Human Values, Purpose & Meaning in the Age of AI — 2025 Data
This page summarises findings from the Human Clarity Institute’s Human Values, Purpose & Meaning 2025 dataset, based on 507 valid responses across six English-speaking countries. The dataset examines how people understand what matters most to them, how consistently life feels aligned with those priorities, and how digitally mediated environments may influence coherence, direction, self-trust, identity continuity, and behavioural alignment over time.
Across the findings, one pattern appears repeatedly: coherent functioning is strongly associated with continuity between values, behaviour, direction, identity, and self-trust. Rather than suggesting that people lack values clarity, the dataset indicates that the central challenge may involve maintaining behavioural continuity with what already matters under conditions of continual digital stimulation, interruption, and competing external demands.
See the full system model:
Human Values in Practice: Coherence, Direction, and Human Functioning in Digitally Mediated Environments
View the Human Values, Purpose & Meaning 2025 Dataset
What the data shows
Four behavioural patterns stand out in this dataset. First, values clarity itself appears extremely high. Most respondents report understanding what matters most to them and feeling confident in what feels meaningful and right for them personally.
Second, coherence appears strongly stabilising. Respondents reporting stronger alignment between their values and everyday behaviour consistently report stronger life direction, stronger self-trust, greater fulfilment, and lower identity struggle.
Third, weakened continuity appears associated with lower alignment between values and behaviour. Respondents reporting lower alignment consistently show substantially higher uncertainty, lower fulfilment, weaker self-trust, and stronger identity struggle.
Finally, digitally mediated environments appear capable of influencing more than attention alone. Large portions of respondents report digital noise affecting focus, values clarity, and identity clarity, suggesting that attentional environments may interact with internally guided orientation systems over time.
Strong life direction among highly aligned respondents
Respondents reporting high alignment between their values and everyday behaviour were far more likely to report strong life direction.
Strong self-trust among highly aligned respondents
Respondents with strong behavioural alignment consistently reported substantially higher trust in their own judgement.
High fulfilment among highly aligned respondents
Respondents reporting strong alignment between values and behaviour were far more likely to report strong fulfilment.
Report digital noise affecting focus
More than half of respondents report that digital noise negatively affects their ability to maintain focus.
Overall, the data show a population that feels clear about what matters, but not always able to live by it consistently. This points to a visible values–behaviour gap, where people understand their priorities yet still face work pressures, digital stimulation, and competing external demands that shape attention, judgement, and daily behaviour.
By the numbers (from HCI data)
Clear understanding of core values
Report understanding their core personal values.
Confident in what feels meaningful and right
Report confidence in what feels meaningful and personally important to them.
Strong life direction among highly aligned respondents
Compared with only 17% among low-alignment respondents.
Strong self-trust among highly aligned respondents
Compared with 50% among low-alignment respondents.
High fulfilment among highly aligned respondents
Compared with only 11% among low-alignment respondents.
High identity struggle among highly aligned respondents
Compared with 72% among low-alignment respondents.
Digital noise affecting focus
Report that digital environments negatively affect focus and attentional continuity.
Digital noise affecting values clarity
Report that digital environments negatively affect clarity around what matters most.
Digital noise affecting identity clarity
Report that digital environments negatively affect identity clarity.
Family is the most common core value cluster
Family is the most commonly selected core value across the dataset.
Work and career are the most common areas of misalignment
Work and career pressures emerge as the most common area where behaviour feels least aligned with values.
Human Values in Practice
Explores how values alignment, direction, attention, and behavioural drift interact to shape coherence, self-trust, and human functioning within digitally mediated environments.
Values vs Noise
Examines how digitally saturated environments compete with attention, reflection, and internally guided priorities — shaping coherence, direction, and meaningful human functioning over time.
Methodology
This dataset forms part of the Human Clarity Institute’s Human–AI Experience research programme, examining how people define their core values, experience meaning and purpose, and interpret behavioural alignment in the context of digital life and emerging AI systems. The study uses a cross-sectional online survey design and focuses on descriptive patterns in values clarity, life meaning, alignment and misalignment, digital distraction, and attitudes towards AI and human judgement.
Data were collected on 25 November 2025 via the Prolific research platform from adults across six English-speaking countries. Participants provided explicit informed consent for anonymised data publication as part of HCI’s open research programme.
Sampling & participants
- Clean dataset: 507 valid responses
- Countries: United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland
- Eligibility: Adults (18+) fluent in English
- Recruitment platform: Prolific
Participants were recruited using platform screening filters. The resulting dataset should be interpreted as a non-probability convenience sample and is not intended to represent national populations.
The cleaned dataset, variable dictionary, and reuse terms are publicly available through the HCI dataset repository: Human Values, Purpose & Meaning 2025 Dataset →
Data integrity
All percentages reported on this page are calculated from valid responses in the cleaned dataset (n = 507). Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number for readability. Unless otherwise stated, summary percentages combine respondents selecting 5–7 on the 7-point agreement scale (slightly agree, moderately agree, or strongly agree).
For questions that do not use an agreement scale, such as top values or areas of misalignment, percentages represent the share of respondents or selections associated with each option. Where more than one response could be selected, totals may exceed 100%.
Where percentages refer to subgroups, the wording on the page makes this explicit. No approval-rate filter, attention checks, or AI-deception trap items were applied in this study. Prolific IDs and timestamps were removed before publication as part of the anonymisation process.
This dataset is exploratory and descriptive in nature. It does not support causal inference and results should be interpreted as observed patterns within the survey sample.
This dataset is released as open research to support transparent analysis of values, meaning, behavioural alignment, and human judgement in digitally mediated life.
Suggested citation:
Human Clarity Institute. (2025). Human Values, Purpose & Meaning 2025 (Dataset).
Human Clarity Institute.