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Do cultural values predict individuals' moral attitudes? A cross-cultural multilevel approach.
- Source :
- European Journal of Social Psychology; Aug2011, Vol. 41 Issue 5, p645-657, 13p, 4 Charts, 2 Graphs
- Publication Year :
- 2011
-
Abstract
- This study examined whether cultural values predict individuals' moral attitudes. The main objective was to shed light on the moral universalism and relativism debate by showing that the answer depends on the moral issues studied. Using items from the Morally Debatable Behaviours Scale (MDBS) fielded in the World Value Survey (WVS), we found that moral issues can be differentiated cross-culturally into attitudes towards (1) dishonest-illegal and (2) personal-sexual issues. Drawing upon evolutionary and cultural theories, we expected that the former moral domain is not related to cultural values, whereas the latter is influenced by cultural conceptions of the self (i.e. independent versus interdependent selves). We used multilevel modelling with Schwartz' cultural values as the independent variables and the two moral domains as assessed through the MDBS as dependent variables to test our hypothesis. After controlling for individual-level differences in moral attitudes as well as the socio-economic development of countries, our findings confirmed that attitudes towards dishonest-illegal issues were not related to cultural values whereas attitudes towards personal-sexual issues were predicted by the Autonomy-Embeddedness value dimension. We conclude that our study sheds not only light on the universalism and relativism debate, but also on the discriminant validity of cultural values. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- ANALYSIS of variance
ATTITUDE (Psychology)
AUTONOMY (Psychology)
CHI-squared test
CONCEPTUAL structures
CONFIDENCE intervals
DISCRIMINANT analysis
ETHICS
FACTOR analysis
GOODNESS-of-fit tests
HONESTY
REGRESSION analysis
RELIGION
RESEARCH funding
SCALE analysis (Psychology)
SELF-perception
HUMAN sexuality
ETHNOLOGY research
CULTURAL values
SOCIOECONOMIC factors
MAXIMUM likelihood statistics
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 00462772
- Volume :
- 41
- Issue :
- 5
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- European Journal of Social Psychology
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 63071839
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.794