your willingness to act on it differently, not the values themselves flipping.