Taking Advantage of the Circular Structure of Human Values

Schwartz (1992) has shown that Value Domains have a circular structure. The same circular structure has been observed in so many samples all over the world that we may assume that the circular structure is rather universal. Given this structure, the Value systems of individuals can be fruitfully characterized using only one score, which enables us to describe it extremely economically. The Value Circle score we suggest might be independent of response tendencies and cross culturally valid as well. The purpose of this chapter is (a) to show how such a score can be assigned to individuals and (b) to show the advantages and possibilities we have using such a score for analyzing the relation between religiosity and values. As long as it was tried to measure Human Values it was asserted that not the absolute importance of values but their relative importance should be assessed (Vernon & Allport, 1931). Values by definition are rated highly by the large majority of people in a society or cultural group. To assess values in a sensible way it should be crucial to assess the priorities or relative importance people assign to values. Therefore all well known value scales have concentrated on ranking Values. The for the last decennia most influential scientist in this area, Milton Rokeach (1973) has chosen to base his scales on a very complex ranking process