ERASMUS+ PROGRAMME, KEY ACTION 2

CAPACITY BUILDING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Furthering International Relations Capacities and Intercultural Engagement to

Nurture Campus Diversity and to Support Internationalisation at Home
(FRIENDS)

Unit 5: World Values Survey

Part 3

Dr. Nedka Dimitrova

TRANSCRIPT

You have already got acquainted with some fundamental models and dimensions of culture
used to measure various aspects of cultural differences in people’s attitudes to authority and
power, group belonging and tolerance to uncertainty for example.
In this unit you can learn about the change of cultural values in relation to their influence on
economic and political development, studied through the World Values Survey, conducted
by an international network of scientists, among whom, the two leading political scientists,
namely Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel. They suggested two dimensions reflecting the
contrast between the world societies, based on their orientation towards economic growth
– Traditional versus Secular-rational values and Survival versus Self-expression values.
The WVS is currently the academic study with the broadest research coverage of the main
cultural groups with 400, 000 respondents in almost 100 countries on all continents and it
provides useful information about the changes in people’s beliefs for professionals in the
field of psychology and sociology, anthropology and economy. Banks, journalists, and
government policymakers are also making use of the WVS data in order to analyze particular
social phenomena and trends in different parts of the world.
Let us first revive our memory of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the pyramid showing
how people’s motivation change. Once we meet our needs at a particular bottom level, we
feel the drive to move up and satisfy the next category of needs.
The image shown here illustrates the two main groups of deficiency and growth needs in the
updated structure of the 8-stage hierarchy of needs.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views
only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the
information contained therein. 1
If some deficiency needs are not satisfied, it is less likely for people to strive for democracy
and freedom. On the other hand, in case of survival is not threatened, then self-expression of
more democratic values would be more likely to increase social change.
Globalisation and technological advancement undoubtedly bring for a change in our views
of the world. Ronald Inglehart (2007) points out the shift from traditional cultural values to
more secular-rational values driven by the industrial revolution with centralized and
standardized authority, followed by the post-industrial development characterized by a
trend towards emerging self-expression of people’s desire for freedom.
According to Inglehart, the economic, social and political transformation in the
contemporary world, come as a result of two major cultural dimensions. The Traditional
versus Secular-rational dimension measures the difference between the more traditional
and religious agrarian societies and the industrialized societies, which share more rational,
non-religious (secular) values.
The Survival versus Self-expression dimension focuses on the generational variation of
values from physical and economic security to a more pronounced expression of growth
needs, concerning personal wellbeing.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views
only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the
information contained therein. 2