Value consensus and importance - A cross-national study

Societal value consensus has been widely discussed but rarely studied empir ically. The authors developed a definition and an operational index for val ue consensus suitable for cross-national comparisons. They then generated a nd 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 importa nce of openness and self-transcendence values, and negatively with the impo rtance of conservation and self-enhancement values. Development and democra tization have opposite relations to value consensus, suppressing one anothe r's effects. Development increases overall value consensus, whereas democra tization decreases it. Differences between effects on specific value types are discussed.