Here we briefly describe different people. Please read each description and think about how much that person is or is not like you.
The official instrument words its portraits to match your gender. Choose how they should read:
The they / them wording is my adaptation and not part of the validated instrument. Answers are saved on this device only, so you can leave and resume; nothing is sent anywhere.
Ask people what they value and you get slogans. Ask them instead to compare themselves with fifty-seven short portraits β βIt is important to her to be wealthyβ, βIt is important to him to care for natureβ β and something more structured appears. The Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ-RR) is social psychologyβs standard instrument for doing exactly that: it measures the nineteen basic values of Shalom Schwartzβs refined values theory without ever asking you to rate a value by name. Each value is measured by exactly three portraits.
The theoryβs central claim is geometric: values form a circle. Neighbouring values draw on compatible motivations, so pursuing one tends to advance the other; values across the circle draw on conflicting ones, so pursuing one comes at the otherβs expense. At the end, your answers are drawn onto that circle. Nothing you enter leaves the browser.
The nineteen values are arranged in their theoretical order, the one recovered again and again from survey data across cultures. Values that sit side by side β stimulation and hedonism, say β express compatible motivations. Values that face each other express a conflict: self-direction opposes conformity, universalism opposes power. A person who gives an unusually high priority to one side of the circle almost mechanically gives a lower one to the other side, because the scores are relative to their own average.
The four colours mark the higher-order values that summarize the circleβs quadrants: openness to change (self-direction, stimulation, hedonism), self-enhancement (achievement, power), conservation (security, tradition, conformity), and self-transcendence (benevolence, universalism). They pair into the theoryβs two axes β openness to change versus conservation, and self-enhancement versus self-transcendence. Hedonism is counted with openness to change but borders self-enhancement. Face and humility sit on the circleβs boundaries β face between self-enhancement and conservation, humility between conservation and self-transcendence β so the wheel draws them as a blend of their neighbours and they stay out of the four higher-order scores.
People use rating scales differently: one person calls nearly everything βvery much like meβ, another reserves the top of the scale for one or two items. Comparing their raw means would mostly compare their enthusiasm for the scale, not their values. The standard correction is simple: compute your mean across all 57 answers (Schwartz calls it MRAT) and subtract it from each of the nineteen value means.
What remains is a profile of priorities β which values matter more or less to you, relative to you. That relative reading is also the theoretically interesting one: values steer behaviour through trade-offs among the ones a situation activates, so it is the balance between them, not their absolute level, that carries the information. The wheel and the summary under it therefore show centered scores; the table and the CSV keep the raw means alongside.
Three portraits per value means a single answer moves a value score by a third of a scale point β treat small differences lightly. You are also reading a one-sitting self-report: mood, context, and self-image all leave fingerprints. The questionnaire is a research instrument for mapping value priorities, not a clinical or diagnostic tool, and this page is a way to explore the theory with your own data β not an assessment of you.
The instrument is the Portrait Values Questionnaire β Revised (PVQ-RR) by Shalom H. Schwartz, reproduced with its official scoring rules from the authorβs repository of value scales in Online Readings in Psychology and Culture (Schwartz, 2021). The refined theory it measures is presented in Schwartz et al. (2012), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and its measurement validated across 49 cultural groups in Schwartz & Cieciuch (2022), Assessment.
Per the authorβs terms, the PVQ-RR is available at no cost for academic research; commercial use requires a license from the author. This page is a personal, non-commercial teaching adaptation; the instrument and theory belong entirely to Schwartz and colleagues. Your answers never leave your browser β scoring, the drawing, and both downloads are computed locally on this page.