Values are universal concepts with very personal meanings. Freedom, fairness, community, security: what meanings these and other values have depend on who you are and what life experiences you have had.

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So for groups to cooperate well when deliberating about complex problems they need to be aware of the unique values perspectives of each person. This can help participants uncover points of agreement and disagreement, reflect on and possibly change their values priorities, and accommodate any differences when arriving at a group position.

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To facilitate this, PHRONETIK frames a complex issue as a set of discrete trade-offs between values promoted or undermined by the various consequences of accepting or rejecting a proposed course of action. Each participant is asked to select which values they care about most and use writable hexagons to define what those values mean to them.

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These value statements are combined into clusters to display a formative map of the group's value system which expresses the weight participants give to each of the values at stake in the problem. This supports a shared understanding of the criteria used to evaluate the desirability of the proposal's different consequences as the group examines the debate map together.