Skip to content
Contents
The Public Mind

    Type to search. Planned chapters match by title only.

    Volume 2: Ideology, values and religion

    Part VIII

    Values beneath politics

    Basic values and dispositions lean left or right modestly where left and right are structured, and differently elsewhere.

    2 written, 5 planned

    This part moves from the left-right label to the values and dispositions beneath it. Basic values and left-right asks which basic human values lean left or right and whether the pattern holds outside Western Europe. The obedience-autonomy disposition asks how valuing obedience over autonomy in children relates to the political right. The planned chapters ask where countries sit on traditional-secular and survival-self-expression values, whether younger cohorts are more emancipative, whether security values and threat perceptions lean right, how national pride and grievance relate to nativism, and whether people with lower incomes believe less in meritocracy.

    Explorer for this part: World values. Thirty-one World Values Survey questions by country, region and group.

    Chapters

    1. 8.1

      Basic values and left-right

      People who rate universalism higher place themselves further left in all 18 Western European countries (mean correlation −0.19), but by the 95% interval values sit on their predicted sides of left-right in 4 of 18 post-communist countries and on the opposite sides in 4.

      DraftCountriesesswvs

    2. 8.2

      Countries in value space

      Where do countries sit on traditional-secular and survival-self-expression values, and how have they moved?

      PlannedCountrieswvs

    3. 8.3

      The silent revolution

      Are younger birth cohorts more emancipative, and has the shift stalled?

      PlannedCountrieswvsess

    4. 8.4

      The obedience-autonomy disposition

      Valuing obedience over autonomy in children tracks left-right placement weakly (median correlation +0.04 across 103 countries), while in the United States its correlation with party identification rose from −0.04 in 1992 to +0.28 in 2024, except among Black respondents.

      DraftCountrieswvsessanesgss

    5. 8.5

      Order, security and threat

      Do security values and threat perceptions lean right, and where?

      PlannedCountriesesswvs

    6. 8.6

      National pride and grievance

      Do national pride and national grievance relate to nativism in the same way?

      PlannedCountrieswvsess

    7. 8.7

      System justification

      Do people with lower incomes believe in meritocracy less than those with higher incomes?

      PlannedCountrieswvsgss