Do demographic predictors of personal values vary by context? A test of Schwartz's value development theory

Abstract

Personal values have been shown to shape consequential social beliefs and behaviors in cultures around the world, but relatively little is known about how they develop. Schwartz argues that personal values form as individuals are exposed to social institutions which are themselves informed by cultural values and other macro-level forces. An important but largely unexamined implication of this theory is that nominally similar social categories such as gender or religion will have different effects in different countries because context-sensitive institutions will imbue them with context-specific meanings. We test this claim using eight independent, nationally representative samples that collectively include 32 European countries (total N = 374,729). We find that most relationships between social categories and personal values vary across countries. Further, country-specific effects are patterned by cultural regions, supporting the idea that similarities in macro-level influences lead to similarities in how social institutions shape personal values. These results are consistent with Schwartz's theory. Practically, they suggest that efforts to understand value development should be sensitive the particulars of specific environments.