Inglehart-Welzel World Cultural Map: Wave 7 Version (2020)

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

Idk how many of you have heard of the World Values Survey or the World Cultural Map, but I thought I'd make a thread on this. It explains a lot of how divergent cultural values among societies affect their politics.

IMO it does a surprisingly good job explaining different cultural groups' affinities to certain politicians, political parties, policies, and perspectives on civic engagement.

The WVS has over the years demonstrated that people’s beliefs play a key role in economic development, the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions, the rise of gender equality, and the extent to which societies have effective government. Some of the key findings of the work are described below.

Inglehart–Welzel Cultural Map
The map presents empirical evidence of massive cultural change and the persistence of distinctive cultural traditions. Main thesis holds that socioeconomic development is linked with a broad syndrome of distinctive value orientations. Analysis of WVS data made by political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel asserts that there are two major dimensions of cross cultural variation in the world:

1) Traditional values versus Secular-rational values and

2) Survival values versus Self-expression values.

• Traditional values emphasize the importance of religion, parent-child ties, deference to authority and traditional family values. People who embrace these values also reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide. These societies have high levels of national pride and a nationalistic outlook.
• Secular-rational values have the opposite preferences to the traditional values. These societies place less emphasis on religion, traditional family values and authority. Divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide are seen as relatively acceptable. (Suicide is not necessarily more common.)
• Survival values place emphasis on economic and physical security. It is linked with a relatively ethnocentric outlook and low levels of trust and tolerance.
• Self-expression values give high priority to environmental protection, growing tolerance of foreigners, gays and lesbians and gender equality, and rising demands for participation in decision-making in economic and political life.

The two dimensions have been created by running factor analysis over a set of ten indicators. The ten indicators used (five to tap each dimension) were chosen for technical reasons: in order to be able to compare findings across time, we used indicators that had been included in all four waves of the Values Surveys. These ten indicators reflect only a handful of the many beliefs and values that these two dimensions tap, and they are not necessarily the most sensitive indicators of these dimensions. They do a good job of tapping two extremely important dimensions of cross-cultural variation, but we should bear in mind that these specific items are only indicators of much broader underlying dimensions of cross-cultural variation [Source: Chapter 2 from Inglehart, R & C. Welzel. 2005. Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence. New York: Cambridge University Press].

https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp?CMSID=Findings

According to the authors: "These two dimensions explain more than 70 percent of the cross-national variance in a factor analysis of ten indicators—and each of these dimensions is strongly correlated with scores of other important orientations."[3]

The authors stress that socio-economic status is not the sole factor determining a country's location, as their religious and cultural historical heritage is also an important factor.[4]

Wave 7 (2017-2021)



I was surprised to see how much further down on the y-axis Mainland China is here, compared to previous versions. It seems pulled towards Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam relative to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea, and Japan.

I also noticed that the US is much further left on the x-axis than in previous versions. Historically the US was further down on the y-axis than the rest of the Anglosphere (which checks out with anecdotal observations that the US is relatively religious and socially conservative). I wonder how much of this is due to rising income inequality, declining social mobility and trust, and secularization- all of which are correlated with the rise of Don Giovanni and his tenure in the White House.

India has also shifted considerably down and left- not sure how correlated this is with the rise of Modi's BJP if at all. It was solidly within the "Other Asia" cluster in the last version.

Spoiler alert: Wave 6 (2010-2014)

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Spoiler alert: Wave 5 (2008)

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Spoiler alert: Wave 4 (1996)

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[CumbrianLefty]

Yes, I think the "Modi effect" is clearly visible there. As is how constant the UK has been since 1996!

[Tintrlvr]

I have a hard time taking seriously any measurement that lists Japan of all countries as having the lowest rate in the world of "emphasizing the importance of...parent-child ties, deference to authority and traditional family values." Fine if you want to make your vertical axis strictly based on religiosity, but, if so, come out and say that's what you're doing and don't claim it says anything about societies except how seriously they take sky deities.

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

I have a hard time taking seriously any measurement that lists Japan of all countries as having the lowest rate in the world of "emphasizing the importance of...parent-child ties, deference to authority and traditional family values." Fine if you want to make your vertical axis strictly based on religiosity, but, if so, come out and say that's what you're doing and don't claim it says anything about societies except how seriously they take sky deities.

Japan also has a high suicide rate, high rates of singledom among men and women under 40, a culture of "death by overwork", and relatively libertine attitudes towards artistic depictions of human sexuality.

While I would strongly argue that some of the above are due to overly conservative gender norms, they do not seem indicative of a society that places particular importance on "parent-child ties" or "traditional family values". Moreover, Japan is a highly technologically advanced country where people place a great deal of trust in scientists and experts.

Besides- if the y-axis was really just based on religiosity, South Korea and Japan would probably score lower while Mainland China and Vietnam would probably score higher.

[Silent Hunter]

Why is African-Islamic one thing?

[Red Velvet]

Brazil is fake christian (mostly on speech only), so being alongside Argentina and Uruguay as the more “secular” Latin American countries and in a similar level as more religious catholic European countries like Portugal or Poland, makes sense to me.

Watching the telenovelas from other Latin American countries I always get surprised how much more traditional fluff they are, usually the old romantic cliches. While in Brazilian telenovelas there’s kinda more openness to erotic scenes, homosexual affection and more heavy social topics are also touched on.

[CumbrianLefty]

Why is African-Islamic one thing?

Presumably because the two are seen to have at least some aspects in common.

[Hatman 🍁]

I guess Canada has stopped existing over the last 6 years? Or are we so woke under Trudeau, we've fallen off the chart?

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

Why is African-Islamic one thing?

Presumably because the two are seen to have at least some aspects in common.

Looks like “African” and “Islamic” no longer form distinct clusters now that they’ve added more countries.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

This is the modern version of phrenology.

[Tintrlvr]

I have a hard time taking seriously any measurement that lists Japan of all countries as having the lowest rate in the world of "emphasizing the importance of...parent-child ties, deference to authority and traditional family values." Fine if you want to make your vertical axis strictly based on religiosity, but, if so, come out and say that's what you're doing and don't claim it says anything about societies except how seriously they take sky deities.

Japan also has a high suicide rate, high rates of singledom among men and women under 40, a culture of "death by overwork", and relatively libertine attitudes towards artistic depictions of human sexuality.

While I would strongly argue that some of the above are due to overly conservative gender norms, they do not seem indicative of a society that places particular importance on "parent-child ties" or "traditional family values". Moreover, Japan is a highly technologically advanced country where people place a great deal of trust in scientists and experts.

Besides- if the y-axis was really just based on religiosity, South Korea and Japan would probably score lower while Mainland China and Vietnam would probably score higher.

LOL. Japan is a country that still has to blur the naughty bits in porn. "Relatively libertine attitudes towards depictions of sexuality" is not true at all beyond the "Japan is weird" meme.

Beyond that, try telling a Japanese person that "parent-child ties" are not very important in their society - more significantly, less important to them than to any other society in the world. You'll just look like a fool. (Same goes for Korea, etc., too, who are also ranked way too highly on the vertical axis if it's supposed to represent what the authors say it represents.) Then you got to the end and started to emphasize being technologically advanced and trusting science and experts... Which is exactly the point I was making, that the vertical axis is at most a science vs. religion axis and doesn't say any of the things about family values or deference to authority that the authors are claiming it says. Instead, it's a sneaky western Christians meme about how you can't possibly trust science/be non-religious and also value your family.

Also, a hilarious grouping is "West and South Asia". Sure, Thailand and Israel are a completely reasonable pair of countries to have in the same cultural group. And it also just betrays obvious ignorance on cultural history: Vietnam clearly culturally and historically fits much better into the "East Asia" sphere than the "South Asia" sphere, for example, even though this would further ruin their goal of creating blobs of cultural homogeneity in order to generalize about societies. And why is Malaysia in "South Asia" but Indonesia is in "African-Islamic"? They're both predominantly Muslim societies, of course, and have much more in common with each other culturally than with any of the other countries in the groups they've been paired with.

[vitoNova]

The map is simply a rip-off of Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations". 

[Red Velvet]

It isn’t that much deep, but I think it works if you look at vertical axis as “science vs religion” and the horizontal axis as “people politics are driven by economics vs driven by culture”

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

I have a hard time taking seriously any measurement that lists Japan of all countries as having the lowest rate in the world of "emphasizing the importance of...parent-child ties, deference to authority and traditional family values." Fine if you want to make your vertical axis strictly based on religiosity, but, if so, come out and say that's what you're doing and don't claim it says anything about societies except how seriously they take sky deities.

Japan also has a high suicide rate, high rates of singledom among men and women under 40, a culture of "death by overwork", and relatively libertine attitudes towards artistic depictions of human sexuality.

While I would strongly argue that some of the above are due to overly conservative gender norms, they do not seem indicative of a society that places particular importance on "parent-child ties" or "traditional family values". Moreover, Japan is a highly technologically advanced country where people place a great deal of trust in scientists and experts.

Besides- if the y-axis was really just based on religiosity, South Korea and Japan would probably score lower while Mainland China and Vietnam would probably score higher.

LOL. Japan is a country that still has to blur the naughty bits in porn. "Relatively libertine attitudes towards depictions of sexuality" is not true at all beyond the "Japan is weird" meme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexuality_in_Japan

Sexuality in Japan developed separately from that of mainland Asia, as Japan did not adopt the Confucian view of marriage, in which chastity is highly valued. Monogamy in marriage is often thought to be less important in Japan, and sometimes married men may seek pleasure from courtesans. Prostitution in Japan has a long history, and became especially popular during the Japanese economic miracle, as evening entertainments were tax-deductible.

I am not an expert on Japan, so I can’t really fact-check this. But I can anecdotally confirm the “Japan is weird” meme, and believe it makes sense given Japan’s geographic and cultural isolation from the rest of Asia.

The relative position of Japan + South Korea + Taiwan + Hong Kong + Macau vs Mainland China + Vietnam on the y-axis makes sense to me in that the former have higher GDP per capita, have been industrialized for longer, and are also less nationalistic than the latter. In my experience, it’s negatively correlated with the prevalence of Christianity among those countries’ respective diasporas in the US.

The two dimensions have been created by running factor analysis over a set of ten indicators. The ten indicators used (five to tap each dimension) were chosen for technical reasons: in order to be able to compare findings across time, we used indicators that had been included in all four waves of the Values Surveys. These ten indicators reflect only a handful of the many beliefs and values that these two dimensions tap, and they are not necessarily the most sensitive indicators of these dimensions. They do a good job of tapping two extremely important dimensions of cross-cultural variation, but we should bear in mind that these specific items are only indicators of much broader underlying dimensions of cross-cultural variation [Source: Chapter 2 from Inglehart, R & C. Welzel. 2005. Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence. New York: Cambridge University Press].

Also, a hilarious grouping is "West and South Asia". Sure, Thailand and Israel are a completely reasonable pair of countries to have in the same cultural group. And it also just betrays obvious ignorance on cultural history: Vietnam clearly culturally and historically fits much better into the "East Asia" sphere than the "South Asia" sphere, for example, even though this would further ruin their goal of creating blobs of cultural homogeneity in order to generalize about societies. And why is Malaysia in "South Asia" but Indonesia is in "African-Islamic"? They're both predominantly Muslim societies, of course, and have much more in common with each other culturally than with any of the other countries in the groups they've been paired with.

Obviously the cultural groupings on the chart aren’t perfect (lndia, Myanmar, Kazakhstan, Georgia, South Africa, Chile, and Estonia are also pretty obvious outliers). I agree that whoever made this version was not consistent with labeling cultural outliers- although it’s worth noting that Malaysia has a much larger non-Muslim minority than Indonesia. (This also holds for Bosnia vs Albania)

But given how much the axes correlate with industrialization and post-materialism- it’s remarkable that some of the variation across countries can still be explained by cultural affiliation.

[Middle-aged Europe]

India is denoted as a "Muslim-majority country".

[Tintrlvr]

It isn’t that much deep, but I think it works if you look at vertical axis as “science vs religion” and the horizontal axis as “people politics are driven by economics vs driven by culture”

That was basically my criticism on the vertical axis and I do agree with you there. The problematic aspect is the attempt by the authors to make science vs. religion mean something else.

I didn’t touch the horizontal axis because it’s hard to even parse what they are trying to say there, but ultimately it seems like it might just be a proxy for economic security. Which of course on its own isn’t a cultural trait at all.

[WindowPhil]

America's march to the left of the chart may be due to the right wing of the country growing decidedly more Anti-Immigrant and anti-"wokeness". Which effects the country's ranking overall.

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

America's march to the left of the chart may be due to the right wing of the country growing decidedly more Anti-Immigrant and anti-"wokeness". Which effects the country's ranking overall.

Yeah I’m inclined to agree. It also describes what happened in China during Xi’s tenure (shift down) and India during Modi’s tenure (shift down and left), although it’s hard to say if politics affected the culture, or if political changes reflected cultural/non-political shifts in PRC and IN society.

It isn’t that much deep, but I think it works if you look at vertical axis as “science vs religion” and the horizontal axis as “people politics are driven by economics vs driven by culture”

That was basically my criticism on the vertical axis and I do agree with you there. The problematic aspect is the attempt by the authors to make science vs. religion mean something else.

I didn’t touch the horizontal axis because it’s hard to even parse what they are trying to say there, but ultimately it seems like it might just be a proxy for economic security. Which of course on its own isn’t a cultural trait at all.

The relative position of East/Southeast Asian countries on the x and y axes makes intuitive sense to me. Japan, South Korea, and company are most highly developed and have been so for longer- which naturally has downstream implications for cultural hegemony and perceived refinement.

I’ve heard the FB group subtle asian traits descrived as a combination of relatively generic anime and hallyu/KBBQ memes with more parochial Chinese/Taiwanese/Hong Kong, Vietnamese, Filipino (and to some extent Korean) specific memes about language and general experiences- which is consistent with the demographics of East Asians in AUS and the US and the perceived cultural dominance/universality of Japanese and South Korean pop culture.

[EastwoodS]

It looks like the US is really stabilizing out on the Y axis despite a huge effort to go more secular.

[mileslunn]

I guess Canada has stopped existing over the last 6 years? Or are we so woke under Trudeau, we've fallen off the chart?

Yeah that was my thought although we don't fit neatly into any as not a European country and pretty evenly split between Protestant and Catholic while mostly English speaking, but unlike other English speaking countries, we do have a sizeable French speaking population.  Still would be interesting to see where it falls or shows challenges in grouping countries.

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

I guess Canada has stopped existing over the last 6 years? Or are we so woke under Trudeau, we've fallen off the chart?

Yeah that was my thought although we don't fit neatly into any as not a European country and pretty evenly split between Protestant and Catholic while mostly English speaking, but unlike other English speaking countries, we do have a sizeable French speaking population.  Still would be interesting to see where it falls or shows challenges in grouping countries.

Canada is included in the updated 2023 version of the Wave 7 chart (near the intersection of Anglosphere, Protestant Europe, and Catholic Europe), along with Mongolia, Latvia, and possibly some other countries I haven't noticed yet.

No idea why the UK was separated into Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the update. Not sure if any of the countries moved much aside from Uruguay and Venezuela.

2020 version


2023 version

[First1There]

I guess Canada has stopped existing over the last 6 years? Or are we so woke under Trudeau, we've fallen off the chart?

Yeah that was my thought although we don't fit neatly into any as not a European country and pretty evenly split between Protestant and Catholic while mostly English speaking, but unlike other English speaking countries, we do have a sizeable French speaking population.  Still would be interesting to see where it falls or shows challenges in grouping countries.

Canada is included in the updated 2023 version of the Wave 7 chart (near the intersection of Anglosphere, Protestant Europe, and Catholic Europe), along with Mongolia, Latvia, and possibly some other countries I haven't noticed yet.

No idea why the UK was separated into Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the update. Not sure if any of the countries moved much aside from Uruguay and Venezuela.

2020 version


2023 version

This map looks like the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy

It looks like they have the data there, but then are drawing the regions around the data to fit some pattern that doesn't exist. I mean, look at the shape of the West and South Asia category. Would that be a respectable category in any other type of data science? Vietnam is so much more similar to Poland than any other country in its category, according to this, but its part of West and South Asia, (when it is neither) even though it be in some neutral category, being near the center of the map.

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

-snip-

This map looks like the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy

It looks like they have the data there, but then are drawing the regions around the data to fit some pattern that doesn't exist. I mean, look at the shape of the West and South Asia category. Would that be a respectable category in any other type of data science? Vietnam is so much more similar to Poland than any other country in its category, according to this, but its part of West and South Asia, (when it is neither) even though it be in some neutral category, being near the center of the map.

The cultural regions that are being suggested do actually exist IMO, they just heavily overlap with each other. If you were to draw blobs connecting all of the Confucian Asian societies, all of the Indianized Asian societies, and the combined blob of Sub-Saharan African + Muslim-majority societies, the intersection of those three blobs would contain Malaysia and Singapore. That isn't too far off from what you'd expect for former British colonies in Muslim-majority Island Southeast Asia that have experienced heavy Chinese immigration in the last 200-300 years.

[Lord Halifax]

No idea why the UK was separated into Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the update.

that seems sensible when NI is so much of an outlier within the UK.