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Tuesday 14th July, 14:00 - 15:30 Room: N-132

Basic Human Values 2
Convenor	Professor Eldad Davidov (University of Zurich )
Coordinator 1	Dr Jan Cieciuch (University of Zurich and Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw)
Coordinator 2	Dr Constanze Beierlein (GESIS)

Session Details

The 4th session organizer is Professor Peter Schmidt, peter.schmidt@sowi.uni-giessen.de, University of Giessen

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 have 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.

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., 2012) and a new scale, the PVQ-RR, has been developed to measure them.

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 are welcome. Both substantive and methodological papers using cross-sectional, cross-cultural or longitudinal datasets are welcome.

Paper Details

1. Validating Schwartz value theory with confirmatory latent class analysis
Mr Marko Sõmer (Tallinn University)

Schwartz value theory has become the main methodological apparatus in the field of value research. The validation of the theory has mostly been carried out using variable-oriented approaches like MDS or CFA. In current paper alternative, person-oriented approach is used. Confirmatory latent class analysis is applied to assess the validity of Schwartz value structure across different European countries.
The results indicate considerable variation in structural coherence of value systems between European countries. Although the value structure proposed by Schwartz can be identified in all countries, the proportion of the population it can be applied to varies.

2. Where is the location of
Mr Henrik Dobewall (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Mr Toivo Aavik (University of Tartu)

Schwartz and colleagues (2012) recently proposed a refined value theory. Like earlier value inventories, however, their measure captures solely one approach to health - avoidance of ill-health. A broader measure to capture the full spectrum of the importance people place on health was developed. It includes the components of physical, mental, social and emotional health. The paper examines structural and content hypotheses in a near representative Estonian sample and confirms the predictive validity of health as a value for health related outcomes. We conclude by arguing for the inclusion of health as a value into general value frameworks.

3. Social axioms in cultural value transmission
Mr Georgi Dragolov (Jacobs University Bremen and BIGSSS)
Professor Klaus Boehnke (Jacobs University Bremen)

We investigate how individuals internalize prevalent values in their culture of upbringing. We find support for the hypothesis that social axioms fully mediate the relationship between cultural and individual values with structural equation mediation models on data from 291 sojourner students of more than 50 nationalities. Cultural values were operationalized with Schwartz’ three culture-level value oppositions: embeddedness-autonomy, mastery-harmony, hierarchy-egalitarianism. The measurement of social axioms follows the approach of Leung et al. (2011), whereas individual values focus on Hierarchic Self-Interest (Hagan et al., 1999). Evidence points to a necessity to refine theories on cultural value transmission.

4. Value-Similarity and Social Trust: The relationship between Social Trust and Human Values in Europe
Miss Mai Beilmann (University of Tartu)
Mr Laur Lilleoja (Tallinn University)

It has been claimed that values have an influence on social trust and people tend to trust people who share similar values. Therefore, sharing the same values as the majority of the society should foster social trust. Using European Social Survey round 6 data from more than 20 European countries, we will test in this study whether people have higher levels of social trust when they emphasize the same values that prevail in their country. Results suggest that relationship between value-similarity and social trust is stronger in countries where the levels of social trust are higher.