Value consensus and importance - A cross-national study

Societal value consensus has been widely discussed but rarely studied empirically. The authors developed a definition and an operational index for value consensus suitable for cross-national comparisons. They then generated and tested hypotheses concerning causal impacts of socioeconomic development and political democratization on both value importance and value consensus in a society. Data are from matched samples of teachers from 42 nations (N = 7,856) who completed a survey that measures 10 distinct types of values. Both development and democratization correlate positively with the importance of openness and self-transcendence values, and negatively with the importance of conservation and self-enhancement values. Development and democratization have opposite relations to value consensus, suppressing one another's effects. Development increases overall value consensus, whereas democratization decreases it. Differences between effects on specific value types are discussed.