Values

Structure, Measurement, and Stability

Most psychologists posit a finite number of discrete human values but dispute the precise number and nature of these. For example, the Rokeach Value Survey lists two subtypes of values: 18 instrumental values (ways of living life, e.g., honesty, courage, responsibility) and 18 terminal values (end goals of life, e.g., happiness, salvation, freedom). Respondents rank the importance of values within each list.

By contrast, Schwartz’s popular intervalue system posits 10 fundamental values, eliminating the instrumental-terminal distinction. These are arranged into four broad clusters: openness to change, conservation, self-transcendence, and self-enhancement, with the value clusters forming quadrants of a circle. A self-report measure, the Schwartz Value Survey, measures individuals’ position in the circle by asking respondents to rate each value’s importance on a semantic differential scale. For each value, some values are harmonious (adjacent on the circle), some irrelevant (90° away), and some antagonistic (180° away). Some supportive evidence for this structure has been demonstrated; for example, making particular values salient increases the accessibility of related values (those in agreement and disagreement with the primed value) and decreases the accessibility of irrelevant values.

Scholars are concerned with the universality of human values (that the same core set of values exist globally) and of value systems (that values are interrelated in the same ways, across cultures). Evidence supports both kinds of universality, particularly research using the Portrait Value Questionnaire, which has substantially reduced cross-cultural measurement variance issues. It should be stressed that this invariance of what cultures construe as values, and how values interrelate, does not mean that all cultures rank the values equivalently. Instead, cultures sharply vary in their prioritizing of values, with important political and economic consequences.

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