A Hierarchical Taxonomy of Human Goals 2001

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Motivation and Emotion [me] pp272-moem-346408 September 29, 2001 16:49 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Motivation and Emotion, Vol. 25, No. 3, September 2001 (C© 2001)

A Hierarchical Taxonomy of Human Goals1

Ada S. Chulef,2 Stephen J. Read,2,3 and David A. Walsh2

This paper presents a hierarchical taxonomy of human goals, based on similar-ity judgments of 135 goals gleaned from the literature. Women and men in 3 agegroups—17–30, 25–62, and 65 and older—sorted the goals into conceptually sim-ilar groups. These were cluster analyzed and a taxonomy of 30 goal clusters wasdeveloped for each age group separately and for the total sample. The clusterswere conceptually meaningful and consistent across the 3 samples. The broad-est distinction in each sample was betweeninterpersonal or social goals andintrapersonal or individual goals, with interpersonal goals divided into family-related and more general social goals. Further, the 30 clusters were organizedinto meaningful higher order clusters. The role of such a taxonomy in promot-ing theory development and research is discussed, as is its relationship to otherorganizations of human goals and to the Big Five structure of personality.

Goals are fundamental to human behavior, playing a central role in both its en-actment and its understanding. Consistent with this centrality, wants and needsare among the earliest things that children communicate (Gelman, 1990), andgoals are basic concepts across all cultures (Wierzbicka, 1991, 1992). Further-more, goals seem to be central elements underlying a host of social concepts,including traits (Borkenau, 1990; Fleeson, Zirkel, & Smith, 1995; Read, Jones, &Miller, 1990), roles (Read, 1987; Schank & Abelson, 1977) and situations (Miller,Cody, & McLaughlin, 1994; Read & Miller, 1989). Yet despite this fundamentalrole in human behavior and understanding, we have only the sketchiest idea ofhow human goals are structured and organized (Austin & Vancouver, 1996). Such

1This research was conducted as a doctoral dissertation by the first author under the direction ofthe second author and was supported by Grant R01008106 from the National Institute on Aging toDavid A. Walsh.

2University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California.3Address all correspondence to Stephen J. Read, Department of Psychology, University of SouthernCalifornia, Los Angeles, California 90089-1061; e-mail: [email protected].

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0146-7239/01/0900-0191$19.50/0C© 2001 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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192 Chulef, Read, and Walsh

limited knowledge greatly hinders the development of the field. Lack of a widelyaccepted conceptual structure obstructs communication among researchers, in-hibits the systematization and integration of the growing array of research, andslows the development of theory, thus hobbling our journey toward a systematicunderstanding of human motivation.

How should we approach the development of such a structure? Allport (1937)and others (for a review and history, see John, Angleitner, & Ostendorf, 1988) haveargued that over the millennia important regularities in human behavior would benoticed and encoded in the language people used to talk about social interaction.These theorists suggested that one example of this kind of language is traits. Thus,the argument went, by examining the structure and dimensions underlying traitterms we could construct a roadmap of the patterning of behavioral sequencesdeemed central in human interaction. Arguments such as these laid a fruitfulgroundwork for exploring—through pursuit of what became the “Big Five”—themajor dimensions underlying trait terms. The success of this enterprise suggeststhat it might be quite fruitful to apply this strategy to the more fundamental conceptof goals.

Although several researchers have attempted to develop such a taxonomy(e.g., Ford & Nichols, 1987; Murray, 1938; Wicker, Lambert, Richardson, &Kahler, 1984), these previous attempts have some serious limitations. It was thepurpose of the present study to create a taxonomy of human goals that was basedon a wide search of the constructs used in the motivational literature and that wasempirically generated, rather than being based on the theoretical preconceptionsof the researchers, as were most previous attempts. Such a taxonomy would placework in this area on a firmer conceptual foundation.

GOALS AND BEHAVIOR

Goals are stable, higher-order entities that function as abstract, organizingstructures and remain fairly stable over time (e.g., Austin & Vancouver, 1996;Ford & Nichols, 1987; Higgins & Sorrentino, 1990; Pervin, 1989; Read & Miller,1989; Schank & Abelson, 1977; Sorrentino & Higgins, 1986; Wilensky, 1983).The goals an individual has—and the interactions among them—play a crucialrole in understanding and predicting the behavior in which individuals engage.

Work on goals has taken a number of forms. Within the realm of personalityand social behavior, for instance, researchers have been interested in individualdifferences in the goals people hold and in their relationship to observed behavior.Pervin and Furnham (1987), for example, perceive goals as “person variables” thatprovide a source of consistency and continuity in behavior. Ford (1987; also seeMiller & Read, 1987, 1991) proposes that in order to understand what an indi-vidual does, one crucial factor to consider is the individual’s personal goals andaspirations (“the directive function”). And Read and Miller (1989) perceive goals

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A Hierarchical Taxonomy of Human Goals 193

as central aspects of individual differences in personality. In fact, they have arguedthat traits can be understood as goal-based concepts (see also, Borkenau, 1990;Fleeson et al., 1995; Read et al., 1990; Read & Lalwani, 2000). In addition to thispure focus on goals, other goal-like constructs that have been proposed includeLittle’s “personal project,” an interrelated sequence of actions intended to achieve apersonal goal (Little, 1983); Emmons’s “personal striving,” a motivational entitythat, he proposes, describes individuals’ propensities toward behavior and capturesrecurring, typical, goal-seeking behavior (Emmons, 1986); Cantor and Kihlstrom’s“life task,” a problem on which an individual is currently working (Cantor &Kihlstrom, 1987); and Klinger’s “current concern,” the state between commitmentto a goal and either attainment or disengagement from it (Klinger, 1987).

The goal construct has also proven useful within the realms of decision mak-ing, behavioral choice, and planning: Beach and Mitchell (1987) perceive goalsas leading agents in individuals’ decisions to engage in a given course of action;Feather (1990) proposes that what a person chooses to do in a situation is relatedto the expectations he or she holds and to the subjective value of the outcomes thatmay follow the action, where the subjective value of an outcome is affected by itsrelation to the individual’s goals; and Wilensky (1983) argues that the process ofplanning one’s own behavior cannot be carried through without knowledge andappropriate use of one’s goals—the organizers of experience (Miller, Galanter, &Pribram, 1960).

Interest in the goal construct is also strong in the social perception and attri-bution areas. Knowledge about an actor’s goals and motives is seen as a meansto understanding observed behavior and interpersonal interactions (Heider, 1958;Jones & Davis, 1965; Read, 1987; Read & Miller, 1989; Wilensky, 1983). AndSchank and Abelson (1977), in their model of social understanding, view goalsas structures that represent and control sequences of behavior such as scripts andplans. Further, an increasing number of researchers and theorists have focused onthe impact of individuals’ interaction goals (e.g., Fiske & Neuberg, 1990; Hilton& Darley, 1991; Jones, 1990) and goals such as accuracy or need to justify a con-clusion (e.g., Kruglanski, 1989; Sorrentino & Short, 1986) on social perception.

A second direction of work has been the effort to create instruments to assessindividuals’ goals. Braithwaite and Scott (1991) provide a thorough review of exist-ing measures. An examination of these tools—e.g., Allport, Vernon, and Lindzey’sStudy of Values (Allport, Vernon, & Lindzey, 1960); Gorlow and Noll’s Empiri-cally Derived Value Constructions (Gorlow & Noll, 1967); and Rokeach’s ValueSurvey (Rokeach, 1967, 1973, 1979)—reveals that no consensus exists amonginstrument writers regarding what constitutes a comprehensive list of human mo-tivators, which motivational domains need to be tapped, and what the best way isto sample items from each of those domains.

The generation of a comprehensive list of human motivations and the cre-ation of a conceptually sound taxonomy or classification of these motivations has

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been a third, related, area of interest aimed at attaining a better understanding ofhuman motivation and its effects on behavior (for further discussion see Austin &Vancouver, 1996). As Ford and Nichols (1987) have suggested, no consensus existsregarding what such a list of motivations should look like. As early as the 1930s,McDougall (1933) presented a list of 13 instincts and Murray (1938) posited 44“variables of personality” as forces that determine behavior. Later, Maslow (1943)introduced a hierarchy of 5 kinds of human needs, Cattell (1957) presented 16“Ergs,” Rokeach (1973) generated a list of 18 instrumental and 18 terminal values,and Schank and Abelson (1977) proposed 6 goal types. Schwartz (1992) exten-sively examined the cross-cultural generality of 11 major value types and theirorganization. These are but a few of the individual efforts that could be men-tioned (see Braithwaite & Scott, 1991; Ford & Nichols, 1987; and Wicker et al.,1984).

In the presence of numerous tools that vary so widely in the sets of goals(or values) they include and in the way these goals are structured within the mea-sure, and given the lack of consensus on the universe of human motivators, thedevelopment of a taxonomy that classifies human goals into conceptually mean-ingful clusters and that offers a detailed organization of these clusters would bean important contribution. This paper attempts to move us closer to this goal. Theresulting taxonomy should (1) include a comprehensive list of goals based on anextensive survey of the various domains of human motivation and that incorporatesa representative set of items; (2) provide a categorization of these goals into se-mantically similar clusters that are conceptually meaningful and representative oflaypeople’s perceptions of how goals fit together, rather than based on researchers’preconceptions; and (3) present the structure of these clusters.

A widely accepted taxonomy of human goals would have important theoreti-cal and conceptual benefits. As John (1990) noted in his discussion of the Big Fiveand its role in the field of personality, development of an adequate taxonomy of ascientific domain often plays a number of fundamental roles in the development ofthat field. First, such taxonomies aid communication among researchers, providinga standard vocabulary or language. In the absence of such a vocabulary it is verydifficult for researchers to know whether they are studying the same or differentthings, drastically slowing progress in the field. As John notes, the proliferationof personality concepts and scales and the lack of any widely accepted descrip-tive vocabulary has made an integrated view of the field of personality almostimpossible.

Second, taxonomies aid in the integration and systematization of findings andtheories in a domain. They give us some sense of where things belong, and of whatthings go together and what things do not. And once we have some sense of howthings are related, we can begin to study why they go together the way they do.

Thus, a third role of consensually accepted taxonomies is that they help fa-cilitate theory development and the development of causal models of the domain.Although initially descriptive, many taxonomies, such as the periodic table of the

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elements and biological taxonomies, have played a major role in theory devel-opment and the development of causal and dynamic theories of the taxonomicstructure. Attempts to explain the relationships among members of different cat-egories can often drive theory development. In biology, for example, taxonomieshave played a major role in theories of the evolution and development of species.

Thus, development of an adequate taxonomy of human goals should greatlyaid the development of the study of human motivation. It should aid scientific com-munication, help in the systematization and integration of research, and facilitatethe development of more adequate theories of human motivation.

In addition to aiding our understanding of human motivation, such a taxonomycould play a broader role in the field of personality. Two of the most fundamentalunits in personality are traits and motives (or goals or needs) of various types.In fact, many theorists (e.g., Allport, 1937; Alston, 1970, 1975; Borkenau, 1990;Miller & Read, 1987; Pervin, 1983; Read & Miller, 1989) have argued that thesetwo types of units may be fundamentally intertwined, that goals or motives maybe a fundamental component of many traits. If so, a widely shared taxonomywould be of great value to examining the ways in which traits and goals arerelated.

Unfortunately, one barrier to examining the relationship between these twoconstructs is the lack of any widely accepted taxonomy of the two domains. Thismakes it difficult to determine the extent to which the two kinds of units mayoverlap or share common territory.

Recent work on such trait taxonomies as the Big Five (for a review seeGoldberg, 1990; John, 1990) or the Interpersonal Circumplex (Wiggins, 1973,1979) has gone a long way toward providing a well-established and relativelywidely accepted conceptual structure for traits. Although there is still disagreementabout the validity of the Big Five (e.g., Briggs, 1989; Hull & Renn, 1994; Mershon& Gorsuch, 1988), work on a goal taxonomy is far more primitive and nothing evenapproaching the Big Five exists as a conceptual structure for motivational concepts.This lack makes it quite difficult to examine the extent of overlap between the twokinds of units. One major aim of the current research is to take a major step towardthe development of such a taxonomy and contribute to a deeper understanding ofthese two fundamental domains of personality and their interrelations.

A widely accepted hierarchical taxonomy would also provide many practicaland empirical advantages: It would have heuristic value for those interested in hu-man motivation and its relation to everyday behavior—the comprehensive list ofgoals would be applicable throughout various domains of motivation, and wouldserve as a common framework for the study of motivated behavior. It would, forinstance, be useful in studies that have required subjects to elicit their own idio-graphic motivators (e.g., Emmons, 1986); the use of a common set of goals basedon a general taxonomy would facilitate comparisons among subjects. Further-more, this taxonomy would provide a broad and flexible framework within whichto study motivated behavior: A set of molecular (lower order) goals organized into

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a hierarchy would give the researcher the choice of assessing human motivation ata more finely differentiated, molecular level or at a more molar level.

A number of attempts at the difficult task of creating a taxonomy of humangoals can be found (for further discussion see Austin & Vancouver, 1996). Wickeret al. (1984), for instance, generated a list of 46 goals (10 goals were added to thatlist in a second study, for a total of 56 goals) and asked subjects to rate the valenceof each goal (“How much do you want it?”). The ratings were then subjected tofactor analysis and cluster analysis. Goal categories were, thus, created on the ba-sis of the valence ratings the subjects produced. Unfortunately, an examination ofthe resulting clusters shows that goals that are not conceptually similar clusteredtogether. For instance, “a good marriage,” “romantic involvement,” “support fromothers,” “getting an education,” and “responsibility” formed a cluster that Wickerand his colleagues labeled “Social institutions.” That conceptually heterogeneousclusters were obtained is not surprising, as a cluster analysis that is done on non-standardized scores, as Wicker et al.’s was, will be sensitive to similar mean ratingsof items, as well as similar patterns of responses across individuals.4

A further problem may have been created by Wicker et al.’s use of importanceratings as the basis for their taxonomy of human goals: There is no particularreason to think that similarity in importance necessarily maps onto conceptualor semantic similarity, or taps into ways in which goals may be organized incommon motivational structures. Although we might think that items that aresimilar conceptually tend to be similar in importance, there is no reason to thinkthat the reverse is true, that items that are similar in importance are also similarconceptually.

In another effort to develop a goal taxonomy, Schwartz (1992) has extensivelyexamined the structure of human goals across a wide range of cultures to ascer-tain what aspects of the structure are similar across cultures. However, his workdoes not provide a hierarchical taxonomy, as he focused on one level of analysis,consisting of 10 major clusters resulting from a smallest space analysis (a form of

4This occurs because distance measures between two items essentially measure the similarity betweenthe profile of responses to the two items across respondents. For nonstandardized scores the similaritybetween the two profiles is a function of two factors: the differences in the elevation or grand meanof the profiles of the two items, and the shape of the profiles. In contrast, standardized scores subtractout the grand mean of the item from the individual responses and thus the distance for standardizedscores is only a function of similar profiles. For example, consider three items with identical profilesacross subjects. That is, there is a perfect correlation among them. But now suppose items A and Bhave means of 8, whereas item C has a mean of 4. Using nonstandardized scores, A and B would becloser to each other than they would be to C, even though all have exactly the same profile acrosssubjects. Conversely, consider a case where the three items A, B, and C have very different profilesand are totally uncorrelated with each other. Again, A and B would be closer than either would be toC, even though theshapesof the profiles are totally different. Thus, for nonstandardized items, twoitems may be somewhat similar because they receive very similar mean ratings across the sample,even though the shape of the profiles may not be all that similar. And two items with exactly the sameprofile may be somewhat different from each other because they have different mean ratings.

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multidimensional scaling). Moreover, Schwartz also relied on importance ratingsof goals, rather than conceptual relatedness.

An alternative approach to the construction of a general-purpose catego-rization of human motivators is the use of semantic similarity judgments of thegoals (instead of importance judgments) as the basis for cluster formation. Thisapproach might result in a more appropriate taxonomy, as it would tap into theconceptual structure shared by members of a particular culture. Ford and Nichols(1987) took a step in this direction. They produced a set of goals (on the basisof discussions and interviews with colleagues, students, and counseling clients)and then organized them into categories on the basis of an “extensive reviewof the literature on achievement motivation, personality, and social motivation”(p. 294). Their taxonomy divides goals into two major groups—“Within-person”and “Person–environment,”—which are further subdivided into three more levelsof goals.

However, this taxonomy was verified by presenting laypeople with the theory-based categories and asking them if these made sense to them. The categories, thus,may largely reflect the authors’ knowledge of the field, rather than subjects’ naiveperceptions of how goals fit with one another. Asking subjects whether they agreewith an experimenter-provided set of categories is quite different from askingsubjects to generate their own categories.

Conceptual similarity judgments made by subjects unfamiliar with formalpsychological models of human behavior could provide us with valuable informa-tion regarding the structure of the goals that underlie, and guide people’s behaviorand the manner in which goals are experienced by individuals. This study tookthis approach. It aimed at the creation of a taxonomy of human goals based onthe semantic-similarity judgments of naive subjects (laypeople) who sorted a quiteextensive set of goals into conceptually homogeneous categories. This set of goalswas generated through a review of the literature on human motivators. As describedin detail below, similarity-based hierarchically organized clusters were attained byasking subjects to sort 135 goals into categories on the basis of their thematic(semantic) similarity, and applying hierarchical cluster analysis to these similarityjudgments. This approach should help provide the field with a common languageto describe and categorize motivational constructs.

We further wished to examine whether we would find the same conceptualstructure across individuals of different ages. To test this we examined three groups:undergraduates (17–30 years of age,M = 19), older adults (63–92 years of age,M = 73.5), and subjects whose ages fell between these two groups (25–62 years ofage,M = 40.3). In sum, this study was aimed at the generation of a conceptuallysound taxonomy of human goals; one that would (1) include a fairly comprehen-sive set of goals sampled from an extensive set of motivational domains, (2) tapinto laypeople’s conceptual organization of goals, and (3) be fairly similar acrossdifferent groups of people.

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METHOD

Subjects

Three different groups of people participated in the study. The three groupsdiffered greatly in age, with each taken from a different age range, and they alsodiffered somewhat on other demographic variables. The first group consisted of70 undergraduate students (30 men and 40 women) who participated in return forextra credit in their class in Introduction to Psychology at the University of SouthernCalifornia. They ranged in age from 17 to 30 (M = 19), were mostly single, andvaried in ethnic background (50% were Caucasian, 27% were Asian, 11% wereHispanic, 2.9% were African American, and the remainder were “Other”).

The second, “middle-aged,” group, consisted of 28 subjects (11 men and17 women), who ranged in age from 25 to 62 (M = 40.3) and covered a broad rangeof ethnic, occupational, and socioeconomic groups. Of these, 19 were staff andfaculty at the University of Southern California who responded to a memo askingfor their participation; the memo was sent to 80 individuals randomly selectedfrom the campus directory. The other 9 subjects included 4 graduate students and5 acquaintances of the experimenters. For their participation, subjects received twofree movie tickets.

The third sample included 75 older adults ranging in age from 63 to 92(M = 73.5). Two did not complete the sorting task and were deleted from thesample, resulting in a final sample of 27 men and 46 women. The vast majority ofthis sample was Caucasian. Twenty-six belonged to a senior club affiliated with aChristian church, whereas 47 belonged to a senior group affiliated with a JewishCommunity Center, both located in Southern California. Fifty-nine percent weremarried, 36% were widowed, and the remaining 5% were either divorced (4%) orsingle (1%). Most of these participants were active within their communities at thetime of the study (e.g., they attended lectures, trips, dance lessons, and exerciseclasses organized by their respective groups). They furthermore varied widely insocioeconomic status. In exchange for each participant’s help, a donation of $10.00was made to his or her club/center.

Materials

Development of the Goal List

Table I shows the list of 135 goals that was attained through the processdetailed below. This list contains only “high-level” goals, which were defined asmotivational entities that could be worded in concrete and unambiguous termsand to which subjects could readily relate (e.g., “having physical ability, agility,”“standing up for my beliefs,” “feeling safe and secure”). Goals that referred either

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Table I. List of 135 Human Goals Derived From the Psychological Literature

Abbreviation Full label

Achieving salvation Achieving salvationArts Appreciating the artsAspirations Achieving my aspirationsAttracting sexually Being able to attract, please, sexually excite a sexual partnerAvoiding failure Avoiding failureAvoiding guilt Avoiding feelings of guiltAvoiding rejection Avoiding rejection by othersAvoiding stress Avoiding stressBeing able to fantasize Being able to fantasize, imagineBeing affectionate Being affectionate toward othersBeing ambitious Being ambitious, hard-workingBeing better than others Being better than others, beating othersBeing carefree Being lighthearted, carefree, enjoying lifeBeing clean Being clean, neat (personal care)Being conventional Maintaining conventional views, avoiding innovationBeing creative Being creative (e.g., artistically, scientifically, intellectually)Being curious Being curious, inspecting, learningBeing disciplined Being disciplined, able to follow-through with projects I start,

following my intentions with behaviorBeing free Having freedom (being a free person)Being good looking Being good lookingBeing honest Being honest, loyal, respectful, courteous, considerate with othersBeing in love Being in loveBeing innovative Changing my ways, being innovative in the way I live my lifeBeing intelligent Being intelligentBeing likeable Being likeable, making friends, drawing others nearBeing logical Being logical, consistent, rationalBeing passionate Being really passionate about somethingBeing playful Being playful, cheerful, acting for funBeing popular Being in the center of things, being popularBeing practical Being practicalBeing private Keeping to myself, being privateBeing recognized Being admired, recognized by othersBeing reflective Being reflective, not impulsiveBeing respected Being respected by othersBeing responsible Being responsible, dependableBeing self-sufficient Being independent, self-reliant, self-sufficientBeing socially attractive Being socially attractive, exciting, fascinating, impressing othersBeing spontaneous Being spontaneousBeing unique Being unique, different, exceptionalBelonging Belonging to social groups, feeling like part of a groupBills Being able to meet my financial needs, not worry about bills,

expenses, etc.Buying things Buying things I wantCared for Being taken care ofCareer Having a careerCareer knowledge Keeping up to date with career-related knowledgeCause Being committed to a cause (e.g., earth, environment, anticrime,

antidrugs)Charity Being charitable, helping the needyClose children Being close to my children

(Continued)

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Table I. (Continued)


Close spouse Being close to my spouseContent with myself Being happy, content with myself, having inner harmony, freedom

from inner conflictContribution Making a lasting contribution to societyControl of environment Being in control of the environmentControl over others Having control over othersDecisions for others Being in a position to make decisions for othersDefense vs. criticism Defending myself against others’ criticisms or attacksDescendants Having enough money to leave for my descendantsDifferent experiences Having new and different experiencesDifficult things Accomplishing difficult thingsEasy life Having an easy and comfortable lifeEducation Getting an educationEducational degree Obtaining an advanced educational degreeEntertaining others Amusing, entertaining othersErotic relationship Having an erotic relationshipEthical Being an ethical personExciting life Having an exciting, stimulating lifeExercising Being physically active, exercising regularlyExploring Seeking new things, exploring, being adventurousFashion Keeping up with fashionFeeling close to family Feeling close to my parents, siblings, grandparentsFeeling meshed Having emotional intimacy, feeling really meshed with anotherFeeling safe Feeling safe and secureFinding higher meaning Finding higher meaning in life, coherence, harmony, onenessFirm values Having firm valuesFlexibility Having flexibility of viewpoint, being broad-minded, openFreedom of choice Having freedom of choiceGood marriage Having a good marriageGood parent Being a good parent (teaching, providing, transmitting values)Having friends Having friends I love, close companionshipHelp from family Receiving help from my parents, siblings, grandparentsHelping others Helping others, cooperating, giving supportHobbies Devoting time to amusements, having recreation, entertainment,

hobbiesIntellectual conversations Having intellectual experiences, conversations, discussing

interesting topicsJob Having a job I really likeKnowing many others Knowing and being on familiar terms with many othersKnowing myself Knowing myself, being in touch with myselfLeader Being a leaderLearning art Learning more about artLife’s limitations Accepting life’s limitationsLiving close to family Living close to my parents, siblings, grandparentsLooking distinguished Carrying myself well, looking distinguishedLooking fit Looking physically fitLooking young Looking youngMature romantic Having a mature romantic relationshipMature understanding Having a mature understanding of lifeMechanical ability Having mechanical abilityMental health Being mentally healthy

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Table I. (Continued)


Mentor Having a mentor, someone to guide meMoney Making a lot of moneyNovel ideas Having original, novel ideasNutrition Being physiologically healthy, maintaining a healthy weight, eating

nutritious foodsOthers to rely Having others to rely onOthers’ trust Having others’ trustOvercoming failure Overcoming failure, putting myself back on my feet after a failureOwn guidelines Setting and following my own guidelinesPeace of mind Having peace of mindPersonal growth Experiencing personal growthPersuading others Influencing, persuading othersPhysical ability Having physical ability, agilityPhysical fitness Being in good physical condition, physically fitPleasing God Pleasing GodProviding family Providing my spouse or children (or both) with a feeling of financial

security and a home to come back toPursuing ideals Pursuing my ideals, fighting for things I believe inReligious faith Maintaining religious faithReligious traditions Engaging in religious traditionsRich social life Having a rich, active, social lifeRomantic experiences Having romantic experiencesSeeking equality Being involved in seeking equality, brotherhood, equal opportunity

for allSeeking fairness Seeking fairnessSeeking justice Seeking justiceSelf-esteem Having high self-image, self-esteem, self-respect, feeling good about

myselfSetting examples Setting good examplesSexual experiences Enjoying sexual experiencesSharing feelings Sharing feelings with close friendsStability Having stability in life, avoiding change, adhering to my ways and

life styleStable family life Having a stable, secure family life (with my spouse or children, or

both)Standing up for beliefs Standing up for my beliefsSupport from others Receiving support from others on projects I believe inTaking care of family Taking care of my parents, siblings, grandparentsTaking risks Not being fearful, being able to take risksTeaching Developing others (teaching, sharing knowledge)Things in order Keeping things in order (my desk, office, house, etc.)Thinking intellectually Being able to think intellectually (handle data, extract ideas, devise

hypotheses, analyze, synthesize information)Well-being Protecting my well-being, avoiding painWisdom Having wisdomWorld beauty Experiencing a world of beauty (going to museums, concerts, being

with nature)

Note. The goals with which subjects were presented are listed alphabetically. The abbreviated labelsare used in Figs. 1 through 4. The “full labels” were given to subjects.

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to a very specific desired end state (e.g., visiting my sister this Sunday, finishingup this one article that has been sitting on my desk for the last year) or to a highlyabstract end state—one too ethereal to serve as a good predictor of behavior (e.g.,achieving my highest values)—were excluded.

The process of generating the list of human goals started with a review ofthe literature on human values, goals, motives, and needs; this produced an initiallist of 136 items, including Murray’s 44 “variables of personality” (20 manifestneeds, 8 latent needs, 4 “inner state” variables, and 12 general traits, Murray,1938), Rokeach’s 18 instrumental and 18 terminal values (Rokeach, 1973), andthe 56 goals that were included in Wicker, et al.’s study (Wicker et al., 1984).These lists were chosen because of their apparent comprehensiveness and becauseof their overlap with other theorists’ lists, such as McDougall’s set of instincts(McDougall, 1933) and Maslow’s set of human needs (Maslow, 1970). For exam-ple, McDougall’s “gregarious instinct” is similar to Wicker’s “having a rich sociallife” and “being socially attractive,” Rokeach’s “true friendship,” and Murray’s“n Affiliation.” And Maslow’s “esteem” is similar to Rokeach’s “self-respect, self-esteem,” Wicker’s “improving self-image,” and Murray’s “n Counteraction.”

An examination of the content of these goals/values made it evident that manyof the descriptors used to define the goal labels in the various authors’ lists includedtwo or more subgoals that were different from one another. These descriptorswere, thus, separated into their components. For instance, Rokeach’s “mature love(sexual and spiritual intimacy)” was separated into sexual and relationship-relatedgoals, respectively. Many of Murray’s needs were also separated into their variouscomponents, as they seemed to include identifiably different goals. For example,“n Affiliation (to draw near and enjoyably co-operate or reciprocate with an alliedother; to adhere and remain loyal to a friend)” was divided into goals such as “beinglikable, making friends, drawing others near,” “helping others, cooperating, givingsupport,” and “having friends I love, close companionship.”

A set of 168 human motivators was thus obtained. These motivators werethen subjected to a stringent screening procedure, which checked for (1) clar-ity (e.g., Wicker’s “Achievement,” a goal too broad to be readily understood,was divided into a number of goals, including “accomplishing difficult things”and “achieving my aspirations,” in an attempt to define “achievement” in a lessambiguous way); (2) redundancy (e.g., Wicker’s “self-knowledge” and Murray’s“knowing oneself”—a component of his Endocathection need—were collapsedinto one goal); and (3) relevance (e.g., Murray’s “repressed Exhibitionism (thedesire to show off and expose one’s body in public)” was deleted, as this was notconsidered a goal likely to be important in a general taxonomy of human goals).

The goals obtained were then compared to other researchers’ lists, in a searchfor missing items. For instance, Ford and Nichols’ “fulfilling social roles” and“community” (aspects of their Integration goal, Ford & Nichol, 1987) led to theinclusion of “being charitable, helping the needy” (a goal to which both Wickerand Rokeach had alluded), and their “physiological well-being” goal led to “being

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physiologically healthy, maintaining a healthy weight, eating nutritious foods” and“being physically active, exercising regularly” (goals closely related to Wicker’s“being in good physical condition”). Furthermore, Ford and Nichols’ “Having tran-quility (peace of mind, serenity, avoiding stress)” led to “having peace of mind,avoiding stress.” Psychology faculty and graduate students at the University ofSouthern California were then asked to volunteer any goals they thought were miss-ing from the resulting set. “Having emotional intimacy, being really meshed withanother” (inspired by Lynn Miller’s romantic-relationship goals (personal com-munication, July, 1990)), and “being unique, different, exceptional” were addedto the list.

This resulted in a list of 134 goals. The final set of 135 goals resulted from run-ning seven (pilot) subjects whose input led to (1) the deletion of Murray’s “seekingand enjoying sensuous impressions” (subjects did not understand this goal); (2) thedivision of “having peace of mind, avoiding stress” into its two component goals,and “seeking fairness and justice” into “seeking fairness” and “seeking justice”;and (3) the rewording of goals such as “being able to understand, repair, constructmechanical devices” and “having aesthetic appreciation and judgment,” whichrespectively became “having mechanical ability” and “appreciating the arts.”

The list of goals was thus developed through a painstaking procedure thatincluded not only a review of the literature but also thorough deliberation amonga team of researchers. Many of the procedures used to develop other goal listshave been less thorough. For example, Ford and Nichols created their 26-goal listby interviewing and “intensely probing” students and colleagues and counselingclients about their own wants, needs, desires and objectives (without going tothe literature). And Wicker chose his original set of 46 goal statements from alist of about 200 “general, psychogenic, and seemingly important goals” (Wicker,1984, p. 288) that he “intuitively generated” without explicit recourse to priorclassifications (10 goals were then added to his list, which were obtained throughasking 110 subjects to “write their 4 most important current goals or aspirations,”and asking 5 graduate students to list as many “humanly important general goals”as they could).

Undoubtedly, we have not captured all important human goals. However, thecurrent list of goals is the most extensive that has been analyzed and thus providesa broad base for further work.

The Sorting Task

As stated above, the primary purpose of this study was to create a taxonomyof human goals that would be based on the semantic similarity of the 135 goals, andwhich would reflect the perceptions of people unfamiliar with formal psychologicalmodels of human behavior. To obtain subjects’ similarity-based categories, setsof 135 index cards (3′′× 5′′), each card containing one of the goals, were created.

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Subjects were asked to sort the 135 goal cards into groups such that goals that fellunder a common “theme” or “topic” went together.

The Goal Importance Measure (GIM)

This instrument was designed to measure the importance that subjects as-cribed to each of the 135 goals. This measure was included so that we couldexamine whether the items in the conceptual clusters identified from the clusteranalysis of the sorting task were also similar in importance. That is, was it thecase that items that were identified as being semantically similar or conceptuallyrelated were also related in individuals’ motivational structures?

This measure required subjects to rate how important each goal was for them intheir current lives, on a scale anchored by 1 (not at all important) and 11 (extremelyimportant). Subjects were instructed to place an “N/A” (nonapplicable) next to anygoal(s) that did not apply (to their current lives). This addition to the instructionswas a result of running the first seven (pilot) subjects: The issue came up morethan once that certain goals were very important to subjects but that they did notaffect their current lives. For instance, more than one PhD holder volunteered that“obtaining an advanced educational degree” deserved an “11,” as they really valuededucation, but having reached this goal made rating the importance it conveyed forthem “at this point in their lives” difficult. This is a very different situation from theone in which a graduate student currently pursuing a doctoral degree would findherself: Both the student and the doctor value obtaining an advanced educationaldegree enormously; however, this is a “current concern” (to use Klinger’s term;Klinger, 1987) for the student only.

Procedure

Participants in the middle-aged and the undergraduate samples were runindividually, whereas, because of logistical reasons and space availability, sub-jects in the older sample were run in groups of up to five individuals. Thesesubjects were seated away from each other in an attempt to decrease social com-parison and pressures posed by others’ performance. Participants were specifi-cally instructed to work by themselves and at their own pace, and not to worryabout time constraints. All participants were told that the purpose of the studywas to gather some information about people’s goals and how they are groupedtogether.

They were first given the Goal Importance Measure and asked to rate, on an11-point Likert scale, how important each of the 135 life goals was for them “atthis point in their lives.” The Goal Importance Measure was administered beforethe sorting task so that subjects would have an opportunity to become familiar withthe goals before having to engage in the sorting task, which required them to think

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about interrelationships among the goals. As stated above, they were asked to write“N/A” (nonapplicable) next to any goal that did not apply to their current lives.Participants were told that there “obviously [were] no right or wrong answers”and that at the end of that task they would be handed a deck of cards and givenfurther instructions. Every participant was informed that he or she had the optionto terminate participation at any point without penalty (two participants took thatoption).

Once subjects finished the Goal Importance Measure, they were asked to sortthe 135 cards into groups. They were asked to “leave their own values aside” andto objectively sort the cards “on the basis of how similar the goals are to oneanother, that is, on the basis of common themes, or topics, under which you seethem falling.” They were instructed to form as many groups as they needed, notexceeding 30 groups. They were also told that they could have as many cards ineach group as they wished and that, again, there were no right or wrong answers.5

All participants were told that at the end of the sorting task they would be asked tolabel each group of goals they had generated; that is, they would have to “come upwith a name for each group which summarized the content of the goals includedin it.” This task was aimed at helping subjects focus on topic-based (instead ofvalue-based) groups. At the end of the sorting task, demographic data (i.e., age,gender, ethnicity, marital status) were collected and participants, as a reward fortheir participation, received (1) class bonus points (young), (1) two movie tickets(middle), or (3) signed a receipt for a $10.00 donation in their name (older). Thisprocedure took a total of 1–2 hr (younger people tended to finish the tasks morequickly than did older adults).

RESULTS

Cluster solutions were obtained for the overall sample and for each of the threesubsamples using Ward’s agglomerative hierarchical cluster procedure (Ward,1963). Input for each of the four cluster solutions was in the form of a 135×135 matrix of the frequency with which each pair of goals was sorted together.Each cell could range from zero to the total number of subjects in the sample, repre-senting the number of subjects who sorted together the two goals that met at thosecoordinates. This matrix was entered into a cluster routine that generated clusterson the basis of the distance scores among pairs of goals. A Squared Euclideanproximity measure was used to assess this distance. This measure, recommendedby SPSS-X for use with Ward’s method, computes distances between two cases

5Several older adults had difficulty with the sorting task. A frequent challenge was the necessaryswitch between a task tapping into one’s motives (filling out the GIM) and this cognitive task whichrequired them to “leave their own values aside” and think about the goals in an objective manner.Elaborations of the instructions that proved helpful included an analogy, volunteered by one of theolder participants, between the sorting task and the categorization of goals “as if I were to file themaway, regardless of how I feel about them.”

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(x andy) by summing the squared differences between the values of the clusteringvariables: Distance (x, y) =∑i (xi − yi )2.

The cluster routine produces a hierarchical organization of goals, depictinghow they are categorized at various levels. It uses an agglomerative process, whichincludes four steps: (1) It calculate the proximities between the initial clusters (the135 individual cases); (2) it combines the two nearest clusters into one; (3) it thenrecomputes the proximities between existing clusters and the newly formed cluster;and (4) it repeats the second and third steps until all cases have been combined inone all-encompassing cluster (SPSS-X, 1988). This produces a hierarchy of clustersolutions, “ranging from one overall cluster to as many clusters as there are cases.Clusters at a higher level can contain several lower-level clusters, but within eachlevel, the clusters are disjoint (each item belongs to only one cluster)” (SPSS-X,1988, p. 405).

The procedure used here (Ward’s) is widely used in the social sciences (Ward,1963). This method is also known as the “within-groups sum of squares or the errorsum of squares (ESS)” method and is designed to optimize the minimum variancewithin clusters. It has been found to outperform other clustering methods in manycases (Aldenderfer & Blashfield, 1984).

In the following we first present the aggregate solution obtained by clus-tering the sorting data of all 171 subjects. We then describe the similarities anddissimilarities among the solutions for the different groups.

Solution for Total Sample

The solution based on the total sample is presented first, as it constitutesthe best estimate of the general population because of its larger size and basis inthree fairly different samples. Figure 1 presents the hierarchical organization ofthe clusters—up to a 30-cluster solution. On the left side of the figure are labelsfor each of the 30 clusters. The labels were generated by the authors, based on aninductive analysis of the items in the category that attempted to best summarize thecontents of the cluster. The numbers running along the top of the figure, from 29to 1, indicate the number of clusters at that level. For each step up in the hierarchy,two clusters at the previous level have been amalgamated into one cluster. Thus, at

→Fig. 1. Cluster solution for total sample. Goal labels presented in Fig. 1 (and all other figures) areabbreviated versions of the actual labels. Refer to Table I for explanations of goal abbreviations. Someof the interesting nodes at which groups of clusters join have been identified by letters. Identifiersmentioned in text match those included in figures. Cluster labels were inductively arrived at by theauthors, and members of a team of researchers. Labels are written in lower case when they do onlya fair job at summarizing the contents of a cluster. Cluster labels have been omitted when the goalscontained in a cluster were highly heterogeneous. Node identifiers (letters or numbers) have been keptconstant across solutions containing similar higher order clusters. Labels for several clusters have beenomitted because of the heterogeneity of their contents.

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level 29, two of the clusters at level 30 have been combined, resulting in 29 clusters.Level 2 indicates that there are two broad clusters at that level. Further, points onthe figure where lower level clusters combine to form conceptually interestinghigher level clusters have been identified by a capital letter.

The tree was “cut” at 30 clusters because this solution seemed to make themost conceptual sense, and finer distinctions did not seem to add substantially tothe meaning of the solution. Further, the goals that fell in each of the 30 clustersseemed to go together, such that each cluster could be assigned a label that sum-marized its contents. This number of categories was also chosen because it was thenumber subjects were asked not to exceed when sorting the goals into groups. Forconsistency and comparability across solutions all trees were cut at 30 clusters.

As Fig. 1 shows, at the highest level of the hierarchy, goals were divided into(A) those related to Sex & Romance, Marriage, and Family and (B) all other goals,pointing to the dramatic conceptual difference perceived by subjects between lifeexperiences that involve family members and those that do not. These other goalsthen divide into (C) general Interpersonal goals (goals related to one’s interactionwith people in general) and (D) Intrapersonal goals. Thus, we see that at a very highlevel subjects made a broad distinction between Interpersonal and Intrapersonalgoals. General Interpersonal goals (C), in turn, subdivide into Physical goals (bothhealth and appearance) (E), and a large higher order cluster (F) that further dividesinto a cluster (N) containing goals related to Friendship and to Belonging, SocialRecognition, and Social Approval, and a large cluster consisting of several lowerlevel clusters containing goals related to Receiving from others, Avoiding rejec-tion, general Positive social qualities (such as being respected and being honest),Teaching and helping others, and Leadership.

Intrapersonal goals (D), in turn, subdivide into several major clusters. Onecluster (O) contains lower level clusters related to Freedom, Ethics and Idealism,Social awareness, and Religion, although Religion joins this higher level clusteronly at a high level in the hierarchy. Another cluster (J) subdivides into Aestheticgoals, goals related to being Creative, a cluster concerned with Being flexible andOpen to new experiences, and Entertainment-related goals. A third large cluster(I) divides into one cluster containing subclusters related to Psychological well-being, and Stability and Safety, and a second cluster containing (1) Personal growth(including “Finding higher meaning,” which formed a cluster by itself at level 30,but joined Personal growth at level 29), and (2) sets of goals related to Order,Achievement, and Self-sufficiency and Self-determination. The fourth large cluster(K) contained one cluster concerning Finances and two other clusters, one relatedto one’s Career and one to Education and Intellect.

In sum, for the total sample goals fell into three major clusters: (1) Family,Marriage, Sex, and Romance; (2) Interpersonal goals related to interacting withpeople in general; and (3) Intrapersonal goals. The general Interpersonal goals thensubdivided into a number of other subclusters, such as physical goals includingHealth and Appearance, goals related to Friendship, Belonging, Social recognition,

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and Social approval, and several clusters of goals related to Receiving from others,Avoiding rejection, general Positive social qualities (such as being respected andbeing honest), Teaching and helping others, and Leadership. The Intrapersonalgoals also subdivided into a number of subclusters, such as a set consisting ofvarious clusters related to Freedom, Ethics, Social awareness, and Religion; an-other set containing clusters related to Aesthetics, Creativity, Entertainment, andOpenness to experience; a third set related to Psychological well-being, Safetyand Stability, Personal growth, Achievement and Self-determination; and a finalset with clusters concerning Finances, Career, and Education and Intellect.

Comparison of Overall Solution With the Three Subsamples

To provide a framework for understanding how particular age groups aresimilar and different in the way they conceptualize motivational constructs, thesolution based on the total sample will be compared in detail to the solutionsfor the three subsamples. Although we recognize that each of the subsamplescontributes to the overall solution, and thus the similarity of the subsamples tothe overall solution is somewhat artifactual, using the overall solution in this wayprovides a conceptually useful way of organizing the comparison among solutions.

Comparison of Fig. 1 with Figs. 2, 3, and 4 (solutions produced by the under-graduates, middle sample, and the older adults, respectively) reveals a fair amountof similarity in the hierarchical arrangement of clusters produced by the total sam-ple and those produced by the subsamples. The division into three major clusters(Family-related, Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal) is found in all four solutions,and the clusters that fell under each of these major categories for the total sample’ssolution also were clustered together by the three subsamples. Within each of thethree major categories, the extent to which subsamples grouped together lowerlevel clusters varied. These similarities and differences will be described withineach of the three major clusters.

Family, Marriage, Sex, and Romance Clusters

The same conceptual topics were included in this category by all people. Thedifferences lay in the lower level distinctions. Thus, the older adults divided, as thetotal sample did, these goals into Marriage (“good marriage,” “close spouse”) andFamily (including goals related to both parental and immediate family). However,younger adults grouped together Marriage and Immediate family and distinguishedthese from Parental-family goals. This difference between the younger and olderadults disappears at higher levels in the hierarchy. At level 22 in the undergraduatesolution, the 10 goals in the Family and Marriage clusters merge and form onecluster. The same happens for the older adults, but a little higher, at the 15-clusterlevel.

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Fig. 2. Cluster solution for younger group.

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Fig. 3. Cluster solution for middle group.

211

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Fig. 4. Cluster solution for older group.

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Also included in node A were goals related to Sex and Romance. The sevengoals included in this cluster were consistently sorted together (by all subsamples aswell as the total sample). It is interesting to note that even though Sex and Romancegoals consistently clustered with Family-related goals, they were perceived byyounger and older adults (and by the total sample) as fairly distinct from the latter,as they remained alone until the 4-cluster level. Finally, the middle sample differedfrom all the other groups in including Finances in this cluster, and in particular withFamily goals. This may be related to the much greater likelihood that individualsin the middle group were raising a family. Both the older and the younger groups,as well as the overall sample, placed the Finance cluster in the Interpersonal goalshigher order cluster.

Students’ perception of being married and having children as different frombeing close to and interacting with their parental family might be related to the factthat the students who participated in the study were single and, thus, perceivedmarriage and parenthood as life experiences that take place together. The oldersample, on the other hand, included mostly married and widowed individuals whoprobably no longer had frequent contact with their parental family or their children.

“Interpersonal” Clusters

In the overall sample, as well as in the subsamples, the higher order categoryformed by Interpersonal goals (C) contains, broadly, (1) Physical appearance andhealth goals, node E (except for the middle subsample who placed these in thePersonal goals cluster), (2) goals related to having Friends and Belonging, Socialrecognition, and Approval, which at node F join (3) goals related to Defendingagainst rejection, Helping and Giving to others, Receiving support from others,and Leadership. The same basic clusters are found in all the subsamples, althoughthere are some differences in the specifics of how they are related to one another.

“Intrapersonal” Clusters

Intrapersonal higher order clusters for the total sample subdivide into 5 majorclusters: (1) Religion, which is a fairly distinct cluster, as it does not join (2) goalsrelated to Freedom, Ethics (and Idealism)—which in turn join Social awareness—until the 6-cluster level; (3) goals related to being Creative, Flexible, and Open tonew, exciting experiences, which join Entertainment and then Aesthetics-relatedgoals; (4) goals related to having Personal growth (including “finding higher mean-ing in life”), which join goals related to having Order, Achieving one’s goals andbeing Self-sufficient, Disciplined and Determined, and then join goals related toPsychological well-being, and Stability and Safety; and finally (5) goals relatedto Career, Intellect and Education, which, interestingly, join Financial goals atlevel 10.

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The 5 higher order clusters delineated above are also found, in slightly differ-ent shapes and forms, within the three subsamples’ solutions: Religion, which alsojoins Social awareness, Idealism and Freedom in the undergraduate and middlegroup solutions, remains very distinct in all three solutions. However, in the olderadult sample, although Social awareness, Idealism (and Ethics), and Freedom (G)are also found together, they are not contiguous to Religion.

A cluster containing Excitement, Entertainment and Openness-related goals,such as Flexibility and Creativity (H) can also be found in all subsamples. AnAesthetics cluster is also related to these other clusters for the overall sample, theyoung and middle groups, but not for the older group.

Node I, at which gather goals related to Personal growth, Stability, Safety,Well-being, Achievement, Self-sufficiency, and Self-determination, can also befound, to different extents, in the three subsamples’ solutions. In the case of un-dergraduates, I also includes Ethics and Finances. In the case of the middle groupand the case of the older adults, I also looks quite similar to the other solutions: Itincludes goals related to Security, Stability, Personal growth, and Self-sufficiency,but does not include Achievement-related goals.

Lastly, the total sample’s Career, Intellect, and Education cluster (L) is alsofound in the undergraduate solution and can be seen in the older adult solutionjoined to clusters tapping into Achievement and Order. However, in the middlegroup the Intellect cluster is relatively distant from the Education and Careercluster, only joining at a relatively high level.

Summary

In sum, the solutions generated by the total sample and the three subsampleshave numerous elements in common, both at high and low levels of abstraction,indicating the existence of stable sets of conceptually based clusters that are sharedby a diverse group of people and, thus, should prove useful in the construction oftools aimed at gaining a better understanding of the motivational basis of behavior(across diverse groups of people). The major distinctions among goals were repli-cated: (1) Family, Marriage, and Sex & Romance constituted a distinct cluster; and(2) Interpersonal goals—including those related to having a Social life, Friends,Support, Recognition, and the opportunity to Give to others and Lead others—weredifferent from (3) Intrapersonal goals, which included goals related to Idealism,Ethics, Freedom and Social awareness; Flexibility, Openness, Excitement andEntertainment; Intellect, Career and Education; Personal growth, Self-determina-tion, Psychological well-being, and Stability and safety; Achievement, Order, andPersonal care; Aesthetics; Religion; and Finances. Moreover, numerous lower levelclusters showed high levels of replicability among these very different groups ofindividuals, demonstrating that this conceptually based organization of humangoals does a good job of capturing the conceptual organization of goals perceivedby a wide range of individuals.

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Table II. Adjusted Rand Indices for Pairwise Comparisonsof Sorts Obtained From Different Subject Groups

Young to old .53Young to middle .60Old to middle .55Average of subgroups to each other .56

Quantitative Comparisons Among the Samples

We first present a measure of the overall agreement among the solutions andthen present a more detailed analysis of the extent to which the same clusters werefound across the solutions. Overall degree of agreement was computed using theadjusted Rand index (Hubert & Arabie, 1985), which calculates the proportionof times that all possible pairs of items are sorted together or separately in twodifferent cluster solutions, adjusted for chance. The index ranges from 1 to 0,where 1 indicates that sorting of pairs of items was identical in the two solutionsbeing compared, whereas 0 indicates that pairs of items were sorted together andseparately no more than would be expected by chance. An adjusted Rand index of.71 can be interpreted as meaning that the two cluster solutions being comparedshow 71% agreement, over and above what would be expected because of chance(Collins & Dent, 1988).

Table II presents the adjusted Rand indices computed on all possible pair-wise comparisons of the solutions for the Undergraduate, Middle-Aged, and OlderAdult samples. As Table II shows, there was an average of 56% agreement, abovechance.

A more detailed analysis of the degree and type of agreement was then calcu-lated by comparing the amount of agreement among the solutions at the 30-clusterlevel. This was done by calculating the percent agreement for each of the 30 clus-ters for each of the three subsamples compared to the Total solution. This moredetailed level of analysis can be found in Table III, for the total sample as comparedto the undergraduate subsample; in Table IV, for the total sample compared to themiddle sample; and in Table V, for the total sample as compared to the older-adultsubsample.

As the three tables show, pairs of clusters tended to match reasonably well,although they varied in the degree of match. The tables present the percent agree-ment and the number of matching goals for each cluster. The last column gives thesum of the matching and unique nonmatching goals, which was the denominatorfor the calculation of the percent agreement.

Inter-Item Consistency of Importance Ratings Within Each Cluster

We were also interested in whether goals that were judged as conceptuallysimilar also hung together in terms of how important they were to the same group

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Table III. Degree of Agreement per Pair of Clusters Between the Total Sample’s (N) and Undergra-duates’ (U ) Sorting-Based Solutions

Cluster nos. forNo. of matching

each solutionaDegree of No. of goals plus no. ofagreement matching unique unmatched

N U Clusters (%) goals goals

1 1 Sex and Romance 100 7 714 14 Social awareness 100 6 65 5 Physical health 100 5 58 10 Receiving from others 100 4 4

13 13 Religion 100 4 421 28 Psychological well-being 100 4 430 30 Finances 100 4 47 11 Friendship 100 3 3

28 21 Career 100 3 317 16 Aesthetics 100 3 320 19 Entertainment 100 3 39 7 Defense vs. rejection 100 2 2

Sum 12 48

6 6 Social life 88 7 822 29 Stability and Safety 86 6 712 12 Leadership 83 5 64 4 Physical appearance 80 4 5

24 23 Personal growth 78 7 911 9 Teaching and Giving others 75 3 425 27 Dexterity and Personal care 67 2 3

Sum 7 34

19 18 excitementb 60 6 103 3 parental family 50 4 8

18 17 creative mind, openness 50 3 629 20 intellect 50 3 610 8 positive social qualities 50 2 426 26 achievement 43 3 727 24 self-determination 43 3 716 15 freedom 40 2 5

Sum 8 26

2 2 33 2 615 25 33 2 623 22 0 0 3

Sum 3 4

aCluster numbers identify each solution’s clusters in the order presented in the particular solution’sfigure. (Top cluster= 1, Bottom cluster= 30)

bLabels written in lower case focus on the matching subset of the goals contained in the pair of clusterscompared. Other goals that were included in either cluster are not described.

of people. This would give us some insight into whether items that are similarconceptually also have similar motivational importance. To assess this, we per-formed an inter-item consistency analysis (standardized Cronbach’s alpha) of theimportance ratings for the goals in each of the 30 clusters in the total solution(The analysis is based on the entire sample.). As Table VI shows, the inter-item

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Table IV. Degree of Agreement per Pair of Clusters Between the Total Sample’s (N) and MiddleAged Group’s (M) Sorting-Based Solutions



N M Clusters (%) goals goals

24 27 Personal growth 100 8 81 1 Sex and Romance 100 7 7

12 12 Leadership 100 5 58 8 Receiving from others 100 4 47 10 Friendship 100 3 3

10 6 Positive social qualities 100 3 317 19 Aesthetics 100 3 320 20 Entertainment 100 3 32 2 Marriage 100 2 2

16 29 Freedom 100 2 2

Sum 10 40

3 3 Family 88 7 85 15 Physical health 80 4 5

13 16 Religion 80 4 530 5 Finances 75 3 44 13 Physical appearance 67 4 6

14 17 Social awareness 67 4 6

Sum 6 26

6 9 social lifeb 63 5 828 30 career 60 3 515 18 ethics and idealism 57 4 721 26 psychological well-being 50 4 826 25 achievement 43 3 727 24 self-determination 43 3 719 21 excitement 40 4 109 11 defense vs. rejection 40 2 5

11 7 helping others 40 2 5

Sum 9 30

29 23 intellect 38 3 825 14 personal care 33 1 322 28 22 2 918 22 13 1 823 4 0 0 3

Sum 5 7

aCluster numbers capture the order in which clusters are listed in their respective clustering-solutionfigures. Use these numbers to identify clusters that lack a label.

bLabels written in lower case focus on the matching subset of the goals contained in the pair of clusterscompared. Other goals that were included in either cluster are not described.

consistency of importance ratings for most of the clusters is high, ranging from.89 to .61. The cluster containing “mechanical ability” was the only one showingvery low inter-item consistency. The clusters produced by the total sample, thus,hang together not only in terms of their conceptual meaning but also on the basisof how important the goals they contain are to the same people.

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Table V. Degree of Agreement per Pair of Clusters Between the Total Sample’s (N) and OlderAdults’ (OA) Sorting-Based Solutions



N OA Clusters (%) goals goals

6 7 Social life 100 8 83 3 Family 100 8 81 1 Sex and Romance 100 7 74 5 Physical appearance 100 5 55 6 Physical health 100 5 5

12 12 Leadership 100 5 513 13 Religion 100 4 47 8 Friendship 100 3 3

28 17 Career 100 3 326 16 Achievement 100 3 32 2 Marriage 100 2 29 9 Defense vs. rejection 100 2 2

16 28 Freedom 100 2 2

Sum 13 57

14 25 Social awareness 86 6 729 18 Intellect and Education 83 5 615 27 Ethics and Idealism 80 4 58 10 Receiving from others 75 3 4

17 14 Aesthetics 75 3 420 21 Entertainment 75 3 425 15 Dexterity 67 2 3

Sum 7 26

30 30 financesb 60 3 523 26 “find higher meaning” 50 1 210 11 positive social qualities 50 3 622 22 stability vs. avoidance 45 5 1119 20 flexibility 40 4 10

Sum 5 16

27 24 36 4 1124 23 27 3 1121 4 20 1 518 19 17 1 611 29 0 0 5

Sum 5 9

aCluster numbers capture the order in which clusters are listed in their respective clustering-solutionfigures. Use these numbers to identify clusters that lack a label.

bLabels written in lower case focus on the matching subset of the goals contained in the pair of clusterscompared. Thus, other goals that were included in either cluster are not described.

DISCUSSION

The same high level division of goals was found across all the solutions:(1) A higher order cluster of goals thematically related to Family and Marital

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Table VI. Inter-Item Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha) of Importance Ratings forEach of the 30 Sorting-Based Clusters Produced by All 171 Subjects

StandardizedCluster Number of items Cronbach’s alpha

Religion 4 .8951Physical health 5 .8678Sex and Romance 7 .8587Social recognition and approval 8 .8497Aesthetics 3 .8361Flexibility, openness, and excitement 10 .8179Physical appearance 5 .8118Social awareness 6 .8097Personal growth 8 .7987Leadership 5 .7942Self-sufficiency 7 .7822Marriage 2 .7764Career 3 .7584Psychological well-being 4 .7401Family 8 .7380Creativity 3 .7351Positive social qualities 3 .7320Ethics and idealism 4 .7178Finances 4 .7064Stability and safety 7 .6864Friendship 3 .6838Defense vs. rejection 2 .6650Receiving from others 4 .6597Freedom 2 .6513Teaching and helping others 4 .6420Intellect and education 5 .6202Achievement 3 .6143Entertainment 3 .6121Dexterity 2 .1523“Finding higher meaning” 1 N/A

relationships, which were perceived by subjects as conceptually similar to—butdistinct from—goals related to Sexual and Romantic relationships; (2) a distinctgroup of goals related to being physiologically Healthy and physically Attractive;(3) a higher order “Interpersonal” cluster that was subdivided on the basis of thekinds of interpersonal relationships people tend to have, namely (a) Friendship,(b) Belonging to social groups and having the Approval and Recognition of others,(c) Receiving help and Support from others; (d) Defending oneself against negativesocial input (rejection, criticism), (e) Being good to others and Giving (sharingknowledge, being honest and trustworthy, helping), and (f) Leadership; and (4) aset of clusters of “Intrapersonal” goals including the following themes: (a) Socialawareness, Idealism, and Freedom; (b) Ethics and morality; (c) Religion; (d) Flex-ibility, Excitement, and Openness to new experiences, Creativity, Aesthetics, andEntertainment; (e) Intellect, Career, and Education; (f) Achievement and Order;

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(g) Finances; (h) Personal growth; (i) the need for Stability, Security, and Safety;and (j) Self-determination and Independence.

The lowest level clusters tend to be semantically homogeneous and theymeaningfully merge into broader categories at increasingly higher levels of ab-straction, forming a hierarchical structure. Moreover, not only are these clusterseasily labeled and interpreted, but they also are fairly replicable, as was revealedby the comparisons among the clustering solutions produced by three widely dif-ferent age groups. It thus seems that this conceptual organization of goals taps intosemantic distinctions that members of a particular culture share. Furthermore, itlends itself to the identification of subsample specific clusters that clearly describethe conceptual perceptions of different groups of people (young, middle-aged, andolder adults) and can be used by researchers and practitioners to address the needsof specific sectors of the population.

The similarity-based clusters reflect the way in which laypeople who share acommon culture conceptually organize the various motivational domains of expe-rience. These clusters also hang together motivationally, as evidenced by the highlevels of inter-item consistency found when examining the importance ratings ofgoals falling within each cluster. This indicates that goals which are perceived asconceptually similar by people are also strongly related to one another in the extentto which they are likely to act as motivating forces.

Hierarchical cluster analyses, such as the current ones, help identify whichfeatures distinguish different categories, as well as which features are most impor-tant in a particular sample of respondents. Higher level distinctions in a hierarchicalcluster solution are typically more important or salient. An important implicationof this point is that if different features are more or less salient to different groupsof participants then these groups may provide somewhat different hierarchicalstructures.

Some evidence for this can be found in this study. Although the same basicstructure is found in all the solutions, there are some interesting differences thatcan be understood in terms of people of different ages facing different life tasks.For example, an interesting distinction made solely by the older adults led Physicalgoals to fall under a separate higher order cluster strictly containing goals relatedto one’s health (both physical and mental) and appearance. This might point tothe salience that health has for older adults. Undergraduate students, on the otherhand, seemed to perceive physical goals as related to one’s social existence. Thesedata suggest that physical fitness, health, and looks might be perceived by collegestudents as instrumental to the pursuit of social goals.6

The difference mentioned earlier in the way in which family-related goalswere categorized by younger vs. older adults is also worthy of comment. Younger

6However, even though Physical goals fell under the Social umbrella for both the total sample and theundergraduate subsample, in both cases they did not join other social goals until the 3-cluster level.This, thus, points to the fact that physical goals were perceived as distinct and only generally relatedto social goals.

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adults’ perception of marital- and immediate-family goals as similar to one an-other and different from parental-family goals was not shared by older adults whoperceived marital goals as conceptually distinct. Younger (single) adults, probablybecause of the stage in their lives in which they find themselves, seem to expe-rience goals related to having a spouse and children (most likely future goals)as highly interrelated and different from goals involving their parents, siblings,and grandparents (with whom they probably share their present lives away fromschool). For older adults and the total sample, on the other hand, the relationshipwith a spouse is distinct and different from all other family relationships.

Validity of Hierarchical Structure

One question that might arise is whether a hierarchy is the best or mostvalid way to represent our taxonomy. Clearly, the clustering technique we usedassumes hierarchical structure. Obvious alternatives would be the kind of dimen-sional structure that results from multidimensional scaling or factor analysis or thekind of single-level structure that results from the kind of smallest space analysisperformed by Schwartz (1992). Another possibility would be something like theoverlapping clusters that can result from Shepard and Arabie’s (1979) ADCLUSprocedure, which allows the same item to be in multiple, overlapping clusters(e.g., “good marriage” could be in both “romance” and “family” clusters). Al-though this technique could be quite informative, unfortunately ADCLUS is notwidely available.

There are several reasons why we think a hierarchy is an extremely usefulway to represent our taxonomy. One is that the current work is on the semanticstructure or meaning of goals. In work on semantic structure, hierarchical analysesof meaning in terms of greater or lesser abstractness or generality are typical andseem to capture the meaning of the constructs. Work on semantic taxonomiesand category structure, which are typically based on similarity, typically resultsin hierarchical structures, where items lower in the structure are more specificand are based on a greater number of distinctions. Conversely, items higher in thehierarchy are more abstract and make fewer distinctions.

Further, clusters in the taxonomy are consistent with one test for hierarchicalsemantic structure, which is that it makes sense to say that a lower level cluster isa type of higher order cluster, but not vice versa. For example, Intellect is a typeof Intrapersonal goal, but an Intrapersonal goal is not a type of Intellect goal. OrFriendship is a type of Interpersonal goal, but an Interpersonal goal is not a typeof Friendship goal.

But ultimately, the strongest argument for a hierarchical structure is whetherit makes sense and whether the distinctions made or features identified are rea-sonable. This is precisely the basis on which semantic taxonomies are made andthe basis on which biological taxonomies are formed. In the current analysis, onecan ask several questions: As we move down the hierarchy, does the splitting of

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large clusters into smaller clusters reveal features or distinctions that are meaning-ful? When we get to the terminal nodes in the structure do the 30 clusters makesense? Do the items in them hang together and do the relations among adjacentclusters make sense? Can one find the same or similar structures among differentgroups of individuals? Finally, does the overall branching structure make senseand reveal interesting and useful relations among clusters of items? We believethe answer to all of these questions is clearly yes, suggesting that a hierarchicaltaxonomy is a valid and extremely useful way to represent the relations amonghuman motives.

Problems With Feature-Based Models?

Several researchers (e.g., Barsalou, 1985; Murphy & Medin, 1985) have raisedimportant questions about the adequacy of feature-based or similarity-based mod-els of categorization. Although it might seem that these critiques create problemsfor the current approach, we do not believe they do. These critiques do not arguethat people do not use features or similarity. Rather, they are aimed at the lackof a theoretical explanation of which features people use and at the insufficiencyof features alone as a way of representing the meaning of categories. As severaltheorists have noted (e.g., Murphy & Medin, 1985), there are a potentially infinitenumber of features we could use to characterize any particular category. But weonly use certain ones. Feature-based models do not explain this. Further, these cri-tiques make it clear that features by themselves are not sufficient for representingcategory meaning; the relations among features are also critical. Not only mustbirds have wings, but these wings must be attached in certain places and theytypically are used to fly.

Although this critique is quite important, neither of these points undercuts ourcurrent purpose, which is descriptive. Our focus here is on better understandinghow the goal domain is organized and what some of the features are that peopleuse to characterize goals. That is, we are trying to determine empirically whichfeatures people use, rather than trying to explain why they use them. Ultimately,we also need a theory of why people use these features and not others. But ourcurrent focus is on improving our description of the domain.

Comparison With Previous Categorizations of Human Motivators

Comparison with previous semantically based categorizations of the motiva-tional domains reveals some overlap, at various levels of abstraction: One of themajor differentiations made by subjects—that between Interpersonal and Intrap-ersonal goals—was also made by Braithwaite and Law’s interviewees, during theprocess of creating their Goal and Mode Values Inventories (Braithwaite & Law,

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1985). This distinction is also found in Ford and Nichols’s categorization (Ford &Nichols, 1987). Moreover, this distinction is also central in the work on culturaldifferences in values, specifically the difference between Individualist and Collec-tivist values (e.g., Markus & Kitiyama, 1991; Triandis, 1995), and also seems toparallel the major distinction in personal orientation identified as Agency versusCommunion (Bakan, 1966; Spence, Helmreich, & Holohan, 1979). Thus, bothlaypeople and theoreticians seem to perceive taking care of oneself and interactingwith others as very different from one another.

This distinction between Interpersonal and Intrapersonal goals, overlaps, butonly partially, with an important distinction made by Rosenberg and Sedlak (1972)between social and intellectual traits. Although their social distinction overlapsquite strongly with our Interpersonal goals, intellectual traits are only a subset ofthe broader category of Intrapersonal characteristics identified in our analyses.

Ford and Nichols

It is interesting, however, that Ford and Nichols, on the basis of their knowl-edge of theories of motivation and a psychological analysis of the structure of themind, placed both social goals (goals that pertain to the individual in his or her in-teraction with other people) and “Task goals” (goals related to achievement, beingproductive and improving one’s performance, and keeping one’s safety) within thehigher order “Person–environment goals” cluster. Participants in the present study,in contrast, split task-related from “Interpersonal or social” goals, placing task-related goals (e.g., “mechanical ability,” “things in order”) within “Intrapersonal”goals.

Numerous other dissimilarities exist, many of them having to do with Fordand Nichols putting Interpersonal and Intrapersonal goals in the same cluster.Thus, clusters formed on a bottom-up, commonsense basis differed from clus-ters generated on the basis of Ford and Nichols’ top-down, theoretically basedconceptualization. Although it makes conceptual sense to cluster under a commonumbrella goals that involve anything external to the individual (i.e., otherpeople and the environment), naive subjects appear not to experience theireveryday lives that way. These differences between researchers’ and subjects’perceptions show that Ford and Nichols’ work fails to capture important aspectsof laypeople’s conceptions of the structure of human motivation.

Braithwaite and Law

The hierarchical organization of the clusters provides us with fine distinc-tions and links at various levels that are lacking in other attempts at organizingthe motivational domain. Braithwaite and Law’s instruments, for instance, con-tain broad goal categories that hide the distinctions between identifiably different

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concepts (Braithwaite & Law, 1985). Thus, their category “Secure and Satisfy-ing Interpersonal Relationships,” a clearly social scale, included “Mature love,”“True friendship,” “Personal support,” “Security for loved ones,” and “Acceptanceby others.” Each of these items corresponds to a separate cluster in the currenttaxonomy.

Schwartz

Schwartz (1992; Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987) has examined the structure ofhuman values across 20 countries and consistently finds 10 major categories.However, as noted previously, he does not provide a hierarchical taxonomy ofhuman values but focuses largely on these 10 major categories. As a result, al-though many of these categories correspond roughly to some of ours, he does notmake many of the lower and higher level distinctions that can be found in ourtaxonomy. For instance, at the highest level in our taxonomy there is a major dis-tinction between Interpersonal goals and individual or Intrapersonal goals. Andat somewhat lower levels, our taxonomy has major categories for things such asSex and Romance, Marriage, Family, Physical appearance, and Physical health.Also, items that fall in the same categories in Schwartz’s results are frequently insomewhat separate clusters in our results.

Maslow

Examination of Maslow’s theoretical classifications of human motivators(Maslow, 1943, 1970) reveals a number of interesting parallels with our taxon-omy. For example, Maslow’s Physiological (or Biological) needs are similar tothis study’s Physical and Sexual goals; his Security and Safety needs are capturedby this taxonomy’s needs for Stability, Safety, Security, and the Avoidance of neg-ative situations, his Affiliation (or Attachment) needs tap into Interpersonal goalssuch as Friendship, Belonging/Social recognition/Approval, and Receiving fromothers, and his cognitive needs resemble our taxonomy’s Intellectual, Educational,and Creativity-related goals. Finally, Maslow’s Self-actualization need tends torelate to Intrapersonal goals referring to Self-determination and Personal growth,and his Transcendence needs tend to relate to this taxonomy’s “finding highermeaning,” “mature understanding,” and “life’s limitations.”

Murray

Some parallels can also be drawn between the results obtained in this studyand Murray’s conceptualizations. For instance, n Affiliation looks similar to theFriendship cluster in the present study. Murray’s n Dominance is similar to thisstudy’s Leadership cluster, which includes, “control of environment,” “persuading

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others,” “decisions for others,” “control over others,” “leader,” and “setting ex-amples.” “Physical Ability, n Ach (Phys)” is similar to this taxonomy’s Phys-ical health cluster. “Economic Ability, n Ach (Econ)” is similar to Finances.“Erotic Ability, n Ach (Sex)”—the ability to please, attract and excite the oppositesex; to love and be loved—is parallel to this taxonomy’s Sex & Romance. Thistaxonomy’s Intellect cluster seems to be tapped into by three of Murray’s Abilitiesor Achievements: “Intellectual Ability, n Ach (Intell)”; “Scientific Ability, n Ach(Sc)”; and “Theory-Creative Ability, n Ach (Th-Cr)”—the ability to construct ex-planatory concepts in science, to devise good hypotheses. Murray’s “AestheticAbility, n Ach (Aesth)” is similar to this taxonomy’s Aesthetics.

However, another example illustrates that components of Murray’s needswere not always perceived as conceptually similar by this study’s participants.Murray’s n Autonomy is described as the desire to get free, shake off restraint;defy conventions, refuse to be tied down by family obligations; love adventure andchange, or seclusion (“where one is free to do and think as he likes”; Murray, 1938,p. 157). These needs fall into clusters in the current taxonomy such as Freedom,Flexibility/Openness/Excitement, Entertainment, Family, and only lightly “touchon” Self-sufficiency-related goals. As this example illustrates, Murray perceivedas conceptually similar entities (desires, effects, actions) that fell under differentlower-level clusters and crossed the highest order distinctions made by this study’sparticipants (i.e., Interpersonal vs. Intrapersonal).

Finally, Murray’s “Social Ability, n Ach (Soc)”—the ability to make friendseasily, be liked and trusted, express oneself in the presence of others, amuse andentertain, be popular—appears to cover more than just one specific social cluster:It contains elements of various Social clusters including Friendship, Giving toothers, and Belonging/Social recognition/Approval.

The analysis presented above illustrates that in some cases laypeople’s moti-vational experiences were closely paralleled by Murray’s conceptual distinctions,whereas in other cases finer grained distinctions were made by either party.

Comparison of the Structure of Traits and Goals

As we noted earlier, a number of researchers have argued that there are im-portant conceptual relations between traits and goals (e.g., Allport, 1937; Alston,1970, 1975; Borkenau, 1990; Miller & Read, 1987; Pervin, 1983; Read & Miller,1989). However, the specifics of this relationship have been little studied. Thus,we examine here the extent to which important distinctions in our goal taxon-omy have parallels in analyses of the structure of traits, specifically the Big Five.We focus our comparison on the Big Five because, although not without con-troversy, it has attracted the largest amount of attention and work, and becauseit provides a fairly comprehensive (although not complete) coverage of the traitdomain.

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Perhaps not surprisingly, the highest level distinction we find in our taxonomy,that between the Interpersonal and the Intrapersonal domain, is also a fundamentaldistinction among traits. For instance, several of the major factors of the Big Five areentirely composed of social or Interpersonal traits (e.g., Extraversion and Agree-ableness), whereas the others are Intrapersonal (Conscientiousness, Neuroticism,Openness). Note, however, that this distinction is not explicitly identified in thefactor analyses in this domain. Further, developers of the interpersonal circumplex(e.g., Wiggins, 1973, 1979) explicitly chose to focus on interpersonal traits, traitsthat deal with how people interact with others.

But the structure of traits and goals is not similar only at the highest level.There is also considerable overlap between the substructure of the Big Five factorsand our goal clusters. Several researchers have identified detailed subcomponentsor facets for each of the Big Five factors (e.g., Costa & McCrae, 1992; Goldberg,1990; John, 1990). In the following, for reasons of space we rely on one analysis,Goldberg’s recent analysis of 100 synonym clusters that identify the Big Five(Goldberg, 1990). Goldberg provides one of the most detailed analyses of thecomponents of each factor, with a number of adjective clusters identifying a lowerlevel in a conceptual hierarchy for each factor.

When we examine the subcomponents of each of the five major factors iden-tified by these adjective clusters we find that a reasonable correspondence can beidentified between almost all of our goal clusters and many of the trait clusters. Inthis comparison we use trait forms (rather than the noun forms he used) of mostof the major trait clusters identified by Goldberg (1990).

Components of Factor 1, Extraversion, are spirited, gregarious, playful, com-municative, spontaneous, unrestrained, energetic, talkative, assertive and domi-nant, animated, courageous, confident, direct, humorous, ambitious, and optimis-tic. These seem to share a common domain with our Belonging, Social recognitionand Approval cluster as well as with our Entertainment, Leadership, and Friend-ship clusters. There is also some overlap with our Achievement cluster.

Major facets of Factor 2, Agreeableness, are cooperative and helpful, ami-able, courteous, generous and charitable, modest, moral and warm. These identifydomains that have considerable overlap with a number of our clusters, such as ourFriendship cluster, the Teaching and Helping others cluster, our Positive socialqualities cluster, our Social awareness, and our Ethics and Idealism clusters.

The domain of Factor 3, Conscientiousness also overlaps considerably withour various goal clusters. Among the major trait clusters are Organized, efficientand self-disciplined, dependable, precise, cautious, punctual, decisive, dignified,predictable, thrifty, conventional, and logical and analytic. Thus, an individualpossessing the goals in our Self-sufficiency and self-determination cluster andour Order cluster would sound very much like a highly Conscientious individual.Moreover, a concern with Finances corresponds with the thrifty adjective cluster.And some aspects of our Physical appearance and Physical Health clusters wouldalso seem to overlap with some of these trait clusters.

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Factor 4, Emotional Stability vs. Neuroticism, seems to have less correspon-dence with our goals than do the other factors. However, even here we find someintriguing overlaps. This domain is characterized by such clusters as independent,placid and unemotional, insecure and self-critical, anxious, unstable and tempera-mental, emotional, gullible, and nosey. The goals in our Psychological well-beingand Stability and Safety clusters (e.g., avoiding stress, avoiding failure, feelingsafe, stability) would seem to be characteristic of an individual who is tryingto avoid the arousal, tension, and anxiety that are important components of thisfactor.

Finally, an individual who scored high on Factor 5, Openness to experienceor Intellect, would seem to be characterized by a number of our goal clusters,specifically the Aesthetics cluster, the Creativity cluster, the Flexibility, Openness,and Excitement cluster, the Higher Meaning and Personal Growth clusters, and theIntellect and Education cluster. This parallel can be clearly seen in the trait clus-ters characterizing Factor 5: intellectual and introspective, insightful, intelligent,creative and artistic, curious, and sophisticated, cultured and worldly.

Interestingly, we also find several important goal clusters that do not have anyready parallel in the Big Five. Our Sex and Romance, Marriage, and Family clustersdo not seem to have any direct correspondence in the Big Five, although they clearlyare an important part of the Interpersonal domain. Further, our Physical appearanceand Physical health clusters do not have any clear correspondences although theremay be some overlap with both Conscientiousness and with Extraversion.

Our Religion goal cluster also does not have any correspondences with theBig Five. However, although items related to religion do not typically appear inmost analyses of the Big Five, Goldberg (1990) did report that in several of hisanalyses he found a factor corresponding to religiosity and religiousness. However,he then deleted these items from further analyses, arguing that they did not formreplicable factors beyond the Big Five.

The fate of the religion items in Goldberg’s analysis may provide a clue asto why there seem to be no trait items in the Big Five corresponding to othergoal clusters as well, such as our Physical appearance, Physical Health, and Sexand Romance, Marriage, and Family clusters. It is not that such trait terms do notexist (e.g., vain, slovenly, athletic, hypochondriac, romantic, maternal, paternal,family-oriented). Rather, they may simply not be so extensively represented inthe language as to form replicable factors in something like the typical “Big Fiveanalysis.” Workers in the Big Five tradition try to identify broad, comprehensivetrait distinctions.

This may also speak of the relative advantages and disadvantages of Factoranalysis versus Cluster analysis as a discovery strategy. Factor analysis tends tofocus on identifying broad factors or dimensions, all of which operate, more orless, at the same level of abstraction. It is good at that, but as numerous researchershave noted it is much less satisfactory for identifying more specific distinctions thatmay only be relevant within a small subset of items. In contrast, cluster analysis

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is better suited for identifying a wider range of distinctions, some of which arerelevant only within a small subgroup of items.

CONCLUSION

The current taxonomy has a number of advantages over previous attemptsat goal taxonomies. It is based on a wider sample of goals and a broader sampleof subjects than previous attempts and it provides a consistent, replicable struc-ture over a range of subjects. Moreover, it is empirically based, rather than beingbased on the theoretical preconceptions of researchers. The taxonomy provides re-searchers and practitioners interested in human motivation with a broad frameworkfor the study and assessment of human goals. This should foster the developmentof the field in several ways. First, it helps provide a common language for the fieldthat should improve communication among researchers. Second, by providing aconceptual structure that identifies how various goals and motives are interrelated,it should help to systematize and integrate the burgeoning body of research onhuman motivation. Third, attempting to explain this structure should further en-courage theory and the development of causal models of that structure. Finally,the utility of this taxonomy extends beyond the domain of understanding humangoals, by providing a means to begin examining the relations among two majorpersonality constructs: goals and traits.

This taxonomy also has several practical advantages for the researcher. Itoffers the flexibility of choosing among domains of interest, and among levels ofabstraction, as well as the potential of tailoring an instrument to a particular agegroup. This offers a common framework from which to sample human motivators,and allows the reliable measurement of the role that individuals’ goals play in awide range of everyday activities. Thus, someone interested in the way in whichgoals related to family, career, health, and finances affect an individual’s job sat-isfaction might measure the extent to which each of the goals included in thesefour clusters is valued; ratings across items belonging to a cluster could then bechecked for consistency.7 This thoroughness is not found in many previous goallists (e.g., Cattell’s (1957) 16 Ergs; Rokeach’s (1967, 1973) 36 values). And otherlists (e.g., Murray’s (1938) complex list of “variables of personality,” each includ-ing distinctly different subvariables) have aimed at covering all areas of humanfunctioning but do not facilitate the analysis of the relationships among the variousgoals, as they provide no information about the hierarchical structure of the goals.

In psychological research, we attempt to understand the factors likely topredict subjects’ future behaviors. If it is individuals’ motivational structures thatare of interest to us, one critical aspect that needs consideration is how people

7Researchers particularly interested in multiple measures of a goal cluster might choose to add con-ceptually similar goals to the cluster(s) of interest, following the conceptual patterns found in thetaxonomy.

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think about them, and how they guide their lives. For the way in which individualsorganize the motivational domains in their own minds should have a significantimpact on how they approach various situations they encounter in their everydaylives. It would, thus, be beneficial to use the taxonomy presented here, obtainedfrom a diverse sample of people, as a basis for studying laypeople’s goal structures,the importance they ascribe to the various goals, and the extent to which these guidetheir everyday lives, and affect their decisions, attitudes, and behaviors.

Clearly the current taxonomy is not the final word. Undoubtedly other goalsneed to be added to this taxonomy and the structure that we outline may wellvary as a function of the different situations and life tasks faced by differentindividuals at different times in their lives (as some preliminary findings heresuggest). Nevertheless it provides a detailed starting point for addressing thesequestions.

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A Hierarchical Taxonomy of Human Goals 2001

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