The Ten Basic Values

Self-direction has a dual origin that makes it one of the richest of the ten values. It derives simultaneously from the organismic need for control and mastery — the drive Deci called intrinsic motivation[1] and White called “effectance”[2] — and from the interactional requirements of autonomy and independence that social life demands. We need to feel like the authors of our own actions both for our psychological health and to participate effectively in a complex, modern society.

This dual origin explains the breadth of its survey items. Curiosity and creativity address the organismic need to explore and master; freedom and choosing one's own goals address the social dimension of autonomy. Independence and self-respect bridge both.

Self-direction sits at the junction of Openness to Change and Self-Transcendence, neighbouring Universalism — which makes sense, since valuing one's own intellectual freedom tends to make one more sympathetic to others' right to think and live differently. It directly opposes Conformity: you cannot simultaneously prize autonomous thought and prize restraining your impulses to meet social expectations.

Universalism is the most expansive of the ten values in both its scope and its content. Where Benevolence cares about close others, Universalism extends concern to all of humanity and to the natural world. Schwartz derives it from what happens when social experience forces us beyond the primary group: once we must live and work with people who do not share our background or values, tolerance and appreciation of difference become survival requirements.

Its items span a wide range — social justice, equality, wisdom, a world of beauty, unity with nature, protecting the environment, a world at peace, broad-mindedness. This breadth reflects the fact that Universalism captures a fundamental orientation: the recognition that other people's experiences and the natural world have intrinsic worth independent of their usefulness to oneself or one's group.

Across the large European Social Survey dataset[3] (N > 35,000), Universalism correlates positively with support for gay rights (+.17), with environmental policy support, and with openness to immigration — all attitudes that require extending moral concern beyond the in-group. It sits most in tension with Power and Security, values that emphasize protecting the self and one's own position.

Benevolence is prosociality at close range. Its motivational goal is the welfare of specific, named people — family, friends, colleagues, neighbours — not abstract humanity. Schwartz grounds it in the demands of primary group interaction and the requirements for organisms embedded in social groups to survive: you cannot maintain a family or friendship without helpfulness, honesty, forgiveness, and loyalty. These are not virtues we invented; they are virtues that selection pressures have made emotionally compelling.

The distinction from Universalism is theoretically crucial. Both Benevolence and Universalism belong to the Self-Transcendence dimension — both involve caring about others — but they differ in who counts as "other." Benevolence is intensely focussed on the in-group; it has no inherent extension to strangers or to nature. Universalism is precisely the expansion of moral concern beyond that circle.

Similarly, both Benevolence and Conformity produce cooperative, prosocial behaviour — but through entirely different mechanisms. Conformity promotes cooperation to avoid social sanctions; Benevolence promotes it from genuinely internalized caring. The outward behaviour may look the same but the motivational substrate is completely different, and they can produce very different responses in edge cases.

Conformity is not simply "going along with the crowd." Its defining concern is self-restraint in the interests of smooth group functioning — inhibiting impulses that might disrupt interaction or harm others. Schwartz derives it from a basic requirement of all societies: for groups to function and survive, their members must inhibit inclinations that are socially disruptive. Conformity is the internalization of this requirement.

Its temporal orientation is present-focused. Conformity responds to the expectations of people you are currently interacting with — parents, teachers, bosses, neighbours. This is the key distinction from Tradition, which defers to expectations established in the past by ancestors, religious codes, and cultural inheritance. You could, in principle, conform carefully to every current social expectation while holding tradition in contempt, or be deeply traditional in your values while entirely indifferent to what your boss thinks of you today.

In Schwartz's 20-country dataset[5], Conformity is the value most strongly associated with age after Tradition (r = .32), is negatively correlated with education (-.22), and shows the strongest negative correlation with support for gay rights (-.22) of any of the ten values. If you prize restraining impulses to match social norms, you are more likely to view departures from conventional behaviour as socially threatening.

Groups everywhere develop symbols, rituals, and practices that represent their shared experience and fate. Durkheim[4] observed that these eventually become sanctioned as traditions and customs valued for their own sake — as expressions of the group's unique worth and guarantors of its continuity. What begins as a functional practice (a harvest ceremony, a greeting ritual, a dietary code) becomes sacred over time. Tradition values are the disposition to respect and preserve this accumulated inheritance.

The item "accepting my portion in life" is philosophically striking. It suggests that high Tradition scorers are oriented not toward improving or transcending their circumstances but toward finding meaning within them — a fundamentally backward-looking, acceptance-oriented stance. The motivational goal is to honour what was, not to build what might be.

Tradition is the most strongly age-correlated value in the entire dataset (r = .33 in 20 countries, consistent across all 20 samples). This cohort and life-stage effect reflects both that older people grew up in less affluent, more insecure societies where tradition served a stronger stabilizing function, and that as social investment deepens, the desire to preserve established ways grows.

Security is unusual among the ten values because it operates at two conceptually distinct levels simultaneously — individual (being healthy, clean) and collective (national security, social order) — and yet they cluster together empirically. Schwartz takes this as evidence that people experience personal and collective security as expressions of a unified concern: the need for stable, predictable conditions in which to live and relate to others.

Security belongs to the Conservation dimension alongside Conformity and Tradition, which makes intuitive sense: all three emphasize stability, order, and maintaining what exists rather than pursuing change. But Security's motivation is more basic than the others — less about cultural continuity and more about the raw conditions for daily life. You can prize personal safety without caring particularly about tradition or even social norms.

Like Power, Security is a deficit value — a category where being blocked from the value makes it more rather than less important. People experiencing economic hardship, social upheaval, or threats to their physical safety attribute greater importance to security than those in comfortable, stable circumstances. This is the reverse of how most values work (where easy attainment reduces importance), and it explains why insecurity and conservatism tend to travel together politically.

Power values are grounded in a social fact: every human group develops some degree of status differentiation. Durkheim[4] and Parsons observed this as a sociological constant; the dominance/submission dimension emerges consistently in cross-cultural analyses of interpersonal relations. Groups must treat power as a value — must convince members to pursue and accept hierarchical arrangements — in order for institutions to function. Power values may also represent the social expression of individual needs for dominance and control.

The distinction between Power and Achievement is worth dwelling on. Both focus on social esteem, and both belong to the Self-Enhancement dimension. But Achievement emphasizes the active demonstration of competence — doing well in specific tasks and interactions, proving oneself. Power emphasizes the attainment or preservation of a dominant position within the broader social system — being in control, being recognized as high status. The former is about performance; the latter is about position.

Like Security, Power is a deficit value: when power is blocked or threatened — by poverty, social marginalization, or loss of status — its importance tends to increase rather than decrease. This explains why perceived status threat is such a reliable predictor of authoritarian political attitudes.

Schwartz's Achievement value contains a qualifier that changes everything: according to social standards. This is not McClelland's[6] intrinsic achievement motivation — the drive to meet personal standards of excellence. This is performance validated by an audience. Competent performance is prerequisite both for individuals to obtain resources and for social institutions to function, so societies need members who value demonstrating their competence in culturally approved ways. Achievement values internalize this requirement.

The survey item influential shows secondary loading on Power — and rightly so, because demonstrating competence and gaining status are deeply intertwined in human social life. You prove yourself capable; others recognize you as capable; that recognition confers influence. The Achievement–Power adjacency on the circle reflects this natural connection.

Achievement values conflict most sharply with Benevolence: seeking success for oneself is likely to obstruct helping others who need it. This is one of the oldest moral tensions in human society — the tension between self-advancement and other-care, between making yourself excellent and making the people around you better. The circle encodes this tension geometrically: Achievement and Benevolence sit directly across from each other.

Hedonism is theoretically interesting for what it doesn't require. Every other value depends on some social context — Achievement requires an audience; Power requires a hierarchy; Conformity requires norms to conform to; even Self-Direction requires a degree of autonomy that society must permit. Hedonism requires only the capacity to enjoy. Its two items — pleasure and enjoying life — are maximally general: any kind of satisfaction counts.

Its position between Openness to Change and Self-Enhancement is not accidental. Schwartz explicitly notes that hedonism "shares elements of both." You can seek pleasure through novelty and exploration (aligning it with Openness), or through comfortable gratification of personal desires (aligning it with Self-Enhancement). This dual nature means hedonism behaves differently in different contexts and correlates more weakly with its neighbors than they correlate with each other.

In the ESS data[3], hedonism correlates positively with support for gay rights (+.19), the second strongest positive association after Self-Direction. The logic is clean: if pleasure is what matters, judgments about what gives others pleasure become hard to justify. Hedonism also shows a strong negative correlation with age (-.33) — a finding with both cohort and biological explanations, as capacity for and orientation toward sensory pleasure shifts across the lifespan.

Of all ten values, Stimulation has the most explicitly biological grounding. Berlyne[7] proposed that organisms need an optimal level of arousal — too little produces boredom and discomfort; too much produces stress. People differ in this optimal level (sensation-seeking, which has a partial genetic basis, is the personality trait most closely linked to stimulation values). High stimulation scorers need more novelty, challenge, and variety to feel engaged. The three survey items — an exciting life, a varied life, daring — all point toward this appetite for heightened arousal.

Stimulation is closely related to Self-Direction — both involve the self reaching outward toward new experience. The distinction is in emphasis: Self-Direction is about autonomy and the freedom to choose and create; Stimulation is about the quality of experience itself — excitement, novelty, the rush of something new. You can value self-direction without needing a particularly exciting life; you can seek excitement without especially caring about intellectual autonomy.

Stimulation shows the strongest negative correlation with age (-.37 across all 20 countries in Schwartz's dataset[5]) — stronger even than Hedonism (-.33) or Achievement (-.26). This reflects several intersecting processes: younger cohorts who grew up in more prosperous, secure societies tend to have higher stimulation values; physical ageing reduces capacity for and tolerance of arousal; and life stages like parenthood and career investment create disincentives to risk and novelty. Stimulation also sits directly opposite Security on the circle — the same life circumstances that make security more pressing make stimulation less so.