Values scales
Encyclopedia
Values scales are psychological inventories used to determine the values that people endorse in their lives. They facilitate the understanding of both work and general values that individuals uphold. In addition, they assess the importance of each value in people’s lives and how the individual strives toward fulfillment through work and other life roles, such as parenting. Most scales have been normalized and can therefore be used cross-culturally for vocational, marketing
, and counseling purposes, yielding unbiased results. Values scales are used by psychologists, political scientists, economists, and others interested in defining values, determining what people value, and evaluating the ultimate function or purpose of values.
, altruism
, authority
, autonomy
, creativity
, cultural identity
, economic rewards, economic security, life style, personal development, physical activity, physical prowess, prestige, risk
, social interaction, social relations, variety, and working conditions. Some of the listed values were intended to be inter-related, but conceptually differentiable.
Since the original Work Importance Study, several scientists have supplemented the study by creating their own scale or by deriving and improving the original format. Theorists and psychologists often study values, values scales, and the field surrounding values, otherwise known as axiology
. New studies have even been published recently, updating the work in the field. Dr. Eda Gurel-Atay published an article in the Journal of Advertising Research in March 2010, providing a glimpse into how social values have changed between 1976 and 2007. The paper explained how “self-respect” has been on the upswing, while “a sense of belonging” has become less important to individuals.
, a prominent social psychologist, human values are defined as “core conceptions of the desirable within every individual and society. They serve as standards or criteria to guide not only action but also judgment, choice, attitude, evaluation, argument, exhortation, rationalization, and…attribution of causality.” In his 1979 publication, Rokeach also stated that the consequences of human values would be manifested in all phenomena that social scientists might consider worth investigating. In order for any type of research to be successful, regardless of the field of study, people’s underlying values needed to be understood. To allow for this, Rokeach created the Rokeach Value Survey
(RVS), which has been in use for more than 30 years. It provides a theoretical perspective on the nature of values in a cognitive framework and consists of two sets of values – 18 instrumental and 18 terminal. Instrumental values are beliefs or conceptions about desirable modes of behavior that are instrumental to the attainment of desirable end points, such as honesty, responsibility, and capability. Terminal values are beliefs or conceptions about ultimate goals of existence that are worth surviving for, such as happiness, self-respect, and freedom. The value survey asks subjects to rank the values in order of importance to them. The actual directions are as follows: “Rank each value in its order of importance to you. Study the list and think of how much each value may act as a guiding principle in your life.”
The Rokeach Value Survey has been criticized because people are often not able to rank each value clearly. Some values may be equally important, while some values may be equally unimportant, and so on. Presumably, people are more certain of their most extreme values (i.e. what they love and what they hate) and are not so certain of the ones “in between.” Further, C.J. Clawson and Donald E. Vinson (1977) proved that the Rokeach Value Survey omitted a number of values that a large portion of the population holds.
Shalom H. Schwartz
, social psychologist and author of The Structure of Human Values: Origins and Implications and Theory of Basic Human Values, has done research on universal values
and how they exist in a wide variety of contexts. Most of his work addressed broad questions about values, such as: how are individuals’ priorities affected by social experiences? How do individuals’ priorities influence their behavior and choices? And, how do value priorities influence ideologies, attitudes, and actions in political, religious, environmental, and other domains? Through his studies, Schwartz concluded that ten types of universal values exist: achievement, benevolence, conformity, hedonism
, power, security, self-direction, stimulation, tradition, and universalism
. Schwartz also tested the possibility of spirituality
as an eleventh universal value, but found that it did not exist in all cultures. Schwartz's value theory and instruments are part of the biannual European Social Survey
.
, a student of German philosopher and psychologist
Eduard Spranger
, believed that an individual’s philosophy
is founded upon the values or basic convictions that he holds about what is and is not important in life. Based on Spranger’s (1928) view that understanding the individual’s value philosophy best captures the essence of a person, Allport and his colleagues, Vernon and Lindzey, created the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values. The values scale outlined six major value types: theoretical (discovery of truth), economic (what is most useful), aesthetic (form, beauty, and harmony), social (seeking love of people), political (power), and religious (unity). Forty years after the study’s publishing in 1931, it was the third most-cited non-projective personality measure.
By 1980, the values scale had fallen into disuse due to its archaic content, lack of religious inclusiveness, and dated language. Richard E. Kopelman, et al., recently updated the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values. The motivation behind their update was to make the value scale more relevant to today; they believed that the writing was too dated. The updated, copyrighted version was published in Elsevier Science in 2003. Today, permission is required for use. (volume 62)
, creator of the Science of Value
, introduced and identified the concept of systematic values, which he believed were an important addition to the previously studied intrinsic and extrinsic values. He also made an illuminating distinction between what people value and how people value. How people value parallels very closely with systematic values, which Hartman operationally defined as conceptual constructs or cognitive scripts that exist in people’s minds. Ideal
s, norm
s, standards, rules, doctrines, and logic systems are all examples of systematic values. If someone’s cognitive script is repetitively about violent actions, for instance, then that person is more likely act vengefully and less likely to value peace. With that additional idea in mind, Harman combined intrinsic, extrinsic, and systematic concepts to create the Hartman Value Profile, also known as the Hartman Value Inventory. The profile consists of two parts. Each part contains 18 paired value-combination items, where nine of these items are positive and nine are negative. The three different types of values, intrinsic, extrinsic, and systematic, can be combined positively or negatively with one another in 18 logically possible ways. Depending on the combination, a certain value is either enhanced or diminished. Once the rankings are completed, the outcome is then compared to the theoretical norm, generating scores for psychological interpretation.
and as a basis for living life. Recent literature suggests that social values are reflected in a large variety of advertisements and can influence audience reactions to advertising appeals. When a choice is tied to a value, that choice then becomes more attractive to people who share that value. Means-end chain analyses often find that consumers select products with attributes that deliver consequences, which in turn contribute to value fulfillment. In short, people’s values resonate in and are observable throughout their daily lives. A perfect example, presented in the Journal of Advertising Research by Dr. Eda Gurel-Atay, is coffee. People who endorse fun and enjoyment in life may want a cup of coffee for its rich, pleasant taste. Meanwhile, people who value a sense of accomplishment may rather use coffee as a mild stimulant. People who value warm, loving relationships with others may want a cup of coffee to share in a social manner. Perspective and personal beliefs greatly influence behavior.
Clawson and Vinson (1978) further elaborated on this idea by explaining how values are one of the most powerful explanations of, and influences on, consumer behavior. Values scales are helpful in understanding several aspects of consumption areas and consumer behavior, including leisure
, media
, and gift giving. People who endorse certain values more highly than others engage in certain activities, prefer certain programs or magazines, or give gifts differently than others. Values scales and the study of values could also be of interest to companies who are looking to build or strengthen their customer relationship management
.
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
, and counseling purposes, yielding unbiased results. Values scales are used by psychologists, political scientists, economists, and others interested in defining values, determining what people value, and evaluating the ultimate function or purpose of values.
Development
Values scales were first developed by an international group of psychologists whose goal was to create a unique self-report instrument that measured intrinsic and extrinsic values for use in the lab and in the clinic. The psychologists called their project the Work Importance Study (WIS). The original values scale measured the following values, listed in alphabetical order: ability utilization, achievement, advancement, aestheticsAesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, altruism
Altruism
Altruism is a concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures, and a core aspect of various religious traditions, though the concept of 'others' toward whom concern should be directed can vary among cultures and religions. Altruism is the opposite of...
, authority
Authority
The word Authority is derived mainly from the Latin word auctoritas, meaning invention, advice, opinion, influence, or command. In English, the word 'authority' can be used to mean power given by the state or by academic knowledge of an area .-Authority in Philosophy:In...
, autonomy
Autonomy
Autonomy is a concept found in moral, political and bioethical philosophy. Within these contexts, it is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision...
, creativity
Creativity
Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...
, cultural identity
Cultural identity
Cultural identity is the identity of a group or culture, or of an individual as far as one is influenced by one's belonging to a group or culture. Cultural identity is similar to and has overlaps with, but is not synonymous with, identity politics....
, economic rewards, economic security, life style, personal development, physical activity, physical prowess, prestige, risk
Risk
Risk is the potential that a chosen action or activity will lead to a loss . The notion implies that a choice having an influence on the outcome exists . Potential losses themselves may also be called "risks"...
, social interaction, social relations, variety, and working conditions. Some of the listed values were intended to be inter-related, but conceptually differentiable.
Since the original Work Importance Study, several scientists have supplemented the study by creating their own scale or by deriving and improving the original format. Theorists and psychologists often study values, values scales, and the field surrounding values, otherwise known as axiology
Axiology
Axiology is the philosophical study of value. It is either the collective term for ethics and aesthetics—philosophical fields that depend crucially on notions of value—or the foundation for these fields, and thus similar to value theory and meta-ethics...
. New studies have even been published recently, updating the work in the field. Dr. Eda Gurel-Atay published an article in the Journal of Advertising Research in March 2010, providing a glimpse into how social values have changed between 1976 and 2007. The paper explained how “self-respect” has been on the upswing, while “a sense of belonging” has become less important to individuals.
Rokeach
According to Milton RokeachMilton Rokeach
Milton Rokeach was a Polish-American social psychologist. He taught at Michigan State University, the University of Western Ontario, Washington State University, and the University of Southern California.-Early life:...
, a prominent social psychologist, human values are defined as “core conceptions of the desirable within every individual and society. They serve as standards or criteria to guide not only action but also judgment, choice, attitude, evaluation, argument, exhortation, rationalization, and…attribution of causality.” In his 1979 publication, Rokeach also stated that the consequences of human values would be manifested in all phenomena that social scientists might consider worth investigating. In order for any type of research to be successful, regardless of the field of study, people’s underlying values needed to be understood. To allow for this, Rokeach created the Rokeach Value Survey
Rokeach Value Survey
The Rokeach Value Survey is a classification system of values. Developed by social psychologist Milton Rokeach, the system consists of two sets of values, 18 individual value items in each...
(RVS), which has been in use for more than 30 years. It provides a theoretical perspective on the nature of values in a cognitive framework and consists of two sets of values – 18 instrumental and 18 terminal. Instrumental values are beliefs or conceptions about desirable modes of behavior that are instrumental to the attainment of desirable end points, such as honesty, responsibility, and capability. Terminal values are beliefs or conceptions about ultimate goals of existence that are worth surviving for, such as happiness, self-respect, and freedom. The value survey asks subjects to rank the values in order of importance to them. The actual directions are as follows: “Rank each value in its order of importance to you. Study the list and think of how much each value may act as a guiding principle in your life.”
The Rokeach Value Survey has been criticized because people are often not able to rank each value clearly. Some values may be equally important, while some values may be equally unimportant, and so on. Presumably, people are more certain of their most extreme values (i.e. what they love and what they hate) and are not so certain of the ones “in between.” Further, C.J. Clawson and Donald E. Vinson (1977) proved that the Rokeach Value Survey omitted a number of values that a large portion of the population holds.
Schwartz
Shalom H. Schwartz
Shalom H. Schwartz is social psychologist, cross-cultural researcher, author of Theory of basic human values...
, social psychologist and author of The Structure of Human Values: Origins and Implications and Theory of Basic Human Values, has done research on universal values
Universal values
Something is of universal value if it has the same value or worth for all, or almost all, people. This claim could mean two importantly different things. First, it could be that something has a universal value when everybody finds it valuable. This was Isaiah Berlin's understanding of the term...
and how they exist in a wide variety of contexts. Most of his work addressed broad questions about values, such as: how are individuals’ priorities affected by social experiences? How do individuals’ priorities influence their behavior and choices? And, how do value priorities influence ideologies, attitudes, and actions in political, religious, environmental, and other domains? Through his studies, Schwartz concluded that ten types of universal values exist: achievement, benevolence, conformity, hedonism
Hedonism
Hedonism is a school of thought which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure .-Etymology:The name derives from the Greek word for "delight" ....
, power, security, self-direction, stimulation, tradition, and universalism
Universalism
Universalism in its primary meaning refers to religious, theological, and philosophical concepts with universal application or applicability...
. Schwartz also tested the possibility of spirituality
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
as an eleventh universal value, but found that it did not exist in all cultures. Schwartz's value theory and instruments are part of the biannual European Social Survey
European social survey
The European Social Survey is a social scientific endeavour to map the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour patterns of the various populations in Europe.-History:The ESS was initiated by the European Science Foundation...
.
Allport-Vernon-Lindzey
Gordon AllportGordon Allport
Gordon Willard Allport was an American psychologist. Allport was one of the first psychologists to focus on the study of the personality, and is often referred to as one of the founding figures of personality psychology...
, a student of German philosopher and psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
Eduard Spranger
Eduard Spranger
Eduard Spranger was a German philosopher and psychologist.A student of Wilhelm Dilthey, Spranger was born in Berlin and died in Tübingen....
, believed that an individual’s philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
is founded upon the values or basic convictions that he holds about what is and is not important in life. Based on Spranger’s (1928) view that understanding the individual’s value philosophy best captures the essence of a person, Allport and his colleagues, Vernon and Lindzey, created the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values. The values scale outlined six major value types: theoretical (discovery of truth), economic (what is most useful), aesthetic (form, beauty, and harmony), social (seeking love of people), political (power), and religious (unity). Forty years after the study’s publishing in 1931, it was the third most-cited non-projective personality measure.
By 1980, the values scale had fallen into disuse due to its archaic content, lack of religious inclusiveness, and dated language. Richard E. Kopelman, et al., recently updated the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values. The motivation behind their update was to make the value scale more relevant to today; they believed that the writing was too dated. The updated, copyrighted version was published in Elsevier Science in 2003. Today, permission is required for use. (volume 62)
Hartman
Philosopher Robert S. HartmanRobert S. Hartman
Robert Schirokauer Hartman was a logician and philosopher. His primary field of study was scientific axiology and he is known as its original theorist...
, creator of the Science of Value
Science of Value
The science of value, or value science, is a creation of philosopher Robert S. Hartman, which attempts to formally elucidate value theory using both formal and symbolic logic.-Fundamentals:...
, introduced and identified the concept of systematic values, which he believed were an important addition to the previously studied intrinsic and extrinsic values. He also made an illuminating distinction between what people value and how people value. How people value parallels very closely with systematic values, which Hartman operationally defined as conceptual constructs or cognitive scripts that exist in people’s minds. Ideal
Ideal (ethics)
An ideal is a principle or value that one actively pursues as a goal. Ideals are particularly important in ethics, as the order in which one places them tends to determine the degree to which one reveals them as real and sincere. It is the application, in ethics, of a universal...
s, norm
Norm (sociology)
Social norms are the accepted behaviors within a society or group. This sociological and social psychological term has been defined as "the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. These rules may be explicit or implicit...
s, standards, rules, doctrines, and logic systems are all examples of systematic values. If someone’s cognitive script is repetitively about violent actions, for instance, then that person is more likely act vengefully and less likely to value peace. With that additional idea in mind, Harman combined intrinsic, extrinsic, and systematic concepts to create the Hartman Value Profile, also known as the Hartman Value Inventory. The profile consists of two parts. Each part contains 18 paired value-combination items, where nine of these items are positive and nine are negative. The three different types of values, intrinsic, extrinsic, and systematic, can be combined positively or negatively with one another in 18 logically possible ways. Depending on the combination, a certain value is either enhanced or diminished. Once the rankings are completed, the outcome is then compared to the theoretical norm, generating scores for psychological interpretation.
Applications to Psychology
Research surrounding understanding values serves as a framework for ideas in many other situations, such as counseling. Psychotherapists, behavioral scientists, and social scientists often deal with intrinsic, extrinsic, and systematic values of their patients. A primary way to learn about patients is to know what they value, as values are essential keys to personality structures. This knowledge can pinpoint serious problems in living, aide immensely in planning therapeutic regimens, and measure therapeutic progress with applications of values scales over time, especially as social environments and social norms change.Applications to Business and Marketing
Values are important in the construction of personal moralityMorality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
and as a basis for living life. Recent literature suggests that social values are reflected in a large variety of advertisements and can influence audience reactions to advertising appeals. When a choice is tied to a value, that choice then becomes more attractive to people who share that value. Means-end chain analyses often find that consumers select products with attributes that deliver consequences, which in turn contribute to value fulfillment. In short, people’s values resonate in and are observable throughout their daily lives. A perfect example, presented in the Journal of Advertising Research by Dr. Eda Gurel-Atay, is coffee. People who endorse fun and enjoyment in life may want a cup of coffee for its rich, pleasant taste. Meanwhile, people who value a sense of accomplishment may rather use coffee as a mild stimulant. People who value warm, loving relationships with others may want a cup of coffee to share in a social manner. Perspective and personal beliefs greatly influence behavior.
Clawson and Vinson (1978) further elaborated on this idea by explaining how values are one of the most powerful explanations of, and influences on, consumer behavior. Values scales are helpful in understanding several aspects of consumption areas and consumer behavior, including leisure
Leisure
Leisure, or free time, is time spent away from business, work, and domestic chores. It is also the periods of time before or after necessary activities such as eating, sleeping and, where it is compulsory, education....
, media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
, and gift giving. People who endorse certain values more highly than others engage in certain activities, prefer certain programs or magazines, or give gifts differently than others. Values scales and the study of values could also be of interest to companies who are looking to build or strengthen their customer relationship management
Customer relationship management
Customer relationship management is a widely implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing,...
.