Toward a Theory of the Universal Content and Structure of Values: Extensions and Cross-Cultural Replications

Shalom H. Schwartz*, Wolfgang Bilsky

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1496 Scopus citations

Abstract

The universality of Schwartz and Bilsky's (1987) theory of the psychological content and structure of human values was examined with data from Australia, Finland, Hong Kong, Spain, and the United States. Smallest space analyses of the importance ratings that individuals assigned to values revealed the same 7 distinct motivational types of values in each sample as had emerged earlier in samples from Germany and Israel: achievement, enjoyment, maturity, prosocial, restrictive conformity, security, self-direction. Social power, studied only in Hong Kong, also emerged. The structural relations among the value types suggest that the motivational dynamics underlying people's value priorities are similar across the societies studied, with an exception in Hong Kong. The interests that values serve (individual vs. collective) and their goal type (instrumental vs. terminal) also distinguish values in all samples.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)878-891
Number of pages14
JournalJournal of Personality and Social Psychology
Volume58
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - May 1990

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