Self-test, 20 minutes
What do your values cost you?
This self-test asks about the price: when did a value cost you something in the past twelve months? Where no moment comes to mind, the placement stays a hypothesis. A counter-check and one small step over the next four weeks put it to the test.
Before you start
In a moment you will answer five questions about your values, on your own and at your own pace. All answers are valid. Nobody needs to see what you write, and later you decide what you show. Leave out other people’s names and anything confidential. An empty field only means that no moment came to mind for the past twelve months. You can stop at any time.
Think beforehand about who you could talk to afterwards, in case a result stays with you.
Pick another time if you are in an acute crisis, in the first weeks after a bereavement, a separation or a dismissal, or in a depressive episode with strong self-devaluation.
Pick five out of ten
Ten value fields, based on the model of Shalom Schwartz. Quickly pick the five that matter most to you. Your first instinct gets you further than your second thought. Choose as if nobody would ever see the list.
0 of 5 selected
The price
Three questions for each value. First: when did this value cost you something in the past twelve months? Write two sentences: when, where, with whom, and what you gave up or accepted for it. Check them with one question: could a stranger draw a scene from this?
Second: what did it cost? Third: did you choose this value, or did you find it already there? If no moment comes to mind, pick “None of these” for the second question. That is a valid answer.
Your result
The placement covers the past twelve months. It is a hypothesis and no verdict on you. The counter-check below puts it to the test.
If an empty field stirs something up
An empty field applies to twelve months and to this one value. If shame, self-blame or lasting unease show up, this is a good point to stop: close the page, put the device away, take two minutes and look at the core values again only after 24 hours. You decide whether to continue.
If the result keeps working in you, talk to the person you thought of beforehand, or to your coach or counsellor. You can also get in touch with Michael Tomoff (contact page in German). If you are in acute distress, contact a local crisis service or emergency number.
moment named
Accidental
Moment named, value inherited.
Core value
Moment named, value chosen.
Permission to play
No moment named, value inherited.
Aspirational
No moment named, value chosen: you want to live up to it.
no moment named
The four types come from Patrick Lencioni. Placing them on the two axes of price and origin is my own addition.
With a named moment
Your own sentence sits beside it. A named price is an indication. How closely values and behaviour are linked differs from value to value (Bardi and Schwartz, 2003).
Without a named moment
A missing moment says nothing about whether the value steers you. The counter-check below clarifies which explanation applies.
Counter-check
The first cent (optional)
Pick one value from the Aspirational field, otherwise from the Permission to play field. Write down the smallest price you would pay for it over the next four weeks, and on which day. Put the date in your calendar. In four weeks you tick a box: paid, partly paid or not paid yet. All three answers count. Paid means: this value now has a documented price. There is no score and no ranking.
Why this values test asks about the price
In 2015, three economists looked at whether the values companies put on their websites are linked to how well those companies do. In the data set they examined, they found no correlation with profitability and Tobin’s q; the exception is customer satisfaction. The authors consider it possible that many of these values are cheap talk, because claiming them on a website costs almost nothing. Where employees experience their top managers as trustworthy and ethical, the company’s performance is stronger.
Patrick Lencioni writes in a practitioner’s essay:
When properly practiced, values inflict pain. […] They limit an organization’s strategic and operational freedom and constrain the behavior of its people.
This values test carries the question over from companies to individual people. That is an analogy. The assumption behind it: a value shows itself in the moment it costs something.
- Core value
- You can name a moment in which the value cost you something, and you chose it, with a point in time or an occasion.
- Accidental
- You can name a moment in which the value cost you something, and you inherited it, through background, team, surroundings or habit.
- Aspirational
- No moment comes to mind, and you want to live up to the value.
- Permission to play
- No moment comes to mind, and the value applies to you because it is taken for granted in your surroundings.
Using it with a coach or in a team
In one-to-one coaching, the person takes the test alone, before the session or in the room, with the screen staying with them. In the conversation they decide which field to show. The coach interprets nothing and asks at most twice per moment: “When exactly was that?” and “What would you have done otherwise?” Their own guesses about the person’s self-image stay out.
To prepare for a team round, everyone takes the test alone beforehand. In the round, only those who want to speak, and only one sentence: “For this value, over the next four weeks I will pay the first cent: …” Nobody comments, nobody asks about core values or empty fields. The manager speaks last. The round is not suited to an ongoing conflict, a restructuring, an appraisal round or a hierarchy gap that makes openness costly. It is less suited there, but it also works with psychologically safe teams (my own experience).
Fine print
The ten value fields follow the structure in Shalom H. Schwartz, Universals in the Content and Structure of Values, 1992. Here they serve as a grid for sorting. This values test is not a psychometric instrument: it is not validated, its test-retest stability is untested, and you score it yourself. It gives you no score to compare with anyone else. This exact exercise is new and has not been tested empirically so far. If you need a validated measure, use the Portrait Values Questionnaire. Its 21-item version is documented as the Human Values Scale at GESIS, with the full item wording, free for non-commercial research.
The finding on published corporate values comes from Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales, The Value of Corporate Culture, Journal of Financial Economics 2015; the thought on cheap talk is in the 2013 working paper. The quote and the four types of values come from Patrick Lencioni, Make Your Values Mean Something, Harvard Business Review, July 2002. Lencioni’s article is a practitioner’s essay, not a study; a web search on 30 September 2026 found no empirical test of his typology. On the link between values and behaviour: Bardi and Schwartz, Values and Behavior, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 2003.
Your answers are not transmitted. They stay in your device’s browser (localStorage), so nothing is lost if you reload the page, and nobody else sees a result. “Delete all answers” and “Start over” remove them from the device. A value you deselect loses its text at once. On a shared device, delete your answers before you leave the page.
Put together by Michael Tomoff, psychologist (Diplom-Psychologe), Bonn. This values test is also available auf Deutsch.