Human values: a lexical perspective

From a German lexicon 383 nouns and 299 adjectives describing human values were derived and rated by 456 respondents as guiding motives in life. For the nouns five orthogonal factors emerged: (I) Balance, (II) Intellectualism, (III) Conservatism, (IV) Salvation, and (V) Profit. For the adjectives, four similar factors resulted: (I) Balance, (II) Salvation, (III) Profit, and (IV) Intellectualism. Two-dimensional circumplex presentations of the factorial solution were employed. Conservatism, Salvation and Profit correlated moderately with domains of the Schwartz Value Survey. Openness to Experience correlated positively with Intellectualism and negatively with Conservatism. Correlations with other traits and value dimensions were low. The taxonomy claims to be more comprehensive than previous ones and to reflect culture specific values of German speaking countries.