An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values

By Shalom H. Schwartz. 2012

3,826 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article presents an overview of the Schwartz theory of basic human values. It discusses the nature of values and spells out the features that are common to all values and what distinguishes one value from another. The theory identifies ten basic personal values that are recognized across cultures and explains where they come from. At the heart of the theory is the idea that values form a circular structure that reflects the motivations each value expresses. This circular structure, that captures the conflicts and compatibility among the ten values is apparently culturally universal. The article elucidates the psychological principles that give rise to it. Next, it presents the two major methods developed to measure the basic values, the Schwartz Value Survey and the Portrait Values Questionnaire. Findings from 82 countries, based on these and other methods, provide evidence for the validity of the theory across cultures. The findings reveal substantial differences in the value priorities of individuals. Surprisingly, however, the average value priorities of most societal groups exhibit a similar hierarchical order whose existence the article explains. The last section of the article clarifies how values differ from other concepts used to explain behavior—attitudes, beliefs, norms, and traits. Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. This article is available in Online Readings in Psychology and Culture: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol2/iss1/11

Subfields: Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/de1067944cbe3574469d641738995de886622ddb

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Citations in the corpus

Where do biospheric values come from? A connectedness to nature perspective (2017, background): “The Theory of Basic Values identifies a system of ten fundamental, cross-culturally relevant value orientations that seem to motivate human actions around the globe (Schwartz, 2012).”
More than money: Developing an integrative multi-factorial measure of entrepreneurial success (2016, background): “For instance, large international value studies such as those conducted by the Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness Research (GLOBE) project (House et al., 2004) or by Schwartz (2012) demonstrate similar underlying dimensionality of value importance ratings across cultures.”
Global Evidence on Economic Preferences* (2018, neutral): “This WVS question was derived from the Schwartz Values Survey (Schwartz, 2012), and designed to capture a universal “value of stimulation.””
Influencing Factors of Chinese Consumers’ Purchase Intention to Sustainable Apparel Products: Exploring Consumer “Attitude–Behavioral Intention” Gap (2020, background): “Values motivate action, giving t direction and em tional intensity [28] (Schwartz, 2012).”
What makes a sustainable business model successful? : An empirical comparison of two peer-to-peer goods-sharing platforms (2018, positive): “Respondents' values are inferred from their self-reported similarity to each portrait (Schwartz et al., 2001; Schwartz, 2012).”
Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Sustainable Seafood Made in Europe (2018, methodology): “The subsequent questionnaire contained various questions related to seafood, including perception of European and local production, attitudes toward fish farming, and Schwartz values (Schwartz, 2012).”
Envisioning the Future of Behavioral Decision-Making: A Systematic Literature Review of Behavioral Reasoning Theory (2020, background): “Similarly, other theories, such as the theory f basic human values ( Schwartz, 2012 ) can be integrated with he values construct of BRT to establish another macro-theory. chwartz (2012) identified ten basic human values: hedonism, chievement, power, self-direction, stimulation, conformity, secuity,…”