A hierarchical taxonomy of human goals

This paper presents a hierarchical taxonomy of human goals, based on similarity judgments of 135 goals gleaned from the literature. Women and men in 3 age groups-17-30, 25-62, and 65 and older-sorted the goals into conceptually similar groups. These were cluster analyzed and a taxonomy of 30 goal clusters was developed for each age group separately and for the total sample. The clusters were conceptually meaningful and consistent across the 3 samples. The broadest distinction in each sample was between interpersonal or social goals and intrapersonal or individual goals, with interpersonal goals divided into family related and more general social goals. Further the 30 clusters were organized into meaningful higher order clusters. The role of such a taxonomy in promoting theory development and research is discussed, as is its relationship to other organizations of human goals and to the Big Five structure of personality.