Not what you say you value — what your calendar, your money, and your unguarded moments reveal you actually live by.
About this assessment
A reflective instrument inspired by Schwartz's theory of basic human values. Rather than asking which ideals you endorse — almost everyone endorses the flattering ones — it probes the concrete moments where values get tested: where you spend your free hour, what you do when no one is watching, the tradeoffs you actually make under pressure. It maps six core value orientations (Self-Direction, Achievement, Benevolence, Universalism, Security, Stimulation) and then measures the alignment gap — the distance between the values you hold and the life you are presently living. Educational and reflective, not a clinical or diagnostic instrument.
Your result breaks down across 7 measured dimensions
This assessment includes built-in validity checks. Your result includes a confidence rating based on response consistency.
About the Values Alignment
A reflective instrument inspired by Schwartz's theory of basic human values. Rather than asking which ideals you endorse — almost everyone endorses the flattering ones — it probes the concrete moments where values get tested: where you spend your free hour, what you do when no one is watching, the tradeoffs you actually make under pressure. It maps six core value orientations (Self-Direction, Achievement, Benevolence, Universalism, Security, Stimulation) and then measures the alignment gap — the distance between the values you hold and the life you are presently living. Educational and reflective, not a clinical or diagnostic instrument.
What this test measures
Your result is broken down across 7 distinct dimensions rather than collapsing everything into a single number. Each dimension is scored from its own set of items, so you can see which specific pattern is driving your overall result.
Self-Direction — measured across 4 items.
Achievement — measured across 4 items.
Benevolence — measured across 4 items.
Universalism — measured across 4 items.
Security — measured across 4 items.
Stimulation — measured across 4 items.
Values-Life Alignment — measured across 8 items.
How to read your result
Scores fall into one of 4 interpretive bands. Here is what each one means, what tends to sit underneath it, and what usually helps.
Living Off-Script
Your answers point to a real distance between what you value and how you're actually living. For many people in this range the values themselves have gone blurry — hard to name without a script — while for others the values are crystal clear but the calendar, the spending, and the daily choices tell a different story. Either way, the 'this isn't quite my life' feeling you may carry isn't a character flaw. It's accurate data.
What it suggests A low, persistent hum of dissatisfaction on ordinary days is usually the sound of someone else's priorities running your life on autopilot — a parent's expectations, a partner's needs, an employer's defaults. The discomfort is not the problem to suppress; it's the signal that your behavior and your values have drifted apart, and signals like that are how people find their way back.
What helps Don't try to overhaul everything. Find the one value subscale where you scored high on caring but your daily life shows almost none of it, and design a single concrete change in the next 30 days that feeds it — small enough to actually happen. Then watch whether the background unease loosens. That feedback loop, repeated, is how alignment gets rebuilt.
Partly Aligned, Pulled in Directions
You have a recognizable set of values and your life honors some of them genuinely — but competing pulls are bending you in directions that don't quite fit. This is where most people live: solidly aligned in a couple of important domains, quietly compromised in others, and aware enough of the tension that it occasionally surfaces. The mix is normal; what matters is whether you're steering it or it's steering you.
What it suggests Schwartz's model shows that certain values structurally oppose each other — security pulls against stimulation, personal achievement pulls against caring for others — so no one can max out all of them at once. A lot of the friction you feel is two real values competing inside you, not weakness or hypocrisy. The cost comes from making those tradeoffs by default and resentment rather than by choice.
What helps Name your two strongest value subscales, then name exactly where each is currently underfed in your week. Make one deliberate tradeoff this month that protects your top value even at a small, real cost to a lower one — and frame it to yourself as a decision you're owning, not a sacrifice imposed on you. Owned tradeoffs feel like integrity; unowned ones feel like being stuck.
Largely Aligned
Your values are clear to you and your life broadly reflects them. The big commitments — how you work, who you pour into, what you do with your money and time — generally line up with what you say matters most, and the gaps that remain feel manageable rather than corrosive. You're not faking it; the life and the values are mostly the same object.
What it suggests People in this range tend to make decisions they can stand behind and bounce back from setbacks faster, because their choices are anchored to something stable underneath the noise. The subtle risk is over-feeding your dominant value while quietly starving the ones you rank lower — it usually shows up not as distress but as a blind spot, a whole domain of life you've stopped noticing you neglect.
What helps Keep using your top value as a compass, but every few months deliberately audit your lowest-scoring subscale — that's the part of your life most likely to atrophy unwatched. A short, recurring check of whether your calendar and spending still match your stated priorities will catch drift while it's still cheap to correct, long before it becomes a quiet regret.
Deeply Aligned
Your values are well-defined and the life you're living closely embodies them. There's very little daylight between the person you mean to be and the way you actually spend a normal Tuesday, and your hard choices trace cleanly back to priorities you'd defend out loud. This kind of coherence is rare, and it's a genuine source of steadiness and meaning.
What it suggests Strong alignment is real fuel — but at the far end it can quietly harden into rigidity: treating your particular value hierarchy as the only valid one, and steering clear of people or seasons of life that would ask you to hold a different balance. The healthiest version of deep alignment stays porous. It's earned by passing through challenges, not by arranging life so the challenges never come.
What helps Protect what's working, and occasionally stress-test it honestly: is your alignment the result of genuine fit, or partly of avoiding anything that would test it? Stay curious about the values you rank lowest — they're where a well-aligned life tends to skip its growth. The goal isn't to keep the score high; it's to keep the alignment true as you and your circumstances change.
How this test is scored
Values Alignment contains 32 items and takes about 8 minutes. Responses are combined using a subscale weighted method across the dimensions listed above, then mapped to the interpretive bands above. Your percentile is an interim estimate that sharpens as more people take the test, and is labelled as provisional in your result.
This assessment also includes hidden validity items that detect inattentive or socially-desirable answering. When they trigger, your result carries a lowered confidence rating and we tell you — rather than presenting a skewed score as fact.
The test ships in 10 parallel forms that rotate between takes, so repeat visitors do not simply memorise the same items.
Limits of this assessment
This is an educational, self-reflective assessment — not a diagnosis. A questionnaire can describe a pattern and point you toward language for it, but it cannot account for your history, context, or circumstances, and it is not a substitute for evaluation by a qualified professional. If a result concerns you, treat it as a reason to talk to someone rather than as a verdict.
Your answers are scored on your device. Taking this test requires no account, no email address, and no payment, and your full result — every band, every dimension — is shown to you immediately and in full.