Are There Universal Values?
Surveys are ubiquitous, especially global surveys. Cross-national surveys tell us what countries have the highest high school math scores, the highest obesity rates, the highest gross domestic product, the lowest infant mortality rate, the highest church attendance, the slowest population growth, the highest per capita car ownership, … I could go on forever. Surveys serve to define a population’s culture or describe a population’s behavior or attitudes relative to others. Surveys may warn us of trends that are not healthy or sustainable.
Surveys may also guide diplomatic relations among nations. Global divisions between East and West, and between North and South are fitting settings for survey and analysis. Such is the focus of the World Values Survey, or WVS. For over forty years the WVS has conducted surveys every five years; the seventh survey, completed 2017-2022 in 92 countries, included over 129,000 interviewees. The most recent survey was particularly timely as governments around the world are questioning the imposition of what the West considers universal values. Survey results addressed the question of whether universal values exist.
Analysis of WVS data concluded that cultural values vary along two major dimensions. In the first dimension, values range along a scale from traditional to secular-rational. Traditional values emphasize the importance of religion and traditional families and reject abortion and divorce. Secular-rational values are less concerned about religion and traditional families and are more accepting of divorce and abortion.
Values in the second dimension range between survival and self-expression. Survival values emphasize economic and physical security with low levels of trust and tolerance. Self-expression values prioritize environmental protection, tolerance of foreigners and LGBTQ people, and demand participation in economic and political decision-making.
People in societies shaped by existential insecurity and rigid intellectual and social constraints on human autonomy … tend to emphasize economic and physical security above all; they feel threatened by foreigners, ethnic diversity, and cultural change – which leads to intolerance of gays and other outgroups, insistence on traditional gender roles, and an authoritarian political outlook.
Countries that are more traditional are also more focused on survival. African and Islamic countries are among this group. Countries that are more secular and focused on self-expression include Protestant countries in Europe and English speaking countries. Confucian countries are more secular but in the middle of the survival/self-expression dimension. Latin American countries are more traditional, but also in the middle range of the survival/self-expression dimension.
The study’s authors did not judge the U.S. to be a prototype of cultural modernization. Generally, high-income countries rank toward the secular end on the traditional/secular dimension and toward the self-expression end on the survival/self-expression dimension.
The United States is a deviant case, having a much more traditional value system than any other postindustrial society except Ireland. On the traditional/secular dimension, the United States is far below other rich societies, with levels of religiosity and national pride comparable with those found in some developing societies.
Are there any universal values? The authors assert that the desire for free choice and autonomy is a universal human aspiration but, “as long as physical survival remains uncertain, the desire for physical and economic security tends to take higher priority than democracy.” By instilling fear and insecurity in a society, an authoritarian regime can extinguish self-expression and tolerance. Democracies have failed in Turkey, Hungary, Cambodia, Venezuela, Tunisia, and Nicaragua, among others, and international assessments, such as The Economist’s Democracy Index, have included the United States and India as countries in which democracy is declining.