World Values

Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan is the director of the "World Values Survey." This survey was started in 1981 by Dutch political scientists at the University of Tilburg and measures sociocultural, moral, religious and political values around the world.

One famous chart resulting from this survey is the Inglehart-Welzel cultural map of the world. Take a look on the World Values Survey website to see this map; it's fascinating. In short, the y-axis of the Inglehart-Welzel cultural map of the world shows where the populations of specific countries are located on a spectrum from traditional/religious values to secular/enlightenment values. As explained on the website:

The Traditional/Secular-rational values dimension reflects the contrast between societies in which religion is very important and those in which it is not. A wide range of other orientations are closely linked with this dimension. Societies near the traditional pole emphasize the importance of parent-child ties and deference to authority, along with absolute standards and traditional family values, and reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. These societies have high levels of national pride, and a nationalistic outlook. Societies with secular-rational values have the opposite preferences on all of these topics.

The x-axis of the map shows where those same countries are located on a spectrum plotting the development from industrial, "survival" societies to post-industrial societies emphasizing self-expression values in response to wealth accumulation. In this regard, the website states as follows:

The second major dimension of cross-cultural variation is linked with the transition from industrial society to post-industrial societies-which brings a polarization between Survival and Self-expression values. The unprecedented wealth that has accumulated in advanced societies during the past generation means that an increasing share of the population has grown up taking survival for granted. Thus, priorities have shifted from an overwhelming emphasis on economic and physical security toward an increasing emphasis on subjective well-being, self-expression and quality of life. [...]

Self-expression values give high priority to environmental protection, tolerance of diversity and rising demands for participation in decision making in economic and political life. These values also reflect mass polarization over tolerance of outgroups, including foreigners, gays and lesbians and gender equality. The shift from survival values to self-expression values also includes a shift in child-rearing values, from emphasis on hard work toward emphasis on imagination and tolerance as important values to teach a child.

Looking at this map, there are some intriguing tidbits of information. For example, it shows that the values of people in many Western European countries (including Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands) are closer to the values of the Japanese than the values of the Irish (making professor Masayuki Tadokoro's recent plea to Western European leaders to stop thinking of the "East" as some amorphous alien world all the more understandable). Similarly, these surveys suggest that the values of the Portuguese are much closer to the values of the people in Chile and Argentina than for example to the values of the Spanish next door.

There are some interesting observations to be made about the U.S. as well. For example, when looking at the y-axis showing the spectrum from traditional/religious values to secular/enlightenment values, the U.S. as a whole is comparable to Romania, Poland, India or Vietnam. Because of the size of the U.S. and the differences among the various regions, it would therefore seem reasonable to conclude that parts of the U.S. are more traditional, religious and nationalistic than any region of any county in Western Europe other than Ireland, and are a world away from Japan and Sweden. At the same time, however, the U.S. is at the same level as those same countries when looking at the x-axis (development from survival to self-expression). Perhaps this begins to help explain some of the recurrent misunderstandings among "Europeans" and "Americans."