Personality traits and personal values: a conceptual and empirical integration

Abstract

Independent advances in the study of personality traits and personal values have clarified their foundations, antecedents, content, structure, and measurement. Accumulating evidence shows that personality traits are largely endogenous characteristics, while personal values are learned adaptations strongly influenced by the environment. Thus, these constructs appear to address nature and the interaction of nature and nurture, respectively. Although each itself is related to an abundance of research and theory, efforts to integrate personality traits and personal values have been limited. We integrate the two constructs conceptually and then report corroborating empirics in a Western sample using two distinct personality approaches. Findings indicate that personal values are influenced in predicted patterns by Openness/Intellect, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness as well as, more moderately, by Extraversion.

Introduction

Personal values and personality traits have been extensively researched across a wide range of disciplines. Although conceptually similar, research into traits and values has generally followed separate streams, with few reported efforts to connect them either theoretically or empirically. However, recent advances in both areas may facilitate improved understanding of their relationships and differences. These include the emergence of comprehensive, theory-based models of the content and structure of both values and traits, the development and extensive validation of corresponding measures, and improved understanding of the foundations and antecedents of both traits and values.

While clearly related, personality traits and personal values are conceptually distinct in important ways. Detailed understanding and description of those relationships and distinctions will be an important step toward integrating the wealth of theory and findings associated with each construct. In the sections that follow we discuss conceptual and empirical developments in both personality traits and values research that shed light on their nature and on how they relate to one another. We next review past empirical studies, and then develop and test a model of personality's effect on values.

After decades of disorder, the 1990s saw emerging consensus that personality traits are organized within five broad factors, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Openness to Experience/Intellect, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. These five traits explain much of the shared variance in the numerous trait taxonomies that have been proposed, and subsume a myriad of narrower, more specific traits, “facets” or “subcomponents;” for a thorough review see John and Srivastava (1999; cf. Block, 1995).

Personality traits are enduring characteristics of the individual that summarize trans-situational consistencies in characteristic styles of responding to the environment (Allport, 1937, Costa & McCrae, 1992, Goldberg, 1993). A growing body of evidence indicates that personality traits are endogenous basic tendencies tied to underlying biophysiological response systems (Costa & McCrae, 2001, McCrae & Costa, 1996, McCrae & Costa, 1999, Zuckerman, 1998, for a recent thorough review of biophysiological theories and research). They are strongly heritable (e.g. Bergeman et al., 1993, Jang et al., 1998), surprisingly immune to parental and social influences (Asendorpf & Wilpers, 1998, Riemann et al., 1997), and remarkably stable throughout adulthood (McCrae & Costa, 1990, McCrae et al., 2000).

The five-factor structure is found universally across cultures, and even transcends species (Gosling, 2001, Jang et al., 1998). It has emerged in questionnaire approaches (e.g. Costa and McCrae's widely adopted NEO framework; Costa & McCrae, 1992) and in analyses of person-descriptive adjectives in natural languages (i.e. the ‘lexical approach’; Saucier & Goldberg, 1996). It is also closely related to well-validated markers of temperament, understood to be genetically and constitutionally based characteristics of the individual (De Fruyt et al., 2000, Shafer, 2001).

Such extensive convergence notwithstanding, ambiguities remain regarding the best interpretations or rotations of the five factors. One of the more substantial and persistent differences is between questionnaire and lexical understandings of the fifth, broadest, and typically smallest factor (De Raad & Van Heck, 1994, Goldberg, 1993, McCrae & Costa, 1997). NEO Openness to Experience, derived via the questionnaire approach, is a pervasive curiosity and interest in all aspects of life including thoughts and ideas, but also experiences, feelings and art (e.g. McCrae & Costa, 1997). In comparison, Goldberg's lexical fifth factor, labeled Intellect, is more narrowly focused on thinking, ideas and intellectual curiosity (Goldberg, 1992, Goldberg, 1993). Saucier (1992) has argued that these differences may be overstated, but McCrae and Costa (1997) have maintained that Openness to Experience is the broadest of the five domains and that it subsumes Intellect as well as other Openness facets.

In contrast to essentially innate personality traits, personal values are learned beliefs about preferred ways of acting or being which serve as “guiding principles in the life of a person or other social entity” (Schwartz, 1994, Costa & McCrae, 2001, McCrae & Costa, 1999, Rokeach, 1973). More specifically, they are “(a) concepts or beliefs, (b) about desirable end states or behaviors, (c) that transcend specific situations, (d) guide selection or evaluation of behavior and events, and (e) are ordered by relative importance” (Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987, p. 551).

Drawing on interviews and detailed reviews of language and of the extant literature, Rokeach (1973) developed a taxonomy of values and accompanying instrument, the Rokeach Value Survey (RVS), among the most widely adopted operationalizations of personal values in the literature. However, he was unable to uncover a fundamental structure underlying his taxonomy. Schwartz provides an answer in his universal theory of the content and structure of personal values (Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987, Schwartz & Bilsky, 1990, Schwartz, 1992, Schwartz, 1994, Schwartz, 1996). Schwartz asserts that values are cognitive representations of three universal requirements: biological needs, interpersonal coordination, and social institutional demands to ensure group welfare. The personal values domain forms a motivational continuum that can be represented in a circumplex in which value types addressing compatible underlying needs are congruent while those addressing conflicting needs are opposed. The resulting circumplex, shown in Fig. 1, has been validated in studies in over 60 countries through Smallest Space Analysis (Guttman, 1968). One axis separates Self-Enhancement from Self-Transcendent values; the other captures Openness to Change versus Conservation values. Schwartz partitions these major domains into 10 specific value types (described in Table 1), cautioning that these types are not discrete, but rather “conceptually convenient decisions about where one fuzzy set ends and another begins” (Schwartz, 1994, p. 25).

Recent research into both personality traits and personal values has shed considerable light on the structure and bases of these constructs. However, few studies have attempted to integrate these advances, either theoretically or empirically, perhaps because they tend to represent discrete streams of research. Most theory and research has focused on environmental rather than endogenous influences on values (see, for example, Knafo & Schwartz, 2001, Schoenpflug, 2001). Still, a number of scholars in each tradition have acknowledged the relationship between personality traits and values. Rokeach (1973) viewed personality traits as antecedent to values, which, while stable, can be reprioritized on the basis of experience and social expectations.

McCrae and Costa bring genetics, physiological differences, personality, values, and environmental context together in their Five Factor Theory of the person (Costa & McCrae, 1998, Costa & McCrae, 2001, McCrae & Costa, 1996, McCrae & Costa, 1999). The three core components of the person are “basic tendencies,” “characteristics adaptations,” and “self concept” (a subcomponent of characteristic adaptations). Biological bases, external influences, and “objective biography” are conceptualized as adjoining systems that interact with personality via dynamic processes. In this framework, personal values are prototypical “characteristic adaptations,” “acquired skills, habits, attitudes and relationships that result from the interaction of individual and environment; they are the concrete manifestations of basic tendencies” (McCrae & Costa, 1996, p. 69). Personality traits, and specifically the five high-level domains Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience and Agreeableness, are “endogenous basic tendencies” or “temperaments,” unaffected by the environment; “the universal raw material of personality—capacities and dispositions that are generally inferred rather than observed. Basic tendencies may be inherited, imprinted by early experience, or modified by disease or psychological intervention…” (McCrae & Costa, 1996, pp. 67–68).

McCrae and Costa acknowledge that designating personality traits as endogenous basic tendencies or temperaments may be their “most radical” postulate (McCrae & Costa, 1999, pp. 144). They base their persuasive case on at least five lines of evidence: the remarkable stability of personality traits across adulthood, the cross-cultural universality of trait structure, theories of biophysiological and neurological bases of traits confirmed in findings of strong heritability, identification of the same five-factor structure of personality in chimpanzees, and findings of surprisingly weak parental influence on traits (Costa & McCrae, 1998, Costa & McCrae, 2001, McCrae & Costa, 1996, McCrae & Costa, 1999, McCrae et al., 2000). Thus, in this emerging understanding, values lie at the interface of the environment or “external influences” (nurture) and “endogenous basic tendencies” (nature) manifested in personality traits.

Relatively few studies have attempted to relate personality traits and values empirically, and only Luk and Bond (1993) provided an explicit test of the relationship between the five factor model (using the NEO-PI-R) and Schwartz values in a sample of Chinese students. They found relationships between the three less affective, primarily intellective traits (see Watson, 2000, Yik & Russell, 2001)—Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness—and personal values.¹ Openness was related to greater Self-transcendence and Openness to Change values (Universalism and Self-direction versus Achievement, Power, and Conformity). Agreeableness was related to greater Self-transcendence and Conservation values (Benevolence, Universalism, Conformity, and Tradition versus Power, Achievement, Hedonism, and Self-direction). Conscientiousness was positively associated with Conservation values (Conformity versus Hedonism and Self-direction).

Luk and Bond (1993) expressed surprise at the observed Conscientiousness–Conformity relationship, speculating that this may be a unique characteristic of Chinese culture. However, several studies using different measures of either personality or values have generally supported these relationships, including that between Conscientiousness and Conservation. Using an alternative personality instrument, Yik and Tang (1996) found that their measure of trait Openness had a significant positive effect on Openness to Change versus Conservation values. Herringer (1998) also found that Openness to Experience had a significant effect on value markers associated with Universalism versus Conformity.² Conscientiousness was strongly related to Conservation and Self-enhancement (Security and Achievement versus Universalism). Agreeableness was related to Self-transcendence (Universalism versus Achievement).

Dollinger, Leong, and Ulicni (1996) found that Openness to Experience correlated positively with Self-Transcendence and Openness to Change markers (Universalism and Self-direction versus Hedonism, Power Security, and Conformity).³ Agreeableness was positively related to Self-Transcendence (Benevolence versus Power). Conscientiousness was positively correlated with markers of Self-Enhancement and Conservation (Achievement and Security versus “Imaginative,” a marker that might be hypothesized to relate to Stimulation or Self-Direction). Research by Roberts and Robins (2000) offers convergent support when their “major life goals” are mapped conceptually into the Schwartz circumplex. Markers of Achievement (“a high status career,” “influential/prestigious occupation,” “high standard of living” and “wealth”) were positively associated with Extraversion and Conscientiousness, and negatively associated with Agreeableness and Openness to Experience. A marker of Power (“becoming a community leader”) was negatively associated with Agreeableness. Markers of Universalism (“working to promote the welfare of others,” “helping others in need,” and “taking part in volunteer community and public service”) were positively associated with Openness to Experience and Agreeableness. A life goal item that would appear to tap Benevolence (“having harmonious relationships with my parents and siblings”) was positively associated with Agreeableness.

The cited studies did not find as consistent relationships between values and the two primarily affective traits, Extraversion and Neuroticism. There is some convergent evidence that Extraversion is associated with Stimulation (Dollinger et al., 1996, Furnham, 1984, Luk & Bond, 1993), but the relationships with other values are decidedly mixed. For example, Roberts and Robins (2000) found positive correlations between Extraversion and markers of both Power and Benevolence, values on opposite poles of Self-transcendence.

In summary, the extant empirical studies generally suggest that the more intellective traits of Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness relate systematically to Values. Specifically, trait Openness to Experience predisposes individuals toward values related to Openness to Change and Self-Transcendence (most specifically, Stimulation, Self-Direction, and Universalism) versus those related to Conservation and Self-Enhancement (Tradition, Conformity, Security, and Power). Agreeableness predisposes individuals toward Self-Transcendence (Universalism, Benevolence) versus Self-Enhancement (Power, Achievement) values. Conscientiousness operates on the Self-Enhancement/Conservation end of the value circumplex (most notably, Achievement and Security). These observed relationships are consistent with general understandings of the content of these traits. The relationships between the major value dimensions and the more affective traits—Extraversion and Neuroticism—are generally weaker and less consistent across the studies. Nevertheless, Extraversion, which includes elements of venturesome, excitement seeking and ascendance (Watson & Clark, 1997), appears to be related to Stimulation, Achievement, and Power in some studies.