Discusses valuation as a selective process in mental-social life. All values are in some sense survival values that have a bearing on the onward tendency of things. The essential things in the conception of value are: A human organism; a situation and an object; and an object which has properties which influence the behavior of organisms in view of the situation. Human-native values are distinguished from institutional values. The first are those which may be traced without difficulty to phases of universal human nature; and the second are those values which must be ascribed to an institutional system. The institutional values are also parts of the same mental-social system, distinguished by their derivation from a special social organism. The process that generates values is mental but not ordinarily conscious. Concludes with a discussion on the processes that underlie appraisal of values, particularly institutional valuation.(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)