Values

Ype H. Poortinga (Prof Em)

Tilburg University, Netherlands &

University of Leuven, Belgium

A bit of background

Up to the 1970s the study of culture was mainly a matter of ethnographers who described separate cultures, emphasizing the uniqueness of each

Even emerging comparative approaches tended to focus on what made each culture unique; an example is the study of national character (Germans are authoritarian, Italians excitable, etc.)

Please note that this legacy of differences between cultures is still dominant in ccp

In 1980 Hofstede published Culture's Consequences (2nd ed 2001) He distinguished cultures (= countries) in terms of 4 dimensions, providing a map of the cultural world, in a sense reminiscent of the meridians and latitudes of geography This book has become the most cited source from ccp in the social sciences, including international business studies

Hofstede's value dimensions

Hofstede (1980) postulated four cultural dimensions of values on the basis of differences in mean item scores between countries, found in a survey study of more than 50 subsidiaries of IBM Well over 100,000 employees completed a questionnaire with well over 100 items of which 63 pertained to values and 24 were ultimately analysed

1. Power distance (PD): the extent to which there is inequality between supervisors and subordinates in an organization

2. Uncertainty avoidance (UA): the lack of tolerance for ambiguity, and the need for formal rules

3. Individualism (IND): a concern for oneself as opposed to concern for one's collectivity

4. Masculinity (MA): the extent of emphasis on work goals (earnings, advancement) and assertiveness, as opposed to interpersonal goals (friendly atmosphere, getting along with the boss) and nurturance

Individualism-collectivism

Notably Triandis contributed to the further development of individualism, now known as Individualism-CollectivismMost often it is conceptualised as a single dimension: "Concern for oneself versus concern for the group(s) to which one belongs" Sometimes the two forms of concern are seen as two independent dimensions

One conception distinguishes four dimensions:- Horizontal Individualism (e.g., "I'd rather depend on myself than on others"), - Vertical Individualism (e.g., "It is important that I do my job better than others"), - Horizontal Collectivism (e.g., "If a coworker gets a prize, I would feel proud), and - Vertical Collectivism (e.g., "It is important that I respect the decisions made by my group")

Comments and concernsHofstede (1980, p. 19) defined values as: "broad tendencies to prefer certain states of affairs over others" He emphasized that he found cultural dimensions; they could not be replicated at the individual levelTriandis and colleagues even use separate terms at the individual level (allocentric and idiocentric persons)

Note: the literature often speaks about individual Chinese as collectivists and Americans as individualists

There are several problems with these dimensions, e.g.,- Can there be value dimensions at the culture-level in data aggregated from individual scores, if such dimensions are not found at the individual level?

- The strongest correlates of IND (and PD) are GNP and related variables (r = up to .80)

- For most Ind-Coll questionnaires socially desirable answers will lead to a high score on Coll; also the Lie scale of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire shows high correlations with IndividualismInd-Coll differences have also been associated also with other response sets, such as acquiescence [agreeing rather than disagreeing with statements] and extremity set

- Differences are small and often go against expectations; the largest meta-analysis today (Oyserman et al, 2002) concludes:"European Americans were not more individualistic than African Americans, or Latinos, and not less collectivistic than Japanese or Koreans. Among Asians, only Chinese showed large effects, being both less individualistic and more collectivistic"

The Schwartz Value Scale

In the tradition of Rokeach, Schwartz developed a value scale with 57 items, e.g., - social recognition (respect, approval by others) - national security (protection of my nation from enemies) - honest (genuine, sincere)

In a large data set with samples of teachers and student from > 40 countries he found 44 items consistently predicting one of 10 value types arranged more or less in a circle

These types reflect two individual-level dimensions, Self-enhancement vs Self-Transcendence and Conservatism vs Openness to change, which later were changed to Person-focused vs Social-focused and protection vs growth (see Figs 1 and 2 in the paper by Fontaine et al., included in your readings)

When aggregating the individual-level data to country level means Schwartz found 7 value types ordered along three dimensions at country level: Conservatism vs Autonomy; Hierarchy vs Egalitarianism; and Mastery vs Harmony The Fontaine et al. paper in your readings is one of several attempts to explain cross-cultural differences in values found in the Schwartz data setIt first analyses which part of structural (i.e., correlational) differences between countries should be attributed to sampling fluctuations Only thereafter it searches for patterns in the remaining variance (that is presumably due to "true" cross-cultural differences in values)NB The paper reports Multi Dimensional Scaling (MDS) analysis; MDS is based on distances between data points, rather than correlations, but gives similar results as factor analysis

Conclusions and questions

The structure of values appears to be pretty similar across cultures

The size of cross-cultural differences in value scores appears to be rather small (see Poortinga & Van Hemert in your readings)For the Schwartz value country differences range from 6% (for stimulation) to 16% (for conformity) of the total variance

Is research misrepresenting the difference in salience of values, or are people using more or less the same values to justify their actions, even if these are highly diverse?