Tuesday 16th July
Wednesday 17th July
Thursday 18th July
Friday 19th July
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Basic Human Values 1 |
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| Convenor | Professor Eldad Davidov (University of Zurich) |
| Coordinator 1 | Dr Constanze Beierlein (Goethe University of Frankfurt) |
| Coordinator 2 | Professor Peter Schmidt (Higher School of Economics Moscow) |
Values have held an important position in the social sciences since their inception. Max Weber treated values as a central component in his analysis of capitalist society, linking the development of capitalism to the values of the Protestant Ethic. Values played an important role not only in sociology, but in social psychology, anthropology, political science and related disciplines as well. They have been used to explain the motivational bases of attitudes and behavior and to characterize differences between both individuals and societies.
Until recently, application of the values construct in the social sciences has suffered from the absence of an agreed-upon conception of basic values and reliable methods designed to measure these values (Hitlin and Piliavin 2004). In 1992, Schwartz introduced a theory of ten basic human values, building on common elements in earlier approaches. The designers of the European Social Survey (ESS) chose this theory as the basis for developing a human values scale to include in the core of the survey. Recently, this theory has been extended to include 19 values (Schwartz et al., in press).
In this session continuing work on basic human values as postulated by Schwartz will be presented. Presentations which discuss (1) The measurement of human values; (2) Values as predictors of attitudes, opinions or behaviour; (3) Value change; and related topics using the theory are welcome. Both substantive and methodological papers using cross-sectional, cross-cultural or longitudinal datasets are welcome.
The 3rd co-organizer of the session is Dr. Jan Cieciuch, University of Zurich, jancieciuch@gmail.com
Within-country diversity is often overlooked when comparing values between countries. In order to combine a study of within-country value diversity and cross-country differences, we applied a person-centered approach. Instead of focusing on the distinct value items, respondents from the 33 European countries were classified based on the Schwartz Human Values Scale by means of Latent Class Analysis. Six Pan-European value classes were found; they differ both by rank of values and degree of value preferences. Surprisingly, a class with the least pronounced value preferences appeared to be the largest one (38%). The nature of this class is hypothesized to be both methodological and substantive, and is connected to strong satisficing tendencies.
In each country, all six value classes are represented. The distribution of each country population between classes gives a more differentiated and enriched picture than conventional averages, and it better demonstrates differences between populations of different countries. Beside substantive differences the form of distribution between classes provides additional information on country values. Nordic and Western European countries have more uniform distributions of value class shares than Post-Communist and Mediterranean countries; this is suggested to be an implication of societal developmental processes, which start from the few people who commit themselves to the values of more advanced countries. It is concluded that using pooled sample classification of individuals based on their values is a fruitful and promising way of cross-national value research.
Co-author 4: Tomasz Rowinski, Co-author 5: Krzysztof Fronczyk
Schwartz and colleagues (2012) introduced a common factor in the model of Confirmatory Factor Analysis for 19 values. They suggested an unusual interpretation of the common factor, that loads on all value items. According to Schwartz and colleagues (2012) the common factor can be interpreted as a social desirability factor. We aimed to validate empirically this interpretation. For this purpose we conducted three studies in Poland on a group of 5,508 participants. Values were measured by three different versions of Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ-40, developed to measure 10 values, and two versions of PVQ-57 recently developed to measure 19 values: PVQ-R and PVQ-R2). In the first study social desirability was measured by the Social Desirability Scale (SDS-17) developed by Stöber (2001), while in the second and third study two facets of social desirability were measured: egoistic and moralistic bias (Caprara, Barbaranelli, Borgogni, & Vecchione 2007) along a differentiation based on the work of Paulhus (2002).
A measurement model with a common factor was created in each study. Each item loads on the intended value factor and additionally loads on the common factor. To test the hypothesis of the social desirability meaning of the common factor, we introduced social desirability to the model and regressed the common factor on social desirability factors. Results indicate that the social desirability explains a large amount of common method variance, what justifies its interpretation according to Schwartz and
The Schwartz value scale touches upon the most fundamental level of the attitude system. Basic Human values underlie attitudes that are considered the basic attitudes in their field, like the Left-Right scale in the field of political attitudes and electoral behavior. Causal antecedence, low item non-response and stable distributions over time make Basic Human Values an ideal basis for missing value imputation. This paper focuses on regression-based missing values imputation of the left-right positions using of Basic Human values.
Although left-right positions is central for explaining public opinion and voting behavior, some respondents are unable (or unwilling) to allocate themselves on a left-right scale. Left-right variables thus often contain substantive amounts of non-response, which constitutes a serious challenge to the analysis. The paper will present the procedure by which regression-based missing value imputation of left-right positions are produced. Special attention will be given to the challenge that the imputation model must take into account the cross-country and cross-time comparison. In general terms, the demarcation of the universe of determinants - from basic human values and other values - is carried out on the pooled data in order to insure the commonality of understanding ideological position in all the countries involved. The determinants actually used in the imputation model are selected in country-wise screening of relevance. In both steps, data are pooled across time in order to maintain temporal stability. The analysis also delivers insights in country-specific interpretations of
Theories of religious individualization argue that bricolage religiosity and spirituality emerged as new forms of religion in addition to church religiosity. However, it is contentious whether different forms of beliefs are related to specific patterns of values. The literature on religious individualization states that new forms of beliefs should be negatively associated with traditional values whereas bricolage religiosity and spirituality are expected to be associated with values that stress individual autonomy.
Using Schwartz's comprehensive theory of basic human values this paper studies the value profiles of different religious orientations (church religiosity, moderate religiosity, bricolage religiosity, spirituality, religious indifference, atheism).
The results show that beliefs and values are congruent: Church religiosity emphasizes conservation and self-transcendence values but rejects self-direction. Bricolage religiosity is moderate on conservation and self-transcendence values but stresses self-direction. Spirituality is characterized by a rejection of conservation values but emphasizes self-transcendence and self-direction. Atheism rejects conservation and self-transcendence values. Only for religious indifference is no clear pattern of values found.
The value profiles indicate that bricolage religiosity and spirituality are relevant forms of beliefs and should be considered more systematically in studies on religious change.