7 What are values? Where do they come from? A developmental perspective Get access Arrow Diana Boer, Klaus Boehnke https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198716600.003.0007 Pages 129–152 Published: October 2015 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Icon Permissions Share Icon Share Abstract In human development, values fulfill various roles as individual motivational goals. Values form and develop in interaction with close others, while the surrounding environment contributes to variability across cultures and changes across time. This chapter introduces perspectives on how values develop and change. It focuses primarily on personal development but also on cultural value change, because values encapsulate personal and cultural continuity and change. Looking at individual value development first, it introduces central developmental theories and links them to value theories, their functions for development, and their measurement. Furthermore, it discusses two phases of value development: in childhood/adolescence and across the lifespan. The chapter closes with a look at societal values and cultural value change. Construing value development from ontogenetic and phylogenetic developmental perspectives enables an integrated understanding of values as central individual, as well as cultural constructs, which are dynamic, multi-layered and complex rather than static, mono-layered and bald.