pursuit (Bilsky, 2005). The situation only changed towards the end of the 1960s in the second strain of research, in reference to Milton Rokeach, who enjoyed wide acceptance within the domain of psychology. Likewise, Schwartz (1992) aligned with Rokeach (1973b) value theory, in an attempt to explore a universal theoretical structure of values. The following sections describe more specifically the two separate research strains on values.
1a) Types of Men by Spranger
Eduard Spranger was a German philosopher, pedagogist, and psychologist, widely acknowledged for his contribution in establishing pedagogy as a distinct academic discipline. Spranger’s most influential contribution to personality theory was his book Lebensformen ([Types of Men]; Spranger, 1928).
Spranger (1928) held the opinion that the human personality is best understood by assessing the corresponding values. To facilitate the process of exploring knowledge, Spranger conceptualized the six “ideal types of individuality” based on rational thinking. This perspective accounts for the theoretical, the economic, the aesthetic, the social, the political, and the religious type. According to Spranger (1928), the various personality types and their corresponding values are characterized as follows (information retrieved from Krobath, 2009):
– Theoretical type: a passion to discover, systemize, and analyze; corresponding values include discovery of truth, discovery of rules, and search for knowledge.
– Economic/Utilitarian type: a passion to gain a return on all investments involving time, money, and resources; corresponding values include work, production, security, and wealth.
– Aesthetic type: a passion to experience impressions of the world and achieve harmony in life; corresponding values include individual expression, fantasy, beauty, harmony, and grace.
– Social type: a passion to invest myself, including my time and resources, into helping others achieve their potential; corresponding values include love, empathy, and loyalty.
– Political/Power type: A passion to achieve position and to use that position to affect and influence others; corresponding values include power, vitality, perseverance, self-realization, and influence.
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– Religious/Traditional type: A passion to seek out and pursue the highest meaning in life, in the divine or the ideal, and achieve a system for living; corresponding values include unity and relativity of human existence.
According to Spranger (1928), this concept is a logical consequence of the assumption, “that each individual structure has a dominating value orientation” (p. 114). Spranger implied that no human personality was bound to fall exclusively into the scope of one of the six “ideal types of individuality.”
1b) “Study of Values” by Allport and Vernon
The studies by the psychologists Allport und Vernon in the 1930s initiated a first step towards an empirical research on values. Furthermore, Allport and Vernon (1931) established the “Study of Values” scale (SOV). This was the most generally used instrument in psychology for many years, based on Spranger’s rationally created model of the six “Types of Men” (cf. Lurie, 1937). The SOV was revised in 1951 (content-wise) and in 1960 (formally). Thereafter the “Study of Values” received strong international acceptance, although it was criticized for perceived “conservative-educational” items and for confounding effects in values and interests (Graumann & Willig, 1983). Specific information on this measurement instrument is provided in section 3.2.2.
1c) Psychology of Politics by Eysenck
In his book Psychology of Politics, personality psychologist Eysenck (1954) referred to values and interpreted the six value types described by Spranger. By analyzing various statements on the subject of social attitude, he identified two orthogonal personality factors which he named “tough-tender Mindedness” (T-factor) and “Radicalism-Conservatism” (R-factor) (cf. Ray, 1973). He assumed that each value type by Spranger (1928) is dominated by a different value attitude as captured by the T- and R-factor. Furthermore, Eysenck described various evaluation studies about the SOV and drew conclusions in his final part: “The evidence is fairly conclusive that the values as measured by the Allport-Vernon Scale are closely related to interest patterns and that these interest patterns show a structure well in line with our T-factor” (p. 169). However, Eysenck (1954) did not claim that the T-factor is a sufficient dimension of covering social attitudes. Accordingly, Eysenck searched for personality psychological explanations of why tough-mindedness (among the T-factor) goes beyond the continuum of left-right orientation (e.g., Stalin vs. Hitler). By investigating empirical data he concluded on the schematic solution that the fascist-right mindset is identified as a tough-minded conservative position and ←58 | 59→the communist-left mindset as a tough-minded radical position. He reasoned that the R-factor fundamentally includes social attitudes, and the T-factor can be seen as a projection on to the attitude level of a personality variable of Extraversion. By drawing a relationship to values, Eysenck succeeded in a first attempt to conceptually combine the two personality factors tender-mindedness vs. tough-mindedness (T-factor) as well as Radicalism vs. Conservatism (R-factor) with the value types of Spranger.
1d) Other systems of values
In the 1940s and 1950s Morris (1956) developed a different, equally well-respected, research approach. As a theoretical basis, he referred to the assumption of the three components of dependence, dominance, and detachment (named as Dionysian, Promethean, and Buddhist), which were considered fundamental to human personality (cf. Schlöder, 1993). He defined the concept of seven “Lebenswege” (“ways of life”), each of which he assigned to one of the three components: the Buddhist path of detachment of desire, the Dionysian path of abandonment to primitive impulses, the Promethean path of creative reconstruction, the Apollonian path of rational moderation, the Christian path of sympathetic love, the Mohammedan path of the holy war, and the path of generalized detachment-attachment. From an empirical perspective, his initial theoretical approach was too constraining. Therefore, Morris and Jones (1955) extended the theory to thirteen “ways of life,” which were assessed by participants on the basis of a combined rating and ranking scale (Braithwaite & Scott, 1991). Richards (1966) factor-analyzed ratings from college freshmen in 31 institutions of higher education on 35 items pertaining to the students’ goals. The factor-analysis was performed separately for males and females. The two groups were found to share seven factors, which according to Richards (1966) assess many of the same factors of the SOV by Allport and Vernon (1931).
2a) The system of values by Rokeach
As another theory, Rokeach (1973b) provided with his publication “The Nature of Human Values,” an influential theory concerning the way values are understood. His assumption was that i) the number of values held by an individual person is relatively small, ii) all human beings have the same values differing in their extent, and iii) values are organized into value systems. Accordingly, he was interested in a full set of values to describe an individual view. Rokeach implemented two distinctive lists of 18 instrumental values (describing modes of conduct as forms of behavior) and 18 terminal values (describing end-states of existence as lifetime goals).
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The Rokeach Value Survey (RVS; Rokeach, 1973a) was widely used as a comprehensive psychological instrument to assess individual values (e.g., Braithwaite & Law, 1985; Feather, 1986; Rokeach, 1973b, 1979). The 18 terminal values, covered by nouns, and 18 instrumental values, covered by adjectives, are sorted into an individual ranking according to the degree the value is desired for one’s self and for others (referring to Tab. 2).
