What is the better predictor of students’ personal values: Parents’ values or students’ personality?

This study examines the relationship between young adults’ values, multicultural personality traits and their parents’ values. A total of 102 students and their matched parents filled in the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire and the Portrait Value Questionnaire. The influence of one's personality and one's parents’ values on personal values was tested by hierarchical regression analyses and structural equation modelling. The analyses revealed a greater contribution of multicultural personality to the variance in stimulation, self-direction, universalism, and achievement values in comparison to the impact of parents’ values, whereas an opposite pattern was found for power, benevolence, and conformity. Tradition, hedonism, and security were found to be linked to multicultural personality and parents’ values to a similar extent. Furthermore, overall trait-like parents’ values were better predictors of the offspring's trait-like values, and the same effect held for parental societal values: they predicted better the offspring's societal values. The authors discuss the need for differentiation between trait-like and societally oriented values and the application of content-tailored personality measures, in line with previous studies.

► The study explores young adults’ values, multicultural traits, and parental values.
► Multicultural traits explain better trait-like values than parents’ values do.
► Parental values predict better societal values than do multicultural traits.
► Overall trait-like parents’ values predict better the offspring's trait-like values.
► Parental societal values predicted better the offspring's societal values.