Abstract

The present study intends to re-examine Schwartz and Bilsky's theory of universal structure of human values. The main criticism is that they focused only on individual sets of domains and did not examine the overall arrangement patterns of the domains. The main object of this study is to demonstrate that a simultaneous consideration of the entire relations among domains is essential to describe a value structure. Arrangement patterns of Australia, Hong Kong, the U.S., Spain, Finland, Israel, and Germany were reconstructed from Schwartz and Bilsky's figural presentations shown in their early articles. Including our own data on Korean sample, the eight arrangement patterns of domains were examined with Procrutes rotation method for their structural similarities. The similarity coefficients among the eight patterns varied widely, and were relatively low. It was concluded the eight patterns cannot be assumed to have been derived from one single value structure. An appeal was made for a culture-specific model of value structure.