An Analysis of the Structure of Basic Human Values and their Relation to Right-Wing Authoritarianism in an African American Undergraduate Student Sample

Shalom Schwartz's basic theory of human values has been empirically validated in over 60 countries, yielding remarkably consistent results. Although US samples have yielded strong support for Schwartz's theory, they have been predominantly European-American and seldom included African Americans. The present study examined whether value content, structure, and priorities are well characterized by Schwartz's theoretical framework, and relations among values and authoritarianism in a Historically Black University (HBU) sample. Theory-based multidimensional scaling produced a highly interpretable two-dimensional solution, consistent with Schwartz's theory. HBU students prioritized their values in much the same way as students from predominantly White institutions in previous studies had, except HBU students assigned higher priority to achievement. Principal components analyses also indicated HBU students' values were well characterized by Schwartz's model and similarly related to authoritarianism, when compared to samples from earlier studies that were not predominantly African American.