Values, Ethos, and Diversity

Values are a central concept in the social sciences and recently have been intensively studied across disciplines. Theoreticians usually distinguish between two lines of research: personal values and values of social collectives. Personal values represent desirable goals that serve as internalized guides for individuals. Schwartz identified ten types of values that can be organized according to their conflicts and compatibilities. The importance attributed to difference values has consequences for behaviors, attitudes, and emotions, such as tolerance, career choice, and religiosity. Cultural values are broad goals that members of a social collective are encouraged to pursue. An important role of cultural values is their influence on the ethos of social groups. The ethos unifies the social collective, provides it with meaning and differentiates it from other groups. Several large-scale studies have sought to identify the content and structure of cultural values and to map national cultures according to their values. The most prominent were projects led by Hofstede, Schwartz, Inglehart, and House. There is some conceptual and empirical overlap between the dimensions identified in these models though the ranking of specific nations can differ considerably from model to model.