Introducing the ‘Distribution Approach’ as an Alternative Methodology to Empirically Arrive at Value Priorities at the Culture Level

Recently, evidence has surfaced that empirical tests of Schwartz’s theory of cultural value priorities relies on a methodology–averaging across individuals within a culture–that may be inadequate from a theory of measurement standpoint. The current approach seems insufficiently accurate in capturing the compatibilities-incompatibilities between values of individuals within cultures. As an alternative, we propose an approach that is based on the distribution of values of individuals in a given culture–the distribution approach. Concretely, we introduce a way to empirically unfold the circumplex model of value priorities at the individual level as ‘ideal value types.’ These are then used as threshold indices in the classification of the data-informed ‘observed value types’, a procedure that, at its core, computes Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients. Using data from rounds 6 and 7 of the European Social Survey (N = 92,415) and rounds 5 and 6 of the World Value Survey (N = 148,764), providing evidence from 90 countries and territories, we show how frequencies of specific individual value priorities in a culture can be used towards the description of culture-level value preferences. As a consequence of the empirical exemplifications of the new approach, we suggest a re-conceptualization of Schwartz’s culture-level theory to an orthogonal two-dimensional structure of culture-level value priorities, namely as Preservation vs. Alteration and Dominance vs. Amenability. About five countries are insufficiently integrated in this two-dimensional space. The overall result indicates that cultures under conditions of ‘macro-social worries’ are better described in terms of Dominance vs. Amenability.