Values · Grounded in cross-cultural psychology
Core Values: The 10 Universal Values and How They Shape Your Choices
Ask people what they value and you'll hear a long, agreeable list — freedom, family, success, kindness, security. The interesting part isn't the list. It's that some of those pull hard against each other.
Your core values are the guiding principles that steer your choices across situations. The dominant framework, built by Shalom Schwartz, finds ten basic values recognized in cultures around the world — and arranges them in a circle, where neighbouring values fit together and opposite values conflict. Beneath them run two tensions: openness to change vs conservation, and self-enhancement vs self-transcendence. The crucial idea: values aren't a checklist you complete — they're a set of priorities, and leaning into one usually costs its opposite.
What core values are
In psychology, values have a precise meaning: they're trans-situational goals — desirable aims that hold across contexts and act as guiding principles in your life. Unlike a passing preference, a value shows up everywhere, quietly shaping what you notice, choose, and judge as right. And critically, values aren't all equal to you; you hold them in a personal order of importance. That ranking — not the raw list — is what makes your values yours.
Starting in the early 1990s, Shalom Schwartz set out to find whether there's a common structure to human values across the world. Surveying people in country after country, he found the same ten basic values recurring — and, more strikingly, the same relationships between them, forming a circle that has held up with remarkable regularity across cultures and languages.
The Schwartz circle of values
The four higher-order values
The ten values collapse neatly into four broader families, arranged as two opposing pairs. Most people find one or two of these speak loudest to them.
Openness to Change
Self-Direction · Stimulation
Independence of thought and action, and a readiness for novelty, freedom, and new experiences. Charting your own course over following a set path.
↔ opposes Conservation
Conservation
Security · Conformity · Tradition
Order, safety, stability, and respect for custom. Preserving what works, self-restraint, and the comfort of the familiar over upheaval.
↔ opposes Openness to Change
Self-Enhancement
Achievement · Power
Personal success, competence, status, and influence. Pursuing your own interests and standing — getting ahead and being recognized for it.
↔ opposes Self-Transcendence
Self-Transcendence
Benevolence · Universalism
Care for others — from the people close to you to all people and nature. Fairness, compassion, and the welfare of something bigger than yourself.
↔ opposes Self-Enhancement
Why you can't hold every value
This is the insight that makes the circle more than a pretty diagram. Because values sit around a ring of compatibility and conflict, acting on one value tends to push against its opposite. The more you chase achievement and power, the harder it is to simultaneously prioritize benevolence and universal care — the motivations genuinely pull in different directions. The more you crave stimulation and self-direction, the more you're working against security and tradition. This is why "just value everything" is impossible, and why it isn't a moral failing to feel torn: the tension is built into the structure of human motivation itself.
That reframes what it means to know your values. It's not about assembling a flattering list — everyone would happily claim all ten. It's about seeing which ones you actually prioritize when they conflict, because those are the moments your real values show. A useful values profile doesn't tell you what's good; it shows you your own trade-offs.
Values vs behavior
One honest caveat keeps values in perspective: what you value and what you do don't always match. Values are among the best predictors of attitudes, choices, and even political leanings, but the link to actual behavior is real rather than perfect — the gap between stated ideals and daily action is one of the most familiar facts of human life. Situations, habits, and competing pressures all intervene. So treat a values profile as a clear map of what matters to you, not a guarantee of how you'll act in every moment. The value of seeing your priorities is that the gap becomes visible — and a visible gap is one you can actually choose to close.
And do values change? They're relatively stable — your ranking tends to hold over years — but not frozen. Major life stages and experiences can gradually reshuffle your priorities, even as the underlying set of ten values, and the circle they form, stays strikingly constant across people and time.
How we measure it
How MyTestPro measures your core values
Our values assessment is built on Schwartz's framework — the tradition of the Portrait Values Questionnaire — 40 questions measuring where you sit on the four higher-order value families (openness to change, self-transcendence, self-enhancement, and conservation) and how aligned your daily life feels with them. Every part of your result is computed from your own answers; nothing is invented or filled in with generic text.
Rather than asking you to rate every value as "important" (almost everyone does), we surface your priorities on the two great tensions as a 0–100 read, resolving into one of five values profiles — so you see the trade-offs that define you, not a flattering list. You can take the test and see your result before deciding whether to go further.
See what you actually prioritize
Take the assessment and get a clear read on your core values — including the trade-offs that show up when they compete. Free, with your result before any sign-up.
Take the core values testFree first assessment · results before email · your priorities, not a checklist
Frequently asked questions
What are core values?
Core values are the trans-situational goals that act as guiding principles in your life — the things you consider important that steer your choices across many situations. In Schwartz's dominant framework there are ten basic values recognized across cultures.
What are Schwartz's 10 basic values?
Self-Direction, Stimulation, Hedonism, Achievement, Power, Security, Conformity, Tradition, Benevolence, and Universalism. They sit in a circle where neighbouring values are compatible and opposite values conflict.
What are the four higher-order values?
Openness to Change (self-direction, stimulation), Conservation (security, conformity, tradition), Self-Enhancement (achievement, power), and Self-Transcendence (benevolence, universalism). They form two tensions: openness vs conservation, and self-enhancement vs self-transcendence.
Can you have conflicting values?
Yes — that's the heart of the model. Values sit in a circle, so pursuing one often works against its opposite. Craving novelty pulls against wanting security; chasing personal success pulls against caring for others. You can't max out every value; you rank them.
Do your core values change over time?
They're relatively stable but not fixed. Your ranking can gradually reorder with major life stages and experiences, even as the underlying set of values and the circle they form stay remarkably consistent across people and cultures.
Are values the same as personality?
They're related but distinct. Personality (like the Big Five) describes how you tend to think, feel, and behave; values describe what you consider important and worth pursuing. Your traits shape how you act; your values shape what you aim at.
- Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 1–65.
- Schwartz, S. H. (2012). An overview of the Schwartz theory of basic values. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1).
- Schwartz, S. H., et al. (2012). Refining the theory of basic individual values. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(4), 663–688.
- Schwartz, S. H., et al. (2001). Extending the cross-cultural validity of the theory of basic human values with a different method of measurement. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32(5), 519–542.
- Rudnev, M., et al. (2018). The structure of Schwartz's values at the individual level across cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49(8), 1165–1182.
- Sagiv, L., & Roccas, S. (2021). How do values affect behavior? Let me count the ways. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 25(4), 295–316.