Personality Traits and Personal Values: A Meta-Analysis

Personality traits and personal values are important psychological characteristics, serving as important predictors of many outcomes. Yet, they are frequently studied separately, leaving the field with a limited understanding of their relationships. We review existing perspectives regarding the nature of the relationships between traits and values and provide a conceptual underpinning for understanding the strength of these relationships. Using 60 studies, we present a meta-analysis of the relationships between the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality traits and the Schwartz (1992) values, and demonstrate consistent and theoretically-meaningful relationships. However, these relationships were not generally large, demonstrating that traits and values are distinct constructs. We find support for our premise that more cognitively-based traits are more strongly related to values and more emotionally-based traits are less strongly related to values. Findings also suggest that controlling for personal scale-use tendencies in values is advisable.