5 2. Read the given passage carefully, HOW DOES ONE DEFINE VALUES OR A VALUE SYSTEM? Values can be defined as beliefs or attitudes that you hold close; something that you want to keep as a standard for judging yourself and the rest of the world. It is the basis of your sense of right or wrong and good or bad. It is our values that drive us to act in certain ways, to lead a certain lifestyle and to shun certain habits. Actually each of us has a unique value system-almost as unique as our fingerprints. Yet, value systems can differ starkly even within the same family or group of friends. There are many values and any combination of these separate values will form a person's value system. To figure out yours, you must do a lot of soul-searching, ask yourself questions about what really matters to you and what you deeply believe in, or what are the issues that you are not willing to compromise on—that will be your unique set of values. Source: Annie Zaidi Answer the following questions in brief: 1. How can the values be best defined? 2. On what grounds is the sense of right and wrong based on? 3. Our value system is compared to which thing? 4. What is required to do in order to figure out one's value system? 5. What is the opposite of 'separation' in the above passage?
Answers
Answer:
Human beings are complex, multifaceted creatures. Psychologists and sociologists have written thousands of pages of text attempting to explain what makes human beings “tick ” in order to better understand why individuals behave as they do. Why does one person laugh off an insult while another feels the need to punch the offender? Why do some cultures value the uniqueness of the individual while others believe that the group working as a whole is more important? What makes one person persevere while another gives up? In one small section of this chapter, we certainly cannot hope to comprehensively cover all that comprises human psychology, but we do need to identify a few key terms that have relevance in our study of communication and speech. For our purposes, the terms values, beliefs, and attitudes are especially important as you attempt to analyze your audience. These terms are defined for you in the table below.
Values
The underlying principles or standards of desirable or ideal behavior that we use to justify our beliefs and attitudes
Beliefs
Ideas we express about subjects that may explain our attitudes towards them
Attitudes
A frame of mind in favor of or opposed to a person, policy, belief, institution, topic, etc.
Explanation:
So why is this knowledge of belief systems important to you as a speaker? Knowing as much as you can about how your audience members think, believe, and view the world gives you “insider ” information that will assist you as you choose your topics, your examples, and your evidence. As you attempt to persuade listeners, you will certainly need to be aware of which beliefs are fixed and which are variable. It might also help if you realize how persistently we humans hold on to our beliefs, often even after we are presented with evidence that clearly contradicts them. This can make your attempt to convince your audience more difficult. Wolpert states that “when examining evidence relevant to a given belief, people are inclined to see what they expect to see and conclude what they expect to conclude ” (7-8). We often see only what we want to see. We focus on the evidence that supports our already established beliefs and disregard other conflicting evidence because it doesn’t fit how we view the world. It doesn’t fit into our belief system. You must be prepared to combat that human tendency.
Knowing what individuals in your audience value and believe can assist you in all phases of your speech preparation and presentation. How can you gather this information from them? First, you will need to know what questions to ask and what types of data to collect. One of the first places to start is with the collection of demographic information.