Values are defined as collectively held ideas about what is good, desirable, and proper or bad, undesirable, and improper in a culture. Values specify how people should behave and attach degrees of goodness to activities. Values have several key characteristics: they can provide standards of competence and morality; influence behavior; are relatively permanent and central to a person's core being, largely formed early in life; contain judgments of right and wrong; and differ between cultures and individuals. Values help integrate societies, mold culture, and guide social behavior through establishing norms.