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Values: Cultural and Individual

Shalom H. Schwartz

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and University of Bergen, Norway

November, 2008

Chapter In F. J. R. van de Vijver (Eds.), A. Chasiotis, & S. M. Breugelmans, Fundamental

questions in cross-cultural psychology (pp. 463-493). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 2011

This research was supported by Israel Science Foundation Grant No. 921/02. I am grateful to

Liat Levontin, Lilach Sagiv, and Noga Sverdlik for their insightful comments on an earlier

draft of this chapter.

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Introduction

During the past two decades, I have developed, validated, and applied two separate

theories of value related constructs. The first concerns the basic human values on which

individual people in all societies differ (e.g., security, achievement, hedonism, concern for

others). Basic individual values are an aspect of personality. The second theory deals with

normative value orientations on which cultures differ (e.g., hierarchy, egalitarianism,

harmony). These orientations underlie and justify the functioning of societal institutions.

Are two value theories really necessary? Could the same value constructs or

dimensions serve at both individual and cultural levels of analysis? It would certainly be more

parsimonious to do with one theory. Logically, one theory would suffice if we could assume

that culture is simply personality writ large or that individual values are culture writ small.

Sadly—for accepting either assumption would make life easier—I find them both

unacceptable. In addressing the question of the relationship between individual and culture

levels, I hold that we need separate theories of values.

This chapter presents and contrasts my individual-level and culture-level theories and

suggests how to apply them fruitfully together. It is structured as follows: First, I explicate

each theory, specifying its constructs and the relations among them and citing evidence to

support them. Next, I compare the empirical structures obtained when the same values data

are analyzed at the two levels of analysis and discuss how to interpret these structures as

expressions of individual personality and of societal culture. I then contrast the causes of

individual differences in basic values and the causes of societal differences in cultural

orientations. Next, I present and illustrate the questions that cultural orientations are suited to

address and the different questions that individual values are suited to address. Finally, I

discuss and illustrate how multi-level analyses that exploit both types of values together can

explain national and individual differences in behavior and attitudes.

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CITA Schwartz, Shalom. (2015). Schwartz, S. H. (2015). Basic individual values:

Sources and consequences. In D. Sander and T. Brosch (Eds.), Handbook of value. Oxford:

UK, Oxford University Press..

For me, as for Rokeach (1973) and others, values represent broad, desirable goals that

serve as standards for evaluating whether actions, events, and people are good or bad.

Individual values are goals that derive from what it means to be human, to be a biological

organism who participates in social interaction and who must adapt to the demands of group

life. Cultural values, in contrast, are goals that derive from the nature of societies, from the

“functional imperatives” (Parsons, 1951) with which societies must cope in order to survive.

Every society must coordinate activities among individuals and groups, adapt individual and

group activity to the social and physical environment, and motivate individuals to perform

their roles in ways that meet expectations. Thus, I adopt a functionalist perspective in

identifying value constructs at both the individual and the cultural level.

Two Levels of Analysis, Two Theories

Individual values

I start with the individual level theory, the psychological level at which my theorizing

and empirical research began (Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987; Schwartz, 1992). In the tradition of

Spranger (1928), Allport (1955), Kluckhohn (1951), Morris (1956), and Rokeach (1973), I

sought to identify a comprehensive set of values that help to explain individual differences in

attitudes and behavior. Two other objectives, not a focus of earlier theorists, were to seek the

basic values recognized in all societies and to understand how these values are organized into

a coherent system that reflects the dynamics of value-based, individual decision-making.

Basic Individual Values

Varied conceptions of values in past psychological literature have given way to a

growing consensus among psychologists regarding values as an individual attribute (e.g.,

Rokeach, 1973; Feather, 1975; Rohan, 2000; Schwartz, 1992). Basic values are commonly
 3

defined as trans-situational goals, varying in importance, that serve as guiding principles in the

life of a person. In order to cover the full range of potential values, I examined previous value

theories, past values questionnaires, religious and philosophical texts from around the world,

and motivational variables mentioned in theories of needs, goals, and personality. On this basis,

I tentatively identified ten motivationally distinct basic values that subsequent research has

shown to be recognized across societies (Schwartz, 1992, 2006a). These values are likely to be

universal because they are grounded in one or more of three universal requirements of human

existence with which they help to cope. These requirements are needs of individuals as

biological organisms, requisites of coordinated social interaction, and survival and welfare

needs of groups.

Each value is grounded in one or more of the three universal requirements of human

existence. For example, conformity values derive from the requirement that individuals inhibit

inclinations that might disrupt and undermine smooth interaction and group functioning; and

hedonism values derive from organismic needs and the pleasure associated with satisfying

them.1 Below are the ten basic values, each defined in terms of its central goal.

Power: Social status and prestige, control or dominance over people and resources.

Achievement: Personal success through demonstrating competence according to social

standards.

Hedonism: Pleasure and sensuous gratification for oneself.

Stimulation: Excitement, novelty, and challenge in life.

Self-Direction: Independent thought and action -- choosing, creating, exploring.

Universalism: Understanding, appreciation, tolerance and protection for the welfare of all

people and for nature.

Benevolence: Preservation and enhancement of the welfare of people with whom one is in

frequent personal contact.

1
For detailed derivations of the ten values, see Schwartz (1992, 2006a).
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Tradition: Respect, commitment and acceptance of the customs and ideas that traditional

culture or religion provide the self.

Conformity: Restraint of actions, inclinations, and impulses likely to upset or harm others and

violate social expectations or norms.

Security: Safety, harmony and stability of society, of relationships, and of self.

The social and psychological conflict and congruity people experience when pursuing

values give rise to a coherent structure of relations among the ten values (Schwartz, 1992,

2006a). Figure 1 presents a circular structure that portrays the total set of relations. Values that

come in conflict when individuals try to pursue them simultaneously are in opposing directions

from the center; congruent values are adjacent to one another in the circle. The closer any two

values in either direction around the circle, the more similar their underlying motivations; the

more distant, the more antagonistic their motivations. Although the theory discriminates these

ten values, at a more basic level, values form a continuum of related motivations. The circle

reflects this continuum. Depending upon the degree of refinement desirable for scientific analysis,

one could split it into more or fewer distinct values.

The continuum of values can be viewed as organized along two bipolar dimensions

shown in the figure: (1) Self-enhancement values (power, achievement) that encourage and

legitimize pursuit of one’s own interests oppose self-transcendence values (universalism,

benevolence) that emphasize concern for the welfare of others. (2) Openness values (self-

direction, stimulation) that welcome change and encourage pursuit of new ideas and

experience oppose conservation values (security, tradition, conformity) that emphasize

maintaining the status quo and avoiding threat. Hedonism values share elements of openness

and self-enhancement.2

Figure 1 about here

2
By rotating the axes of the two dimensional space, the continuum of values can be conceptualized as
organized on alternative pairs of bipolar dimensions. For example, a horizontal axis from the left to the right
of Figure 1 corresponds to a social- vs. self-focused dimension of values, and a vertical axis from the top to the
bottom of the figure corresponds to a protection vs. growth dimension (cf. Fontaine, et al. 2008; Schwartz,
2006a).
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Measuring Basic Individual Values. Based on this conception of values, I developed

three instruments to measure individual differences in value priorities (Schwartz, 1992, 2003,

2006a). The first was the Schwartz Value Survey that includes 56 or 57 value items (SVS:

Schwartz, 1992; Schwartz & Boehnke, 2004). Each abstract item (e.g., humility, creativity,

social order, pleasure, social justice) is followed in parenthesis by a phrase that helps to specify

its meaning. Respondents rate the importance of each “as a guiding principle in MY life.”

Several items index each value. For example, ‘authority’, ‘social power’, ‘wealth’, and

‘preserving my public image’ index power values. Multidimensional scaling analyses (MDS)

within each of 70 countries established that 46 of the 57 items have reasonably equivalent

meanings across countries (Schwartz, 1992, 2006a; cf. Fontaine, et al. 2008). The score for

the importance of each value is the average rating given to the items that were designated a

priori as markers of the value and that demonstrated cross-cultural equivalence of meaning.

The other instruments, the 40-item and 21-item Portrait Values Questionnaires (PVQ),

include short verbal portraits of different people gender-matched to the respondent. Each

portrait describes a person’s goals, aspirations, or wishes that point implicitly to the

importance of a value. For example, “Thinking up new ideas and being creative is important to

him. He likes to do things in his own original way” describes a person for whom self-direction

values are important. “It is important to her to be rich. She wants to have a lot of money and

expensive things” describes a person who cherishes power values. For each portrait,

respondents answer: “How much like you is this person?” We infer respondents’ own values

from their self-reported similarity to people described implicitly in terms of particular values.

All these value items have demonstrated near-equivalence of meaning across cultures in

analyses using multi-dimensional scaling (Schwartz, 2006a,b).

Empirical Evidence for Basic Individual Values. Separate MDS analyses in each of

over 250 samples from representative national samples in 26 countries and samples of

teachers, students, adolescents, managers, or others in 75 countries have examined the

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structure of value relations using the different methods. Figure 2 presents an MDS analysis of

SVS items based on averaging the individual-level correlation matrixes within 68 countries

(Schwartz, 1992, 2006a; cf. Fontaine et al. 2008). A point represents each value item such that

the more positive the correlation between any pair of value items the closer they are in the space

and the less positive their correlation the more distant. The marker items for each value are in

bold. Comparison of Figure 2 with Figure 1 shows that the locations of specific items in

regions of basic values in this figure completely support both the content of each value and the

circular structure of relations among them.

Analyses in single samples typically show small deviations such as intermixing of items

from adjacent values and misplacement of a few value items to nearby regions. Items located

in their postulated region in at least 75% of samples or in that region and adjacent regions in at

least 90% of samples are considered to have reasonably equivalent meanings for individuals

across cultures. Analyses of samples using the 40-item and 21-item PVQ also support the

motivationally distinct content of the ten values and the relations of conflict and compatibility

among them (Schwartz, 2006a,b). Confirmatory factor analyses of data using all three

methods lend further support to the individual-level values and their structure (Davidov,

Schmidt, & Schwartz, 2008; Perrinjaquet, et al., 2007; Schwartz & Boehnke, 2004).

Evidence from several analyses suggests that the ten basic individual values do indeed

cover the full range of broad, near-universal values. Collaborators from different countries

added items whose content they thought might be missing in the SVS. These items emerged in

the MDS analyses in regions appropriate to their meanings (e.g., chastity in conformity)

(Schwartz, 1994a). Thus, they identified no new, potentially universal values. Judges

successfully classified over 93% of more than 1000 value items from 42 different scales into

the ten basic values. The remaining items measured work values rather than basic values (De

Clercq, Fontaine, & Anseel, 2008). Finally, the absence of any major motivationally distinct

types of values would produce empty regions in the MDS space. This occurs, for example, if
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we drop the items representing two adjacent values. However, empty regions do not appear in

analyses that include items to measure all ten values. The absence of empty regions in these

analyses implies that no broad values are missing (Schwartz, 2008b).

The basic individual values identified here reflect the range of individual goals people

pursue. The structure of relations among individual values reflects the compatible and

conflicting consequences individuals experience when pursuing their values. As aspects of

personality, these values are appropriate for studying individuals. They are also appropriate for

comparing the average values of the members of different groups. Leung and Bond (2004) call

such group averages on individual level constructs “citizen scores.”

Cultural Value Orientations

I turn next to the culture or society level. At this level, we seek a set of value

constructs that reflect the nature of societies or other large, solidary groups (e.g., ethnic

groups). These value dimensions should be appropriate for identifying societal differences in

preferred ways of attaining key societal goals. Early sociological theorists identified these

goals as maintaining social order, containing social conflict, encouraging productivity and

innovation, and regulating social change (Comte, 1896; Durkheim, 1897; Weber, 1922). These

are basic requirements of societal functioning that differ from the basic requirements of

individual functioning. Therefore, the dimensions appropriate for comparing the values of

societal culture and for comparing the values of individuals also differ.

The prevailing value emphases in a society may be the most central feature of culture

(Hofstede, 1980; Inglehart, 1997; Schwartz, 1999; Weber, 1958; Williams, 1958). These

emphases are conceptions of what is good and desirable, cultural ideals. The normative value

emphases find expression in the complex of beliefs, practices, symbols, and specific norms and

personal values prevalent in a society. These are the manifestations of the underlying culture.

The cultural value emphases help shape these manifestations and give them a degree of

coherence. Culture itself is a latent variable measurable only through its manifestations.
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In this view, culture is external to the individual; it is not a psychological variable. It is

an aspect of the context in which people live. Hofstede’s (1980) metaphor of culture as the

“programming of the mind” seems to locate culture itself in the minds of individuals, making it

a psychological construct. Though Hofstede does not endorse this view, it is common among

many cultural and cross-cultural psychologists (e.g., Chiu, et al., in press; Kitayama & Cohen,

2007), especially those for whom culture is primarily about the self (e.g., Markus & Kitayama,

1991). The value orientations that are the central aspect of societal culture in my theory

influence the minds of individual people but are not located in the mind. To rephrase

Hofstede’s metaphor, culture is the ‘programmer’ of the mind, not its programming. By virtue

of living in particular social systems, individuals experience the normative value emphases of

their society’s culture as a press to which they are exposed, a press that influences their

attitudes, beliefs, behavior, and thought (Berger & Luckman, 1966).

The press of culture takes many forms. In psychological terms, the press refers to the

primes that individuals encounter more or less frequently in their daily life (e.g., primes that

may draw attention more to the individual or the group, to the material or the spiritual). The

press also takes the form of language patterns (e.g., pronoun usage that may emphasize the

centrality of self versus other; Kashima & Kashima, 1998). The cultural press may also be

conceptualized as a set of environmental affordances (Norman, 1988), the possibilities for

action more or less available in a particular society (e.g., opportunities to express solidarity

with or independence from others). In sociological terms, this press refers to the expectations

and constraints encountered more or less frequently when enacting roles in societal institutions

(e.g., in schools—encouragement of or constraints against questioning, in courts of law—

expectations to win the case or to seek the truth). The frequency of particular primes,

expectations, constraints, affordances, and taken-for-granted practices in a society express the

underlying normative value emphases that are the heart of the culture.
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This view of culture contrasts with views of culture as a psychological variable. These

views see culture as beliefs, values, behaviors, and/or styles of thinking that the individual

members of a society or other cultural group share to a substantial degree. I view these as

significant psychological consequences of culture. In order to study the impacts of culture on

them, however, it is necessary to distinguish them from the culture itself—the normative value

emphases in the society that affect them. These emphases shape the content and distribution of

individual beliefs, actions, goals, and styles of thinking through the press and expectations to

which people are exposed. A strong cultural value emphasis on preserving hierarchical

relations and traditional in-group solidarity in Thailand (Schwartz, 2004), for example, induces

widespread conformity and self-effacing behavior.

The ways the social institutions in a society are organized express the underlying

cultural value emphases. For example, competitive economic systems, confrontational legal

systems, and achievement oriented child-rearing all express a cultural value emphasis on

success, ambition, and self-assertion (e.g., in the USA). These social institutions continually

expose the individuals living in the society to primes, affordances, and expectations consistent

with the underlying cultural values. Most individuals develop, adopt, and/or internalize modes

of thinking, behaviors, attitudes, and personal value priorities that enable them to function

effectively and feel comfortable in the societal contexts to which they are exposed. In these

ways, they absorb the impact of culture.

Seven Value Orientations. All societies confront and must cope with basic problems in

regulating human activity in order to survive ((Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, 1961; Parsons, 1951).

These and other sources (Comte, 1896; Durkheim, 1897; Weber, 1922) point to three societal

problems as most critical: (1) defining the boundaries between the person and the group and

the optimal relations between them; (2) ensuring coordination among people to produce goods

and services in ways that preserve the social fabric; (3) regulating the utilization of human and

natural resources. Cultural value emphases reflect and justify preferred societal responses to
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these problems. I derived a set of dimensions for comparing cultures by considering societal

values that might underlie alternative societal responses to these problems (Schwartz, 1994b,

1999, 2008a). These cultural dimensions are based on a priori theorizing, unlike the Hofstede

(1980) and Inglehart and Baker (2000) dimensions.

The cultural value orientations that form the poles of my conceptual dimensions are

ideal-types; the cultures of actual societies are arrayed along the dimensions. These

orientations are normative responses; they prescribe how institutions should function and how

people should behave in order best to deal with the key problems societies face.

Autonomy vs. Embeddedness: The problem of defining the optimal relations and boundaries

between the person and the group translates into the question: To what extent should people

be treated as autonomous versus as embedded in their groups? ‘Autonomy’ cultures treat

people as autonomous, bounded entities. They encourage people to cultivate and express their

own preferences, feelings, ideas, and abilities, and to find meaning in their own uniqueness.

There are two types of autonomy: Intellectual autonomy encourages individuals to pursue

their own ideas and intellectual directions independently. Affective autonomy encourages

individuals to pursue arousing, affectively positive personal experience.

‘Embeddedness’ cultures treat people as entities embedded in the collectivity. Meaning in life is

expected to come largely through in-group social relationships, through identifying with the

group, participating in its shared way of life, and striving toward its shared goals. Embedded

cultures emphasize maintaining the status quo and restraining actions that might disrupt in-

group solidarity or the traditional order. 3

Egalitarianism vs. Hierarchy: The problem of ensuring coordination among people to

produce goods and services in ways that preserve the social fabric translates into the question:

How can human interdependencies be managed in a way that elicits coordinated, productive

3
This dimension shares some elements with the individualism-collectivism construct. Schwartz (2004)
discusses substantial conceptual differences between these two dimensions as well as between the other
Hofstede and Schwartz dimensions and presents differences between them in the ordering of national cultures.
 11

activity rather than disruptive behavior or withholding of effort? ‘Egalitarian’ cultures urge

people to recognize one another as moral equals who share basic interests as human beings.

They socialize people to internalize a commitment to cooperate, to feel concern for the

welfare of all, and to act voluntarily to benefit others. ‘Hierarchy’ cultures rely on hierarchical

systems of ascribed roles to insure responsible, productive behavior. They define the unequal

distribution of power, roles, and resources as legitimate and even desirable. People are

socialized to take a hierarchical distribution of roles for granted.

Harmony vs. Mastery: The problem of regulating the utilization of human and natural

resources translates into the question: To what extent should individuals and groups control

and change their social and natural environment vs. leaving it undisturbed and unchanged?

Harmony cultures emphasize fitting into the social and natural world, accepting, preserving,

and appreciating the way things are. Harmony cultures discourage efforts to bring about

change and encourage maintaining smooth relations and avoiding conflict. Mastery cultures

encourage active self-assertion by individuals or groups in order to master, direct, and change

the natural and social environment and thereby to attain group or personal goals. They

emphasize the desirability of active, pragmatic problem-solving that can produce ‘progress’.

In sum, the theory specifies three bipolar, conceptual dimensions of culture that represent

alternative resolutions to each of three problems that confront all societies: autonomy versus

embeddedness, egalitarianism versus hierarchy, and harmony versus mastery (see Figure

3). A societal emphasis on the cultural orientation at one pole of a dimension typically

accompanies a de-emphasis on the polar type with which it tends to conflict. For example,

Russian culture tends to emphasizes hierarchy but not the opposing

orientation of egalitarianism. Israeli culture tends to emphasize mastery and to give little

emphasis to harmony. The cultures of Iran and China emphasize hierarchy and embeddedness

but not egalitarianism and intellectual autonomy (Schwartz, 2008a).

Figure 3 about here

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The cultural value orientations are also interrelated based on compatibility among their

basic assumptions. For example, embeddedness and hierarchy share the assumption that a

person’s roles in and obligations to collectivities are more important than her unique ideas and

aspirations: Both are high in Nepal. Egalitarianism and intellectual autonomy share the

assumption that people can and should take individual responsibility for their actions and make

decisions based on their own understanding of situations: Both are high in Scandinavia.

Harmony and embeddedness share the assumption that avoiding dramatic change is desirable:

Both are high in Ethiopia. Mastery shares with hierarchy the assumption that inequality in the

distribution of resources is legitimate, and with affective autonomy the assumption that self-

assertion should be encouraged. The combination of high mastery and hierarchy, as found in

Confucian cultures, encourages group assertiveness. The combination of high mastery and

affective autonomy, as found Anglo countries, encourages individual assertiveness.

The shared and opposing assumptions inherent in cultural values yield a coherent circular

structure of relations among them. This structure reflects the cultural orientations that are

compatible (adjacent in the circle) or incompatible (distant around the circle). It points to the

cultural profiles on the seven value orientations that are likely to be found (relatively high

emphases on adjacent values and low on opposing values) and the profiles that are unlikely to

be found (relatively high emphases on opposing values).

As Figure 3 shows, the cultural value dimensions are not orthogonal. Cultural preferences

for dealing with one problem are not independent of preferences for dealing with other

problems. For example, a preference for autonomy in individual/group relations is inconsistent

with a preference for hierarchy as the way to manage human interdependence. Although not

opposites, these orientations offer conflicting prescriptions for how to regulate human

behavior. Indeed, in none of the 77 cultural groups I studied do emphases on autonomy and on

hierarchy appear together (Schwartz, 2008a). One could, of course, constrain orthogonal

dimensions in factor analysis at the cultural level, as Hofstede (1980), House, et al. (2004),
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and Inglehart and Baker (2000) do. But that would hide the interdependence of cultural

elements and obscure the pull toward coherence in culture portrayed in Figure 3.

Measuring and Validating the Cultural Value Orientations. For examining cultural

differences, it is important to use items that have similar meanings across cultures. As noted

above, 46 SVS value items demonstrated reasonable cross-cultural equivalence in the within-

sample analyses. These items, therefore, constituted the item pool for measuring the seven

cultural value orientations. As a priori markers for each cultural orientation, I chose the items

whose content expressed the substance of that orientation. Three to eight items (shown in

Figure 4 below) served as markers for each orientation.

The assessment of the structure of values at the culture level started with the same

individual responses to the SVS as the individual level analyses. However, the input to the

MDS analysis at the culture level was the mean importance rating of each value in each

sample. Thus the unit of analysis at the culture level was the sample (societal group), not the

individual person. The individual-level structure is based on individual differences in value

priorities within groups, that is, individual-level variance. This individual variance does not enter

the culture-level analysis because the data analyzed are group means. The culture-level structure

is derived exclusively from variance between groups. Thus, individual-level differences do not

affect the culture-level. The two levels are statistically independent, even though the same

responses are analyzed to measure both sets of value constructs (Dansereau, Alutto &

Yammarino, 1984).

How can group means, aggregated from individual data, reflect the culture external to

individuals rather than psychological characteristics of individuals?4 Cultural value orientations

find specific expression in the social institutions of a society, in the expectations, primes,

affordances, and constraints that encourage actions consistent with the orientations. Thus, the

4
Liska (1990) discusses how group means, aggregated from individual variables, are a product of the dynamics
of social interaction and the organization of social units just as such structural variables as communication
networks or such global products as laws are. As such, they are properties of societies, not properties of persons.
 14

cultural value orientations help to shape the contingencies to which people adapt in their daily

lives. They help to determine the value preferences that are considered more or less legitimate

in common social contexts, that are encouraged or discouraged. The cultural press affects all

members of a society, so societal members share many value-relevant experiences.

Of course, every individual is exposed to the cultural press in a unique way, depending

upon her location in society. Moreover, each individual has unique experiences and a unique

genetic makeup and personality that give rise to individual differences in personal values

within societies. Critically, however, these individual differences have no effect on the average

importance attributed to each value item.

The average importance reflects the impact of exposure to the same culture. Hence,

individual responses, averaged across groups exposed to the same culture, can point to the

latent cultural value orientations in a society. These average societal values emerge out of

ongoing negotiations among persons and institutions over desirable goals, negotiations that

produce a cultural context of values embedded in societal institutions. Culture, in this sense,

does not depend upon the degree of consensus regarding values among group members.

The latest assessment of the validity of the culture-level theory employs data gathered

from 233 samples from 72 countries during 1988-2005. These include 88 samples of

schoolteachers, 132 samples of college students, and 16 representative national samples (total

N=55,022). For each sample, we computed the mean rating of each value item. We then

correlated item means across samples, thereby treating the sample as the unit of analysis. The

correlations reflect the way values covary at the sample (country) level, not the individual

level. They are statistically independent of the correlations across individuals within any

sample. A confirmatory multidimensional scaling analysis (Borg & Groenen, 2005; Guttman,

1968) of the correlations between the sample means assesses whether the data support the

seven cultural orientations and the relations among them.

The 2-dimensional projection in Figure 4 portrays the pattern of intercorrelations among

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values, based on the sample means. The theoretical model implies a circular structure in which

each orientation is close to (correlates positively with) those with which it is compatible and

distant from (correlates negatively with) those with which it conflicts. Confirmation that the

orientations are discriminated requires finding bounded regions of marker items in the spatial

projection that reflect the content of each orientation. Confirmation of the theorized structure

of relations among the orientations requires finding that the bounded regions of the

orientations form an ordered circle that matches the theorized order.

Figure 4 about here

Comparing Figure 4 with Figure 3 reveals that the observed content and structure of

cultural value orientations fully support the theorized content and structure. This analysis clearly

discriminates the seven orientations: The value items selected a priori to represent each value

orientation are located within a unique wedge-shaped region of the space. The mean importance

rating of these value items can therefore be used as the score for the cultural orientation they

represent.5 Equally important, the regions representing each orientation form the integrated

cultural system postulated by the theory: They emanate from the center of the circle and follow

the expected order around the circle. Three vectors that connect the opposing orientations in

the space identify the three theorized, conceptual dimensions of culture.

Comparing Empirical Structures and Functions of Value Items at the Two Levels

I have distinguished two theories because the basic individual values that guide

individual choices serve different purposes and derive from different sources than the

cultural value orientations that guide societal responses to the fundamental problems

societies confront. Basic values are an aspect of the personality system of individuals;

cultural value orientations are an aspect of the cultural system of societies. The structure of

relations that emerges among individuals' responses to value items reflects the logic of

functioning as individual, psychological beings. Functional requirements that derive from

5
For methods used to control biases in use of the response scale, see Schwartz (1999).
 16

our biological makeup and from the demands of social interaction determine the

organization of value items into the set of (plus or minus) ten individual-level values. The

structure of relations that emerges among societal responses to value items (i.e., sample

means) reflects the logic of societal functioning in regulating human behavior.

Because the structural analyses at the two levels are statistically independent, they

might yield different arrays of value items relative to one another—different structures. In fact,

comparing the individual-level value structure in Figure 2 with the culture-level structure in

Figure 4 reveals considerable overlap in the way the value items are arrayed. To see the overlap

clearly, rotate the Figure 2 projection about 100 degrees clockwise.6

There are two major reasons to expect some similarity between the dimensions at the

two levels (Schwartz, 1994b). First, as noted above, cultural orientations help to shape the

reinforcement contingencies to which individuals in a society are exposed in their daily life.

This influences both the content of individual value socialization and the opportunities for and

constraints against successfully pursuing particular values. Second, the psychological

requirements of human nature place constraints on the normative demands that cultural

orientations can make if they are to be effective. The cultural options for dealing with

fundamental societal problems must be compatible with what individuals are capable of accepting

and doing. It is therefore not surprising that many value items function similarly at the individual

and the culture levels.

Although the arrays of value items in the two-dimensional spaces of Figures 2 and 4

overlap in part, theoretical considerations dictate partitioning the arrays into different sets of

regions. I partition the individual-level space into regions that reflect the functions of values as an

aspect of personality and the society-level space into regions that reflect the functions of values as

an aspect of culture. This enables us to give theoretical interpretations of each array that reflect

6
Fischer et al. (submitted) compared the two-dimensional arrays of value items at the two levels statistically,
using 55 SVS items. They found considerable similarity, but they also found that many items have different
locations in the two arrays.
 17

the dynamic forces that organize values at the appropriate level. As illustrated next, it also helps

to explain differences in the associations among value items at the two levels. I note only items

that index the same basic individual value but index cultural orientations that are not even

adjacent in the culture-level structure. In the spatial arrays at both levels, these values have

associations consistent with their standard dictionary definitions. However, different aspects of

these definitions are prominent at each level. The prominence of one aspect or another reflects the

different functions of the values as individual goals or as cultural prescriptions.

‘Humble (modest, self-effacing)’ is a tradition item in the individual-level space, closest to

‘self-discipline’ and other conformity items and distant from ‘social power’, ‘wealth’ and

‘authority’. As an individual, psychological goal, humility calls for submission and avoidance of

assertiveness. At the culture level, ‘humble’ is a hierarchy item close to ‘social power’, ‘wealth’

and ‘authority’. As a cultural prescription, encouraging people to show humility supports the use

of hierarchical roles to regulate human interdependence. Effective hierarchies require people to

exercise authority over those below them but also to show humility toward those above them.

‘Forgiving (willing to pardon others)’ is a benevolence item at the individual level, closest

to ‘helpful’ and ‘honest’. Pursuing the individual goal of forgiving entails showing concern for

others, accepting rather than blaming them. At the cultural level, forgiving is an embeddedness

item, closest to ‘respect for tradition’, ‘obedient’, and ‘moderate’. As a cultural prescription,

forgiving contributes to preserving group solidarity and avoiding conflict.

‘Wisdom (a mature understanding of life)’ is a universalism item at the individual level,

close to ‘broadminded’ and ‘creativity’ and distant from ‘respect for tradition,’ ‘devout’, and

‘obedient’. This implies that wisdom, as an individual, psychological goal, is attained through

intellectual openness, tolerance for differences, and freedom of expression. At the culture level,

wisdom is an embeddedness item, closest to ‘devout’ and distant from ‘broadminded’ and

‘creativity’. As a cultural prescription, an emphasis on wisdom apparently encourages reliance on

 18

the storehouse of cultural knowledge and group traditions rather than on one’s autonomous

thought as the road to understanding life.

‘Accepting my portion in life (submitting to life's circumstances)’ is a tradition item at the

individual level, close to ‘moderate’, ‘devout’, and ‘obedient’ and distant from the universalism

items concerned with the environment and world peace. As an individual, psychological goal,

‘accepting my portion in life’ signifies self-restraint and submission to external expectations. At

the culture level, this is a harmony item, close to ‘world at peace’ and to the three items that

express environmental concern and distant from the mastery items. These associations suggest

that the cultural prescription to accept one’s portion is part of a broader expectation that

humankind refrain from assertively changing the natural and social environment.

These examples illustrate how the functions of value items differ depending on whether

the associations among them express the relations of compatibility among individual motivations

or among preferred cultural responses to societal problems. Other interesting variations in

associations among value items include the splitting of the five individual-level self-direction

items into one subset that goes with intellectual autonomy and another subset that goes with

mastery at the culture level. Also noteworthy is that the five individual-level benevolence items

split between cultural egalitarianism and embeddedness and the eight individual-level

universalism items redistribute into five different culture-level orientations. An explication of

what leads to each of these variations is beyond the scope of this chapter. The critical point is

that the locations of items at both levels make sense in terms of the theories at each level. The

values retain the same general meaning at both levels, but the aspect of their meaning that is

prominent reflects the different functions they fulfill as expressions of individual, psychological

goals or as societal, institutional preferences.

Causes of Variation in Basic Individual Values and in Cultural Value Orientations

 19

The causes that account for variation in basic values across individuals and those that

account for cultural variation across societies differ in ways that reflect the distinct nature of

personal values and of societal culture.

Basic Individual Values. Most work on personal values traces individual differences to

role-linked learning, socialization, and internalization. Schwartz (2006) summarizes many

findings and discusses mechanisms that account for them. For example, gender, education,

age, and occupation have systematic effects on value priorities. Women attribute more

importance to self-transcendence values and men to openness and self-enhancement values.

Openness values are more important among those with more education and conservation

values are less important. Effects of age on values reverse the pattern for education and are

stronger. Relations of value priorities to occupation reflect reciprocal causality. For example,

valuing power promotes self-selection into business (Gendel et al., 2005), and occupations

that provide opportunities for self-direction promote openness values (Knafo & Sagiv, 2004).

For most values, individuals adapt their value priorities by increasing the importance of

values they can attain and decreasing the importance of those whose attainment is blocked

(Schwartz & Bardi, 1997). The reverse holds, however, for security values and, under some

conditions, for power values. Living in a threatening environment leads to greater valuing of

order, safety, and control. Thus, the importance of the basic individual values reflects the

dynamics of individual learning and adjustment to the environment. Preliminary research on

values among twins and research on genetic bases of behavior closely tied to values (e.g.,

altruism) suggest that individual genetic characteristics may also affect value priorities (Knafo,

2006; Schwartz, in press b).

As noted in the discussion of the ways cultural value orientations manifest themselves

in everyday experience, prevailing cultural orientations in societies are a determinant of mean

individual values though not of individual differences in values. To illustrate this source of

individual values, I use scores for cultural orientations measured with the SVS in samples of
 20

teachers and students and scores for individual values measured with the PVQ in separate

representative national samples.

Affective autonomy should promote hedonism because it encourages individuals to

pursue affectively positive experience for themselves. In contrast, cultural embeddedness

should discourage hedonism because it opposes self-serving behavior that might disrupt the in-

group. Together, the two cultural orientations accounted for 56% of the cross-national

variance in mean levels of hedonism values across 23 countries. Using cultural orientations

derived from student samples to predict hedonism in teacher samples, the two cultural

orientations accounted for 52% of the variance in hedonism across 53 countries. Similar

analyses assessed predicted positive effects of cultural mastery and negative effects of

harmony on achievement values. Mastery encourages active self-assertion in order to attain

group or personal goals, whereas harmony encourages accepting things as they are. These two

cultural orientations accounted for 20% of the variance in individual achievement values

across 23 countries and 50% across 53 countries.

Cultural Value Orientations. Causes of differences in the cultural orientations reflect

the historical experiences and social structural, demographic, and ecological characteristics of

societies. A study of the origins of national differences in the embeddedness orientation, for

example, reveals that embeddedness is higher in countries historically rooted in Islam, with a

relatively short history of sovereign control over their territory, and with

greater ethnic heterogeneity (Schwartz, in press a). Another study reveals that

egalitarianism is higher in countries historically rooted in Western

Christianity, that participated in a greater number of wars during the 19 th

century (a period of state formation), and with little ethnic, religious, or

linguistic heterogeneity (Siegel, Licht, & Schwartz, 2008). Both studies

spell out probable unidirectional, causal impacts of these antecedent

variables on cultural orientations.

 21

The importance of culture contact or diffusion as a cause of cultural orientations is

attested by numerous studies using different dimensions of culture (e.g., Hofstede, 1980;

Inglehart & Baker, 2000; Schwartz, 1999, 2004). All these studies identify world regions of

culturally similar countries that are geographically close or share colonial experiences.

Causal relations between culture and social structure have received the most attention.

Most theorists reason that causality between these variables is reciprocal. Schwartz (2006b,

2007a,b, 2008) provides detailed analyses of causal relations between the cultural dimensions

presented here and aspects of the economic and political systems of countries. For example,

the market systems of industrialized capitalist countries are more competitive in countries high

in cultural mastery and low in harmony (Schwartz, 2007b). And cultural egalitarianism and

autonomy relate positively to the level of democracy in countries (Schwartz, 2007a).

Although no work has yet connected natural resources and technology to the cultural

dimensions presented here, many studies have discussed links to other aspects of culture. For

example, Hofstede (2001) viewed climate as an influence on both individualism and power

distance, operating through its effect on the development of technology and individual

initiative to enable survival in cold climates. Diamond (1997) explicated how the availability

thousands of years ago of plants and animals that could be domesticated had implications for

the types of culture that emerged in different world regions.

The critical point made clear by comparing causes of cultural value orientations and of

individual values is that the former are variables on which societies differ whereas the latter are

variables on which individuals differ. Just as these causes differ, so the questions that the two

types of values are suited to address also differ.

Different Questions that Cultural Orientations and Individual Values Can Address

Table 1 specifies the types of questions that cultural value orientations and basic individual

values are suited to study. The questions addressed by one cannot be addressed by the other.
 22

To clarify further, I provide specific examples of each type of question. These examples come

from completed studies.

Table 1 about here

Cultural Value Orientations

Questions of types 1, 2, 3, and 5 are ‘monolevel’ questions. That is, all of the variables

involved are measured at the societal level. Question 4 crosses levels. As noted in the footnote

to the table, ‘societal’ refers to any group whose culture is measured.

(1) Studies of how societal culture reciprocally influences country wealth, average family size,

or level of democracy exemplify this type of question. For example, countries whose cultures

emphasize autonomy as compared with embeddedness are richer, have smaller families, and

have more democratic regimes (Schwartz, 2007a). Asking how colonialism or geographic

location of a society may causally influence culture also exemplifies this type of question. For

example, British colonial rule apparently contributed to a cultural emphasis on mastery at the

expense of harmony (Licht, Goldschmidt, & Schwartz, 2007).

(2) Studying relations between the culture of a country and its welfare net, military actions, or

gender equality exemplifies this type of question. For example, unemployment benefits are

higher where cultural autonomy is high and embeddedness low, military responses to foreign

crises are more frequent where mastery is high and harmony low, and the percent of women

ministers is greater where egalitarianism is high and hierarchy low (Schwartz, 2008).

(3) Asking whether the effects of one societal characteristic on another flow through its

influence on culture exemplifies this type of question. For example, analyses in Schwartz

(2007a) suggest that, over time, greater country wealth promotes democracy only to the

extent that it increases cultural autonomy vs. embeddedness and egalitarianism vs. hierarchy.

(4) Studies that ask whether associations between characteristics of individuals within a

society (e.g., age, attitudes) depend upon the culture of the society exemplify this question.

For example, societal culture may moderate relations of age with political preferences or of
 23

income with self-esteem. Data from 22 countries in the European Social Survey reveal, for

example, that the positive correlation between individuals’ education and their trust in other

people is substantially stronger the more egalitarian and the less hierarchical a country’s

culture. This type of question crosses levels of analysis; it uses cultural variables to understand

variation in the associations between individual characteristics.

(5) Asking how the culture of a society relates to rates of conforming behavior or to the

distribution of income in the society exemplifies this type of question. These are not cross-

level questions because rates and distributions of individual variables in a society are

characteristics of groups aggregated across individuals. An example of such research found

that, across 20 countries, the rate of helping strangers was lower where the culture emphasizes

embeddedness (Knafo, Schwartz, & Levine, in press).

Much cross-cultural psychology research that compares countries asks questions of

type (5). Simple statements about country differences are not very informative, however,

because country is not an explanatory variable. Substituting national cultural orientation scores

for the names of countries makes it possible to develop hypotheses and explanations that use

the mechanisms that link the cultural press to individual behavior and attitudes. In order to test

these hypotheses and reject alternative explanations, it is necessary to study many (say, at least

10) countries that can be ordered on the cultural orientations. With the two to four countries

common in many studies, all attempts to explain country differences are inevitably weak

because these countries are likely to differ in similar ways on many variables.

Basic Individual Values

The first four basic values questions in Table 1 are monolevel questions. They concern

relations among individual difference variables. Question 5 crosses levels.

(1) Studies of how individuals’ values relate to their age, gender, education, occupation,

income, or health exemplify this type of question. Examples were mentioned in the section on

causes of variation in individual values. This type of question also includes the investigation of
 24

differences between group members in value priorities—differences between occupational

groups, ethnic groups, religious groups, etc. Studies of mean differences in the values of

citizens of different countries fall into this category. These studies use individuals, classified by

country, as the unit of analysis in analyses of variance. Because these are comparisons of

individuals, the ten basic values should be used, not the seven cultural orientations. What is

compared are average ‘citizen scores’ (Leung & Bond, 2004), not cultures. Comparing means

can be informative if agreement on the basic values is reasonably high within countries.

A related topic concerns the degree of consensus in groups regarding the importance of

values. Although consensus is a group characteristic, it is appropriate to use basic individual

values because the question is how much individuals agree about their values. For example,

Schwartz and Sagie (2000) found that overall consensus on the ten values was greater in

countries higher in socio-economic development and, controlling for development, lower in

more democratic countries.

(2) Asking how individuals’ value priorities relate to prejudice, creativity, or religious behavior

exemplify this type of question. Such studies may treat values as causes, as consequences, or

as interdependent, correlated variables. Consider an example of each of the three approaches:

Priming universalism values in an experiment increased environmental behavior (Verplanken &

Holland, 2002). Priming secure attachment increased the importance of universalism and

benevolence values (Mikulincer et al., 2003). In the USA and Israel, self-direction values

correlated positively and conformity values negatively with identification with one’s country

(Roccas et al., in press). If researchers ask whether the associations of values with other

individual-level variables vary across societies, this becomes a subtype of the fourth culture-

level question.

(3) Asking whether the effects of one individual characteristic on another flow through basic

values exemplifies this type of question. For example, Caprara et al. (2006) asked whether

effects of the Big 5 personality traits on voting were mediated by individuals’ values. They
 25

found that individual differences in universalism, security, conformity, and tradition values fully

mediated both trait and demographic effects on voting in Italy.

(4) Studies that ask whether associations among individual characteristics (e.g., attitudes,

beliefs, behaviors, emotions, demographics) depend upon individuals’ values exemplify this

question. For example, Roccas, Horenczyk, and Schwartz (2000) examined whether the

pressure to assimilate that immigrants perceive correlated with their well-being and whether

values mediated this association. They found a negative correlation only among those who

value conformity highly and are therefore presumably vulnerable to social pressure.

(5) Studies that ask whether individual differences in value priorities can explain group (e.g.,

national) differences in attitudes or behavior exemplify this question. For example, do

individuals’ self-direction and conformity values explain national differences in preferences for

procedural justice? Such studies are sometimes described as attempts to ‘unpackage’ culture.

They seek to identify an individual-level mechanism (value priorities) that explains the mean

differences between countries in an individual behavior or attitude. However, what such

studies unpackage are country rather than culture effects. Such analyses do not examine the

cultural bases of country differences in individual values. Truly to unpackage culture, one

needs to explain why mean differences between countries in particular individual values lead to

mean differences in the attitude or behavior and to identify the country differences in culture

that lead to country differences in the means of these particular individual values. I know of

no such studies, so I suggest a hypothetical example.

Assume that conformity behavior is greater in Southeast Asian than in West European

countries. An explanation of this difference that unpackages culture might run as follows: (a)

Cultural embeddedness is higher and cultural autonomy lower in Southeast Asia than in West

Europe. (b) The press of these cultural orientations provides daily contingencies that lead to

mean differences between countries in individual conformity and self-direction values. (c)
 26

Higher conformity and lower self-direction values in Southeast Asia than in West Europe lead

to greater conformity behavior in the former.

If this explanation is correct: (a) Countries’ embeddedness and autonomy scores will

predict their mean conformity behavior and their mean self-direction and conformity values.

(b) Individuals’ self-direction and conformity values will predict their conformity behavior. (c)

Controlling for individuals’ self-direction and conformity values, countries’ culture scores will

no longer predict national differences in mean conformity behavior. Testing such an

explanation requires data from, say, 100 people in each of 10 countries from each region.

Including potentially relevant control variables in both the country level analysis (e.g., mean

family size) and the individual-level analysis (e.g., gender) would increase confidence in the

hypothesized causal sequence.

Multi-level Analyses with Cultural Orientations and Basic Individual Values

This final section demonstrates how individual values and cultural value orientations

can together to explain individual differences in attitudes and behaviour both within and across

countries. The individual-level data are from representative national samples in the European

Social Survey of 2003-2004 (ESS) who responded to the PVQ. The cultural orientation

scores are from separate teacher and student samples who responded to the SVS in the same

countries. Multi-level analyses employing hierarchical linear modeling (HLM5: Bryk and

Raudenbush, 2002) computed regressions both within and across countries.

To enrich the analyses, I included a wide variety of potentially relevant predictors at

both the individual and national levels. At the individual level these were age, gender, years of

education, household income, marital status, religiosity, foreign born, ever unemployed three

or more months, living in a large city, and the individual value priorities expected to be

relevant. At the national level they include GDP per capita, the Human Development Index,

life expectancy at birth, proportion of population below age 15, proportion above age 64,

percent living in big cities (all in 1999), percent annual GDP growth 1990-99, average annual
 27

inflation rate 1990-99, and scores on Hofstede’s individualism and both Inglehart cultural

dimensions plus the cultural value orientations expected to be relevant.

Attitudes to Immigration

First, consider the controversial issue of attitudes toward immigration. Three ESS

items measured readiness to accept ‘other’ immigrants—those of a different race/ethnic group

and from poorer European and non-European countries. A summary index of these items

revealed great variation in levels of acceptance across 15 West European countries. Still,

country differences accounted for only 12% of the variance in acceptance, whereas differences

between individuals within countries accounted for 88%. It is generally the case that even

when there is significant variation across countries on an attitude or behavior, most of the

variation is at the individual level. Hence, to understand the sources of behaviors and attitudes

across cultures, it is important to study both the individual and country levels simultaneously.

The first column of Table 2 presents the findings.

Individuals were more willing to accept ‘other’ immigrants into their country to the

extent that they attributed higher priority to universalism values, lower priority to security and

conformity values, were more educated and older, and were foreign-born. Universalism values

were the strongest predictor, followed by education and security values. Thus, the trade-off

between giving high priority to promoting the welfare of all others (universalism values) and

avoiding personal, national, and interpersonal threat (security and conformity values)

influences readiness to accept ‘other’ immigrants, over and above an individual’s socio-

demographic characteristics.

Table 2 about here

Although many national characteristics correlated with country differences in

acceptance of immigrants, only three predicted acceptance in the country-level regression.

Cultural egalitarianism predicted most strongly, followed by the Human Development Index

(HDI) and then by the percent living in big cities. Together, these three explained 62% of the
 28

variation between countries. The role of egalitarianism reflects the cultural expectation to view

everyone as morally equal and to cooperate voluntarily in building productive relations.

Interestingly, acceptance was lower in more developed countries. Because HDI is present in

the regression, we can conclude that cultural egalitarianism explains national levels of

accepting immigrants over and above national socio-economic development. In this study, a

cultural value orientation and a basic individual value were the most important predictors of

national and individual differences in accepting ‘other’ immigrants into one’s country.

Organizational membership

Membership in voluntary organizations is an important aspect of social capital. From

the ESS survey, I formed an index that measured how many memberships individuals have in

12 types of organizations (sports, humanitarian, labor, religious, etc.). Country differences

accounted for 21% of the variation in membership, individual differences for 79%. The most

important individual level predictors were education, income, age, religiosity, and being male

(Table 3, column 2). Only four values—universalism, benevolence, stimulation, and self-

direction—predicted overall membership, none strongly. This is because these values may only

motivate joining organizations that facilitate attaining relevant goals. Examination of specific

organizations revealed that benevolence and universalism values predicted joining

humanitarian and environmental organizations especially strongly, whereas stimulation and

self-direction predicted joining cultural, sports, and hobby groups especially strongly.

Membership in voluntary organizations was greater in countries lower in cultural

embeddedness values and higher in HDI. Together, these variables explained 66% of the cross-

national variance in membership. Cultural embeddedness values emphasize loyalty and

devotion to the in-group, discouraging unnecessary involvement with outsiders and thus

probably inhibiting membership in voluntary groups in the wider society. Higher levels of

human development mean that people have greater resources of time and money so they are

less preoccupied with making a basic living and can more easily join voluntary organizations.
 29

The presence of HDI in the regression means that the cultural embeddedness reduces

membership in voluntary organizations over and above socio-economic development.

These two analyses illustrate how to use cultural and individual value variables in

combination with other factors at both the country and individual levels to explain behavior.

Additional examples are available in Schwartz (2006b).

Conclusions

The cultural value orientations presented here provide one handle for conceptualizing

and operationalizing a key element of culture. These orientations characterize cultures, not

individuals. Country scores are not located in the mind of any individual, nor do differences

between any pair of individuals capture cultural distances between societies. These

orientations underlie, justify, and give coherence to the ways that societal systems function.

They are external to individuals, expressed in the distribution of primes, expectations, and

affordances that members of a cultural group encounter. Thus, this conception of culture

differs from views of culture as a psychological variable.

Although we can characterize societal cultures, different institutions within societies

give more emphasis to the orientations that are compatible with their functions (e.g., armies to

hierarchy, religions to embeddedness, universities to intellectual autonomy). Ethnic,

occupational, religious, and other sub-groups within societies typically experience different

cultural pressures because of their social locations. These institutional and group differences

induce social tension, conflict, and change in culture. One-time, static measures of the culture

of a whole society are therefore problematic. Nonetheless, findings reported here and

elsewhere demonstrate that cultural value orientations can characterize societies in a fruitful

manner.

This chapter has sought to make clear the differences between values as a cultural and

as an individual phenomenon. It has demonstrated that the conceptual bases of the two types

of values differ, the dimensions on which they vary differ, the causal factors that account for
 30

variation in them differ, and the questions they are suited to address differ. Distinguishing

cultural orientations from basic individual values makes it possible to examine influences of the

normative culture of societies on the values of their members. Cultural value orientations are

an aspect of the cultural system of societies; basic values are an aspect of the personality

system of individuals. If we do not confuse them, we can employ them together to attain a

much richer understanding of human behavior across societies.

 1
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 1

Table 1. Questions that Cultural Orientations and Individual Values Are Suited to Study

Cultural Value Orientations Basic Individual Values

1. Relations of societalA culture to structural, 1. Relations of individuals’ value priorities to

demographic, and ecological characteristics of their personal experiences and background

societies and to their historical experience. characteristics.

2. Relations of societal culture to national 2. Relations of individuals’ value priorities to

policies and actions. their attitudes, behavior, beliefs, traits, etc.

3. Societal culture as a mediator of the effects 3. Individual values as mediators of the effects

of other societal characteristics on one of other individual characteristics on one

another. another.
4. Societal culture as a moderator of 4. Individual values as moderators of

associations between individual-level associations between individual-level

variables. variables.
5. Relations of societal culture to rates or 5. Individual values as mediators of the effects

distributions of individual attitudes, values, of group membership on individual variables.

behavior, etc. within societies.

A
Societal refers to national, regional, ethnic, or other groups whose culture is found to vary on the cultural
orientations
 2

Table 2. Predicting Attitudes and Behaviour within and between Countries with Hierarchical

Linear Modelling

Acceptance of ‘other’ Membership in Voluntary

immigrants Organisations

Individual Level

Education Years .16 .21

Age -.10 .10
Income .12
Native Born -.07
Religiosity .08
Gender Male .07
Universalism Values .20 .04
Benevolence Values .04
Conformity Values -.05
Security Values -.12
Stimulation Values .05
Self-Direction Values .03

R2 Individual Level .15 .12

Country Level

Egalitarianism Values .50

Embeddedness Values -.36
Human Development Index -.48 .26
% in Big Cities -.31
R2 Country Level .62 .66

Note: All coefficients are significant at p <.001 for the individual level and at p < .01 for the

country level. The analyses included data from 15 West European countries for opposition to

‘other’ immigrants and from 18 countries for organizational membership.

 3

Figure Captions

Figure 1. Basic individual values: Theoretical structure

Figure 2. Average individual-level MDS based on 68 countries for value items

Figure 3. Cultural value orientations: Theoretical structure

Figure 4. Culture-level MDS sample means for value items across 233 samples
 4

SELF-
CONSERVATION ENHANCEMENT
Security Power

Achievement
Conformity
Tradition

Hedonism

Benevolence
Stimulation

Universalism
SELF- Self-Direction OPENNESS
TRANSCENDENCE TO CHANGE
 SECURITY POWER
ACCEPTING MY* PRESERVING SOCIAL POWER*
PORTION IN LIFE *PUBLIC IMAGE
AUTHORITY*
WEALTH*
MODERATE* NATIONAL
SECURITY* SENSE OF
TRADITION *BELONGING SOCIAL
* *RECIPROCATION *RECOGNITION
OBEDIENT OF FAVORS
RESPECT *CLEAN ACHIEVEMENT
*DEVOUT FOR* *SOCIAL ORDER
TRADITION *FAMILY SECURITY *AMBITIOUS
*DETACHMENT HONOR HEALTHY* *INFLUENTIAL
*ELDERS *POLITE- *SUCCESSFUL
NESS
*SELF *CAPABLE
DISCIPLINE
*HUMBLE CONFORMITY INTELLIGENT
HEDONISM
* PLEASURE* *SELF-INDULGENCE
BENEVOLENCE LOYAL* *
RESPONSIBLE ENJOYING LIFE*
*
HONEST* *MEANING SELF- EXCITING LIFE*
IN LIFE RESPECT
TRUE*
FRIENDSHIP
STIMULATION
FORGIVING* *HELPFUL *PRIVACY VARIED*LIFE

MATURE LOVE* *WISDOM *CHOOSING *DARING

SPIRITUAL*LIFE OWN GOALS
*WORLD AT PEACE
*SOCIAL
JUSTICE WORLD OF *CREATIVITY
BEAUTY* *INDEPENDENT
INNER HARMONY* *CURIOUS
UNIVERSALISM PROTECT*
ENVIRONMENT
*UNITY WITH
NATURE
SELF-DIRECTION
EQUALITY* BROAD* *FREEDOM
MINDED
 HARMONY
Unity With Nature
World at Peace EMBEDDEDNESS
Social Order, Obedience
Respect for Tradition
EGALITARIANISM
Social Justice
Equality
HIERARCHY
Authority
INTELLECTUAL Humble
AUTONOMY
Broadmindedness
Curiosity MASTERY
AFFECTIVE Ambition
AUTONOMY Daring
Pleasure
Exciting Life
 HARMON
*PROTECT ENVIRONMENT
UNITY*WITH EMBEDDEDNESS
*ACCEPT MY NATURE
EGALITARIANISM HELPFUL* PORTION IN *WORLD OF *RESPECT TRADITION *SOCIAL ORDER
LIFE
*WORLD BEAUTY *FORGIVING
HONEST* *SOCIAL AT PEACE *MODERATE
JUSTICE OBEDIENT*
POLITENESS* NATIONAL
RESPONSIBLE* CLEAN* *SECURITY
*SELF *FAMILY
*EQUALITY DEVOUT* DISCIPLINE SECURITY *HONOR ELDERS
*LOYAL *WISDOM *PRESERVING MY
PUBLIC IMAGE RECIPROCATION
*HUMBLE *OF FAVORS

*BROADMINDED
*FREEDOM *CAPABLE *AUTHORITY HIERARCHY
HIERARCHY
*CREATIVITY SUCCESSFUL*
INTELLECTUAL
INTELLECTUAL AMBITIOUS* *WEALTH
AUTONOMY
AUTONOMY INFLUENTIAL*
EXCITING VARIED *INDEPENDENT *SOCIAL POWER
*CURIOUS LIFE* LIFE*
SOCIAL*RECOGNITION
PLEASURE*
ENJOYING*LIFE CHOOSING*OWN GOALS
*DARING
AFFECTIVE *SELF-
AFFECTIVE INDULGENT
AUTONOMY MASTERY
Schwartz, Shalom. (1990). Individualism-Collectivism Critique and Proposed Refinements. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 21. 139-157.
10.1177/0022022190212001.
Zubieta, Elena. (2005). VALORES Y ACTITUDES.

Allport (1961) en “Pattern and growth

in personality” tiene una percepción distinta y escribe que “las actitudes
mismas dependen de valores sociales preexistentes” (p.802-803).