Basic Values,Ideological Self-Placement,and Voting: A Cross-Cultural Study

Abstract

The current study examines the contribution of left–right (or liberal–conservative) ideology to voting, as well as the extent to which basic values account for ideological orientation. Analyses were conducted in 16 countries from five continents (Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Oceania), most of which have been neglected by previous studies. Results showed that left–right (or liberal–conservative) ideology predicted voting in all countries except Ukraine. Basic values exerted a considerable effect in predicting ideology in most countries, especially in established democracies such as Australia, Finland, Italy, United Kingdom, and Germany. Pattern of relations with the whole set of 10 values revealed that the critical trade-off underlying ideology is between values concerned with tolerance and protection for the welfare of all people (universalism) versus values concerned with preserving the social order and status quo (security). A noteworthy exception was found in European postcommunist countries, where relations of values with ideology were small (Poland) or near to zero (Ukraine, Slovakia).

Keywords

basic values ideology left–right political orientation voting

The long-term decline of sociostructural factors as shapers of political preference has been a striking change for contemporary democracies (Jost, 2006; Van der Brug, 2010). The appeal of party identification has weakened (Dalton, 2000). Social class, income, and education account for political preference less than in the past. Traditional ideological divisions between right and left (or conservative and liberal) appear less marked than in the past as political parties form coalitions and endorse political programs that are barely distinctive (Caprara, 2007). At the same time, ideological preferences are becoming more dependent upon voter’s personality characteristics, such as traits (e.g., Gerber, Huber, Doherty, Dowling, & Ha, 2010; Jost, 2006; Schoen & Schumann, 2007; Vecchione et al., 2011) and values (e.g., Barnea & Schwartz, 1998; Caprara, Schwartz, Vecchione, & Barbaranelli, 2008; Thorisdottir, Jost, Liviatan, & Shrout, 2007; Vecchione, Caprara, Dentale, & Schwartz, 2013).

The above description applies to established Western democracies such as United States, United Kingdom, and Italy. One may wonder whether left–right and liberal–conservative ideological self-placement hold the same meanings in re-established democracies, such as Spain and Chile, and in postcommunist countries, where socialism has recalibrated the ideals of traditional left (Piurko, Schwartz, & Davidov, 2011). Likewise, one may wonder about the extent to which basic values operate as major organizers of ideological self-placement across different countries. The more one considers the diversity of people’s living conditions, traditions, habits, ways of thinking, and styles of relating to each other across the world, the more we are forced to revise the traditional Western understanding of what really matters in political choices.

In this spirit, the present contribution aims to examine the extent to which left–right (or liberal–conservative) self-placement accounts for a major portion of voting behavior across 16 countries from five continents (Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Oceania). Moreover, it examines the extent to which basic personal values account for ideological self-placement across countries that differ significantly in size, economics, religion, political history, and culture.

Ideology

In political science, ideology has been viewed as an interrelated set of attitudes and beliefs about the proper order of society and how it can be achieved (Erikson & Tedin, 2003). Hence, ideology includes shared assumptions and beliefs about human nature and society and about ideals and priorities to be pursued. Different ideologies may contain competing views about how life should be lived and about how society should be governed. When shared by groups of individuals, these ideologies provide both an interpretation of the environment and a prescription for how the environment should be structured (Jost, Federico, & Napier, 2009). They can serve as organizing devices to structure political knowledge and expertise, or as broad postures that more or less consciously explain and justify different states of social and political affairs (Jost et al., 2009).

It is still a matter of debate whether a single left–right ideological dimension is sufficient to organize citizens’ political knowledge and thought (e.g., Jost et al., 2009).

Since the time of the French revolution, ideological opinions have been classified most often in terms of a single right–left dimension. This dimension largely reflected the divide between preferences for stability (the status quo of the ancient regime) versus change in early usage (Revelli, 2007). Much of the ideological conflict over change versus status quo pertained to age-old disputes concerning the role of hierarchy, authority, and tradition (Kitschelt, 2003). Over time and across countries, however, distinctions between right and left have changed. They have come to reflect a variety of combinations of ideals that pertain both to the private and public sphere of politics and to the social and economic spheres of life.

Currently, different conceptions of right and left apply in different polities. In established democracies such as Australia, United Kingdom, and United States, right and left are often equated with conservative and liberal ideologies, respectively. The right is mostly associated with political movements that endorse traditional ideals such as authority and social order, whereas the left is more often associated with political movements that endorse egalitarian ideals (Bobbio, 1996). Various forms of right and left, however, have also included movements that oppose authoritarian regimes and democracy and political programs that oppose free market economy and social welfare in various degrees (Giddens, 1994; Revelli, 2007). As Freeden (2010) noted, ideologies shade off into each other and cut through one another. Although most modern democracies have become more egalitarian in terms of civil rights and access to health services, education, and work opportunities, achieving the optimal combination of individual freedom and social justice is an arduous challenge for the left and right in most countries. Thus, it is sometimes difficult to discern what is common among parties and movements that claim to endorse the same ideology.

Several researchers still wonder whether one dimension is sufficient to illuminate the structure of political choices (e.g., Ashton et al., 2005; Heath, Evans, & Martin, 1994; Ricolfi, 2002). Others have suggested decomposing the left–right distinction into economic and social dimensions (Feldman & Johnston, 2014). Conceptions of freedom in politics and in economics are in fact difficult to reconcile under one left–right dimension in modern democracies. The left has often been identified with political programs that limit individuals’ economic freedom but advocate maximum freedom in the sphere of civil rights. The right is often identified with political programs that curtail citizens’ freedom in the sphere of civil rights but advocate maximum freedom in the sphere of economics.

Nonetheless, the left–right and liberal–conservative distinctions have survived over the centuries to map a political space made of ideas and people that occupy opposing positions. These distinctions still hold even where opposing political coalitions have adopted more pragmatic platforms intended to attract a wide swath of the electorate, platforms that are much less distinctive. Likely, the more party coalitions lead to bipolar polities and pose a choice between two major options, the more the traditional ideological divide can serve as a knowledge and communication device that helps citizens to orient themselves in a complex political universe.

Moreover, one should consider that self-placing on the left–right or liberal–conservative continuum may have an affective value in itself, as it enables people to make choices that accord with their basic dispositions and to sort the political world into “us” and “them” (Jacoby, 2009; Sears & Funk, 1999). Self identifying along a unique ideological dimension may satisfy people’s needs of social inclusion and belonging, despite the diversity of contents that can be traced to the opposite poles of that dimension across polities (Nozick, 1989).

Based on this reasoning, we posited that the single ideological dimension continues to be an important organizer of political thought. We expected that left–right and conservative–liberal ideologies are major predictors of political choices across democracies that differ widely in their history and degree of establishment.

Basic Values

A number of scholars have assigned a central role to values as organizers of political preferences and judgments (Knutsen, 1995; Rokeach, 1973, 1979; Schwartz, 1994; Schwartz, Caprara, & Vecchione, 2010). Values are cognitive representations of desirable, abstract, trans-situational goals that serve as guiding principles in people’s lives. They refer to what people consider important, and vary in their relative importance as standards for judging behavior, events, and people (Schwartz, 1992).

Although the relationship between values and political orientation has been addressed from different perspectives (Braithwaite, 1997; Knutsen, 1995; Rokeach, 1973), most recent studies adopt Schwartz’s 10 basic personal values (Schwartz, 1992, 1994). This theory proposes 10 broad, motivationally distinct values derived from universal requirements of the human condition: security, power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition, and conformity. The type of goal or motivation a value expresses distinguishes one value from another. As shown in Figure 1, the 10 values can be located around a motivational circle. Within this circular structure, values that are adjacent (e.g., benevolence and universalism) share similar motivational emphases and are positively related. By contrast, values located on opposite sides of the circle (e.g., power and universalism) express conflicting motives and are negatively related (Schwartz, 1992, 2005). This structure implies that adjacent values have similar correlations with other variables. These correlations should decline in both directions, reaching the most negative value in correspondence of opposing values in the circle (see Schwartz, 2006).

Figure 1.

Schwartz’s (1992) circular model of values.

Based on this pattern of conflicts and compatibilities, the 10 values can be grouped under four broader dimensions: (a) values that emphasize self-enhancement (power and achievement), (b) values that emphasize transcending personal interests and promoting the welfare of others (universalism and benevolence), (c) values that emphasize conservation of the status quo (security, tradition, and conformity), and (d) values that emphasize openness to change (self-direction, stimulation, and hedonism).

Using the Schwartz’s taxonomy, several studies have shown that citizens tend to vote for parties or coalitions whose policies they perceive as likely to promote or protect their important values. A study of the 1988 Israeli elections showed that basic values discriminated significantly between voters of different political parties (Barnea & Schwartz, 1998). In Italy, voters for the center-right coalition gave higher priority to the self-enhancement and conservation values, whereas voters for the center-left coalition gave higher priority to the self-transcendence values (e.g., Caprara, Schwartz, Capanna, Vecchione, & Barbaranelli, 2006; Schwartz et al., 2010).

Other studies have focused on the relation between values and ideological self-placement. Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS) third (2006-2007) round, Piurko et al. (2011) found that self-enhancement and conservation values explained a right orientation, whereas self-transcendence and openness to change values explained a left orientation. They also found that values had greater explanatory power in countries with a long tradition of liberal democracy, such as Germany and the United Kingdom, than in postcommunist countries.

Aspelund, Lindeman, and Verkasalo (2013) analyzed data from 28 European countries using data from the third (2006-2007) and fourth (2008-2009) rounds of the ESS. They found that the conservation versus openness to change value dimension was significantly related to right-wing orientation in almost all Western countries. Relationships in Central and Eastern European countries, by contrast, were much less consistent. The value dimension of self-enhancement versus self-transcendence was significantly related to right-wing orientation in the vast majority of Western European countries, although more weakly than the conservation vs. openness to change dimension. Few correlations were found to be significant among Central and Eastern European countries.

The Present Research

The current study examines the extent to which personal values account for left–right (or liberal–conservative) ideological self-placement in 16 countries from five continents (Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Oceania). It extends prior research on links between values and ideology in Europe (Aspelund et al., 2013; Piurko et al., 2011; Thorisdottir et al., 2007) by considering non-European countries that previous works have often neglected. We include established democracies (Australia, Finland, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and the United States), countries in which democracy has been re-established after a more or less prolonged interval of authoritarian regimes (Brazil, Chile, Greece, Spain, Turkey), and postcommunist countries (Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine).

Moreover, the present study measures values with the full 40-item version of the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ), which allows assessing the 10 basic personal values with adequate reliability, examining their relations with ideological self-placement. It complements and extends earlier cross-cultural studies, which relied on the short, 21 item version of the PVQ.

We examined the pattern of relations of the whole set of values with ideological self-placement. Right and conservative ideologies of most countries emphasize security, limited government, and traditional family and national values. Such policy is compatible with and may express the motivational goals of security and tradition values. Left and liberal ideologies, in contrast, emphasize the merits of the welfare state, express strong concern for social justice and tolerance of diverse groups (even those that might disturb the conventional social order), and emphasize pluralism and equality (Bobbio, 1996). The expected consequences of such a policy are compatible with universalism values.

We, therefore, expect that ideological self-placement on the left/right and the liberal–conservative scales correlate most positively with universalism values and most negatively with security and tradition values. The circular motivational structure of the 10 values implies that correlations would decline from universalism to security and tradition in both directions around the circle.

Although this is the expected pattern, a certain degree of variability in the strength of the relationships is to be expected. As argued by Barnea and Schwartz (1998), the predictive validity of particular values may vary as a function of the ideological content of the political discourse. Moreover, in keeping with previous results (Aspelund et al., 2013; Piurko et al., 2011), we expect that the contribution of basic values to ideological self-placement is stronger in established democracies than in postcommunist societies.

Method

Participants and Procedures

This study involved 16 countries. Data from 15 countries (Australia, Brazil, Chile, Finland, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States) were available from a cross-cultural project aimed at investigating the role of values in shaping political preferences (Schwartz et al., 2013; Vecchione et al., 2015). We performed secondary analysis of data in these countries. Additional data have been collected in Japan. This allowed us to extend the generalizability of results to an Asiatic country.

As described in Schwartz et al. (2013), a representative national sample was obtained in Germany and Turkey. Researchers from other countries enlisted university students to gather the data. The same instructions for administering the instruments were used in all countries. Table 1 presents the characteristics of the samples.

Table 1.

Description of the Samples.

Country	N	% female	Mean age (SD)	Mean years of education (SD)^a	Median household income^b
Australia	285	54	36.1 (13.9)	16.6 (3.6)	3
Brazil	995	56	34.1 (9.0)	19.1 (4.1)	2
Chile	415	50	43.3 (13.4)	15.8 (4.2)	3
Finland	428	68	40.1 (13.2)	16.2 (4.3)	4
Germany	1,066	46	53.7 (16.4)	14.6 (4.4)	4
Greece	374	48	41.9 (12.0)	15.3 (3.5)	3
Israel	478	57	38.6 (12.7)	15.6 (3.0)	4
Italy	557	56	38.7 (13.9)	15.3 (3.7)	4
Japan	364	54	44.6 (13.9)	14.5 (2.5)	3
Poland	699	56	36.6 (13.0)	15.1 (3.0)	4
Slovakia	485	51	47.7 (14.6)	14.4 (3.3)	5
Spain	420	54	37.7 (14.8)	14.3 (3.1)	4
Turkey	512	46	37.7 (13.2)	11.4 (3.3)	5
Ukraine	735	48	41.1 (12.6)	14.0 (3.3)	4
United Kingdom	469	64	36.7 (12.1)	14.2 (2.9)	2
United States	543	56	32.6 (14.4)	14.0 (2.2)	4

Include compulsory years of schooling.

Income was measured with the following scale: 1 = very much above the average of your country; 2 = above the average; 3 = a little above average; 4 = about average; 5 = a little below the average; 6 = below the average; 7 = very much below the average.

Measures

Ideology

Ideology was measured in each country through two distinct indicators. The first was a self-placement item on the liberal–conservative scale: “In political matters, people sometimes talk about conservatives and liberals. How would you place your views on this scale, generally speaking?” Alternatives ranged from 1 (extremely liberal) to 7 (extremely conservative). The second was a self-placement item on the left–right scale: “In political matters, people sometimes talk about and ‘the left’ and ‘the right.’ How would you place your views on this scale, generally speaking?” Alternatives ranged from 1 (left) to 10 (right). We used the liberal–conservative scale in the United Kingdom and the United States, and the left–right scale in all other countries. This decision was based on input from the country collaborators about the common usage in their country. The left–right item was rescaled to a seven-point scale, to have the same range of the liberal–conservative scale.

Voting

We measured political choice directly by asking participants which party they had voted for in the most recent national election. We included parties with at least 25 voters in the analysis. To maximize the number of cases in the analysis, researchers in 9 out of 16 countries combined small parties (n < 25) with larger parties or with one another, based on the similarity of their ideological orientations. Voting was coded as an ordered categorical variable, by positioning political parties along the left–right continuum. The number of categories varied across nations, depending on the number of political parties that were considered. Parties represented in each country and number of voters for each are listed in the Appendix.

Values

The PVQ (Schwartz, 2005) measured basic values. It includes 40 short verbal portraits of different people matched to the respondents’ gender, each describing a person’s goals, aspirations, or wishes that point implicitly to the importance of a value. For example, “Thinking up new ideas and being creative is important to him. He likes to do things in his own original way” describes a person who holds self-direction values important. Three to six items measure each value. For each portrait, respondents indicate how similar the person is to themselves on a scale ranging from not like me at all to very much like me. We infer respondents’ own values from the implicit values of the people they consider similar to themselves. In the current study, Cronbach’s alpha reliabilities averaged across the 16 samples ranged from .62 (tradition) to .89 (universalism).

Results

Ideological Self-Placement and Voting

The left panel of Table 2 reports country means and standard deviations for the left–right and the liberal–conservative scales. Participants with missing data on ideological self-placement (3.6% of the total sample) were excluded from the analysis.¹ The mean of left–right ideology ranged across countries from 3.38 (Australia) to 6.23 (Poland). The mean score of liberal–conservative self-placement was 3.12 in the United Kingdom and 3.90 in the United States. The right panel of Table 2 reports Spearman’s correlations of ideological self-placement with voting. Correlations were significant in all countries except Ukraine. The preference for a left-wing (or liberal) ideology was consistently associated with voting for left-wing parties. According to Cohen’s (1988) standards, correlations were large in Australia, Brazil, Finland, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and the United States; moderate in Chile, Poland, Slovakia, and United Kingdom; and small in Japan.

Table 2.

Ideological Self-Placement: Means and Standard Deviations, and Correlations With Voting.

Country	M (SD)	Pearson’s r with voting
Australia	3.38 (1.54)	.56**
Chile	4.98 (2.14)	.48**
Brazil	4.62 (1.88)	.70**
Finland	5.11 (2.17)	.67**
Germany	4.66 (1.67)	.64**
Greece	4.46 (2.00)	.61**
Israel	5.11 (2.40)	.80**
Italy	4.93 (2.56)	.74**
Japan	5.44 (1.36)	.16*
Poland	6.23 (2.25)	.49**
Slovakia	5.47 (2.03)	.39**
Spain	4.68 (2.37)	.75**
Turkey	5.64 (2.49)	.60**
Ukraine	5.31 (1.67)	−.01
United Kingdom	3.12 (1.38)	.42**
United States	3.90 (1.32)	.54**

Note. We used the liberal–conservative scale in the United Kingdom and the United States, and the left–right scale in the other countries. Higher means indicate self-placement further to the right and to the conservative poles.

p < .01. **p < .001.

The Contribution of Basic Values to Ideological Self-Placement

We used a multilevel regression analysis to investigate the unique contribution of the 10 values to ideology in the overall sample, controlling for basic sociodemographic variables (gender, age, income, and education). This approach, often referred to as random coefficient model (Kreft & De Leeuw, 1998), takes into account the nested nature of the data (individuals are nested within countries). It permits examining the effect of individual-level variables on ideological self-placement, without incurring problems typically associated with the use of ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with nested data. It also allows examining whether these effects vary significantly across countries.

In a first step, we estimated an empty model, which only includes the intercept. This model was estimated to calculate the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of ideological self-placement. The ICC was .08, indicating that 8% of the total variance in ideology was accounted for by differences between countries.

We then estimated a random-intercept model, which adds Level 1 explanatory variables (i.e., basic personal values and sociodemographic variables). We centered the 10 values and the continuous demographic variables on their group mean. Gender was coded as 0 (female) and 1 (male). Results showed that the three conservation values (security, b = .16, p < .001; tradition, b = .10, p < .001; and conformity, b = .10, p < .001) predicted a preference for right/conservative ideology (a higher score on the scale). Power (b = .05, p < .01) and stimulation (b = .05, p < .01) were also related to a preference for right/conservative ideology, although to a lesser extent. Universalism (b = −.31, p < .001) and hedonism (b = −.07, p < .01) predicted a preference for left/liberal ideology (a lower score on the scale). Among the demographics, education (b = −.01, p < .05) and income (b = −.06, p < .01) predicted a preference for left/liberal ideology.

Figure 2 reports full set of unstandardized regression coefficients for personal values. As can be observed, the coefficients followed the motivational circle of values, declining from security to universalism in both directions. All these relationships, except for in the case of universalism, were quite weak. This figure, however, reflects the overall effects on ideology across the 16 samples. Allowing the relationship between ideology and values to vary across countries, we found that the effects of five values (conformity, security, tradition, universalism, and power) varied significantly (p < .01). This suggests that the same pattern cannot be generalized to all countries. We, therefore, performed separate analyses for each sample, using OLS multiple regression.

Figure 2.

Unstandardized regression coefficients relating basic values to ideology in a multilevel analysis.

Table 3 presents the unique contribution of values to ideological self-placement in each country, controlling for the effect of the demographic variables. Given the high number of tests being performed, we applied a Bonferroni correction to determine whether each of the 10 regression coefficient was significant in each country (i.e., the critical level of significance was set at .01). We found that universalism values predicted a preference for left/liberal ideology in all countries, except Ukraine and Slovakia. Security, tradition, and conformity values predicted a preference for right/conservative ideology in most countries. The effects of the other values were weaker and much less consistent across countries.

Table 3.

Standardized OLS Regression Coefficients Relating Basic Values to Ideological Self-Placement.

	SE	CO	TR	BE	UN	SD	ST	HE	AC	PO	R ²	Similarity with the overall pattern
Australia	.23**	.07	.14	.03	−.24**	−.10	.16	−.15	−.01	.18*	.26	.86**
Brazil	.16**	.12**	.12**	.04	−.32**	−.03	.02	−.09	.05	.10*	.17	.93**
Chile	.14	.22**	.00	.06	−.30**	.07	.02	.03	−.07	.09	.20	.71**
Finland	.25**	.19**	.02	.06	−.41**	.02	.15**	−.09	.02	.06	.32	.84**
Germany	.24**	.04	.25**	−.05	−.32**	.07	.07	−.06	−.09	.03	.18	.95**
Greece	.20**	−.05	.31**	−.02	−.37**	.06	.00	.05	.08	.02	.29	.86**
Israel	.22**	−.02	.42**	−.01	−.31**	.05	.11	−.03	−.04	.03	.31	.90**
Italy	.23**	.07	.14**	.05	−.38**	.04	−.09	.00	.11	.10	.27	.83**
Japan	.24**	.04	.19**	.00	−.24**	−.11	.10	−.10	.00	.05	.12	.92**
Poland	.12*	−.09	.24**	.02	−.15*	.13	.02	−.09	−.01	−.13	.09	.62*
Slovakia	−.10	−.09	.04	.09	−.01	−.03	.03	−.11	−.04	.06	.05	.04
Spain	.05	.18*	.15	.09	−.32**	−.10	.12	−.01	−.10	.11	.22	.83**
Turkey	.12	.00	.19**	−.03	−.17**	−.11	.02	−.06	−.07	.07	.13	.88**
United Kingdom	.23**	.03	.24**	−.03	−.35**	−.08	.06	−.06	.01	.09	.30	.98**
Ukraine	.01	.04	.10*	−.11*	.01	.08	.17**	−.03	−.03	−.03	.06	.24
United States	.03	.14	.22**	.08	−.29**	−.06	.10	−.03	−.01	.02	.16	.88**

Note. OLS = ordinary least squares; SE = security; CO = conformity; TR = tradition; BE = benevolence; UN = universalism; SD = self-direction; ST = stimulation; HE = hedonism; AC = achievement; PO = power.

p < .01. **p < .001.

To evaluate the degree of deviation from the overall pattern, we calculated the Pearson’s correlation between the 10 regression coefficients derived from aggregated data and the regression coefficients estimated in each country.² Pearson’s r was higher than .80 (p < .05) in 12 of 16 countries, revealing a substantial homogeneity in the effect that values exerted on ideology (Table 3, last column). The lowest r was observed in postcommunist countries, particularly in Slovakia and Ukraine, where it was not significantly different from zero.³

The incremental contribution of basic values, after controlling for the effect of the demographics, was substantial in most samples. In Western and Southern European countries, the R² ranged from .18 (Germany) to .32 (Finland). A similar effect was found in non-European countries, where the R² varied between .12 (Japan) and .26 (Australia). The smallest contribution was observed in the three postcommunist countries, where the R² ranged from .05 (Slovakia) to .09 (Poland).

Discussion

The aim of this study was to examine the association between ideological self-placement and voting, as well as pattern of relations between Schwartz’s basic personal values and ideological self-placement across 16 countries that differ widely in their traditions, cultural and historical roots. Ideology is a strong predictor of voting in most countries. The highest correlations (.70 or higher) were observed in Brazil, Israel, Italy, and Spain, where ideological self-placement serves as a virtual proxy for voting choice. This pattern of results suggests that claims of the end of ideology and the decline of the right and left divide have been prematurely announced, as already noted by Jost (2006). Although the underlying principles are complex and difficult to grasp, the traditional left–right distinction still serves as useful heuristic device that helps voters to organize political knowledge, to assess political programs, to structure their judgments, and to make their choices (Sears, Lau, Tyler, & Allen, 1980). Likely, right and left are ideological labels that have an intrinsic value, even if they do not always share the same meanings and carry the same priorities across different polities. Yet, they may act as attractors that, at collective level, enable people to take position with others and to strengthen consensus.

This occurs in established democracies where citizens are accustomed to voting as an act that is both symbolic and expressive and that goes beyond contingent interests. People vote despite being aware their single vote is almost irrelevant with respect to the final outcome of an election. People vote regardless of their position in society as voting attests to the personal and social identity they cherish, to their being persons worthy of respect, to the equal dignity of their views as citizens, and to their belongingness and inclusiveness (Caprara, 2008). In this regard, ideology is the device that allows people to cope with complexity and that meets the two fundamental needs of human existence, agency, and communion, namely, the needs to exert one’s own will and to feel part of a community.

The power of ideology in accounting for voting holds also in postcommunist societies, such as Poland and Slovakia, although to a lesser extent. In these countries, the demise of socialist ideals has carried tremendous changes in the political landscape. Ukraine constituted the only country that showed no relation between ideology and voting. One may speculate about the different historical vicissitudes and political traditions of this country, which may account for its being an outlier, even with regard to Poland and Slovakia.

The pattern of relationship of ideological self-placement with basic values revealed that the critical trade-off underlying ideology is between values concerned with tolerance and protection for the welfare of all people (universalism) versus values concerned with preserving the social order and status quo (security).

Universalism and security are located on opposite sides of the motivational circle of values (Schwartz, 1992), as they express conflicting motivations, that seems to correspond closely to liberalism and social welfare versus social conservatism. Universalism values call for promoting the welfare of others even at cost to the self. Moreover, they express concern for the weak, those most likely to suffer from market-driven policies. Security values emphasize preserving the social order. The trade-off between these two values seems to capture particularly well the ideological divide in most countries (e.g., Braithwaite, 1997; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003).

It is remarkable that similar results hold across countries, despite the different trajectories to democracy and the diversities of contents that can be traced under the same ideological labels. A notable exception was found in postcommunist countries, especially in Ukraine and Slovakia, where relations of values with ideology were near to zero. In this regard, one may speculate about the different historical vicissitudes and political traditions of these countries, even with regard to other postcommunist countries, such as Poland. It is possible that the experience of communism in these countries has erased memories of past democratic regimes, and that the profound changes following its collapse resulted in confusion about the definition of left and right. Future studies should further investigate the extent to which past and contingent ideological forces impinge on voting among postcommunist countries whose transition to democratic institutions is still far from being fully achieved.

When interpreting the results of this study, potential limitations should be considered, attributable to sampling or methodological artifacts. A first limitation is that participants were from convenience samples, except for in Germany and Turkey. Thus, one cannot generalize our findings to the entire countries population. For example, participants included in our samples of convenience were more educated, wealthier, and urban than the general population. Yet, the patterns of findings in national samples were largely consistent with those from samples of convenience. Moreover, we cannot exclude that differences across countries in the strength of the effects was due, at least in part, by differences in the reliability of the measures. A further limitation is the limited number of countries, which did not allow us to investigate the role of cultural-level variables in moderating the strength of the relations between values and ideology. Future studies, using a higher number of representative samples from over the world, are needed to investigate the role of different country-level variables, such as economic development of the country, level of democratization, type and importance of religion (for a similar approach, see, for instance, Bond et al., 2004).

Despite the above limitations, we believe that this study is informative regarding the relationship among basic values, ideological orientation, and voting in a variety of representative democracies. The relatively consistent pattern of covariation between these variables suggests that political ideology has a common core of meaning, despite the diversity of left/liberal and right/conservative policies across countries.

Footnotes

Appendix

Political Parties, Ordered From Left to Right, and Number of Voters for Each.

Country	N	Parties
Australia	252	Greens (n = 67), Labor Party (n = 115), Liberal and Nationals combined (n = 70)
Brazil	693	Partito dos Trabalhadores (PT) and Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (PTB) combined (n = 447), Partido Democràtico Trabalhista (PDT; n = 44), Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB; n = 174), Partido do Movimento Democràtico Brasileiro (PMDB) and Partido Progressista (PP) combined (n = 28)
Finland	368	Left Alliance, Green League, and Social Democratic Party combined (n = 226); Centre party (n = 45); Christian Democrats, Swedish Peoples party, National Coalition party, and Basic Finnish party combined (n = 97)
Chile	266	Partido Por la Democracia (PPD; n = 45), Partido Socialista (PS; n = 30), Partido Demócrata Cristiano (PDC; n = 55), Renovación Nacional (RN; n = 103), Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI; n = 33)
Germany	795	Die Linke (n = 43), Alliance ’90/The Greens (n = 130), Social Democratic Party (SPD; n = 255), CDU/CSU (n = 306), Free Democratic Party (FDP; n = 61)
Greece	263	K.K.E. (n = 29), SYRIZA (n = 40), Greens (n = 25), PASOK (n = 124), New Democracy (n = 45)
Israel	362	Meretz–the new movement (n = 56); Avoda-Meimad (n = 73); Kadima (n = 93); Likud (n = 81); HaBa’it Hayehudi - Ichud Leumi, Shas, and Yahadut Ha’Torah combined (Religious-Mafdal, n = 32); Israel Bei’tenu (n = 27)
Italy	615	The Italian Marxist and Leninist Party, Workers’ Communist Party, the Italian Communist Party, Rainbow Left, and the Greens combined (n = 32); Democratic Party (n = 226); Italy of Values (n = 40); Union of the Center (UdC), Union of Democrats for Europe (UDEUR), and La Rosa Bianca combined (n = 25); People of Freedom Party (n = 136), the Movement for the Autonomy, and Northeast League combined (n = 156)
Japan	227	The Democratic Party, Japan Restoration Party, and Social Democratic Party combined (n = 49); The Liberal Democratic Party, New Komeiro, and Your Party combined (n = 178)
Poland	548	Democratic Left Alliance (SLD; n = 59), Samoobrona and Polish People’s Party (PSL) combined (n = 27), Civic Platform (PO; n = 318), Law and Justice (Pis; n = 144)
Slovakia	407	Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS), Direction – Social Democracy (SMER-SD), Party of Civil Solidarity (S.O.S.), Party of the Democratic Left (SDL), and Union of the Workers of Slovakia (ZRS) combined (The Left, n = 171); Slovak People’s Party (SLS), and People’s Party – Our Slovakia (L’SNS) combined (n = 82); Movement for Democracy (HZD), Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), People’s Party – Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (LS-HZDS), Civic Conservative Party (OKS), and Slovak Democratic and Christian Union – Democratic Party (SKDÚ-DS) combined (Conservative Right, n = 154)
Spain	292	United Left (UI; n = 44), Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE; n = 127), Popular Party (PP; n = 121)
Turkey	312	Republican People’s Party (CHP; n = 99), Justice and Development Party (AKP; n = 184), Motherland Party (ANAP), Democratic Party (DP), Young Party (GP), Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and Felicity Party (SP) combined (Other right-wing, n = 29)
Ukraine	541	Party of Regions (n = 89), Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (n = 225), Lytvyn’s Bloc (n = 27), Our Ukraine–People’s Self-Defense Bloc (n = 200)
United Kingdom	284	Liberal Democrats (n = 72), Labour (n = 154), Conservatives (n = 58)
United States	317	Democratic (n = 210), Republican (n = 107)

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The work of Jan Cieciuch was supported by Grant 2014/14/M/HS6/00919 from the National Science Centre, Poland.

Notes

Author Biographies

Gian Vittorio Caprara holds a Laurea degree in political science and a specialization degree in psychology, both from the Catholic University of Milan. He is full professor of personality psychology at Sapienza University of Rome, where he served as chair of Department of Psychology; dean of Faculty of Psychology; president of Federate Faculties of Arts, Law and Economics; and director of the Inter-University Center for the Research on the origin of prosocial and antisocial motivations. His primary research interests focus on personality development and assessment and psychosocial adjustment.

Michele Vecchione holds a Laurea degree in psychology from Sapienza University of Rome and a PhD in personality and social psychology from the University of Padua. He is associate professor of psychometrics at the Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome. His research interests focus on psychological assessment and multivariate statistics in the field of personality and social psychology.

Shalom H. Schwartz is professor emeritus of psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and scientific supervisor of the Socio-Cultural Research Laboratory of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. He holds a PhD in social psychology (University of Michigan), is a past president of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, is an Israel Prize Laureate in psychology, and recipient of a distinguished career award from the American Sociological Association. He has been a member of the European Social Survey scientific board since 1997 and authored its Human Values Scale. His individual and culture-level value theories have been used in research in more than 80 countries. He has written or edited nine books and published more than 220 articles in international journals in social, cross-cultural, and developmental psychology, political science, sociology, education, management, law, and economics. His publications have been cited in the literature more than 50,000 times.

Harald Schoen is professor of political psychology at the University of Mannheim. His research interests include political psychology, political behavior, public opinion, online communication, and political methodology. His recent publications include Old Friends in Troubled Waters: Policy Principles, Elites, and U.S.-German Relations at the Citizen Level After the Cold War, Nomos, 2016 (coauthored with Hans Rattinger, Fabian Endres, Sebastian Jungkunz, Matthias Mader, and Jana Pötzschke).

Paul G. Bain is a senior lecturer at QUT in Brisbane, Australia. His research interests include human values, lay theories, and beliefs (e.g., about human nature and how societies change over time), psychological essentialism, dehumanization, and cross-cultural psychology.

Jo Silvester is an organizational psychologist who specializes in the assessment and development of leaders in public, private, and political organizations.

Jan Cieciuch is a professor of psychology at the Cardinal Wyszynski University in Warsaw (Poland) and a project leader of the University Research Priority Program on Social Networks at the University of Zurich (Switzerland). His interests are psychology of personality and values. Inspired by the circle of values, he codeveloped together with his team a Circumplex of Personality Metatraits and a Circumplex of Identity Formation Modes. His recent publications appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Research on Personality, Self and Identity, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, and Annual Review of Sociology.

Vassilis Pavlopoulos is associate professor of cross-cultural psychology in the Department of Psychology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. His research interests and published work focus on acculturation and adaptation of immigrants, resilience processes of immigrant youth, perceived discrimination and beliefs about justice, cross-cultural study of personal and political values, and the cultural processes of behavioral intentions.

Gabriel Bianchi, senior research fellow at Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute for Research in Social Communication, has several intertwined research and teaching focuses: public participation and deliberative democracy, values, intimate citizenship, sexual and reproductive rights, and health. Recently, his research covers also issues of societal and ethical responses to science and technology innovations.

Hasan Kirmanoglu is a former professor of economics in Istanbul Bilgi University (Department of Economics). He has got his PhD from Paris West University Nanterre La Defense. He has published extensively in journals such as the European Journal of Political Research, Party Politics, Socio-Economic Review, and Social Indicators Research.

Cem Baslevent has a BA degree in economics and mathematics from Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania (1994), and MA and PhD degrees in economics from Bogazici University in Turkey (1996 and 2001). He has published applied studies in journals such as World Development, Urban Studies, Social Indicators Research, and Party Politics. Since 2000, he has been a faculty member in the Department of Economics at Istanbul Bilgi University.

Cătălin Mamali, PhD (University of Bucharest, 1976), is presently at Department of Social Sciences NICC-Iowa, USA. He has published research on motivation, interpersonal cognitive behavior, interpersonal relationships within totalitarian societies, interrogative orientations of scientists, social iconic metaphors, interpersonal crucial experiences, the interface diary-correspondence, on participatory methods and political genealogies. He published a few books such as Interknowledge (1974), Motivational Balance and Coevolution (1981), and The Gandhian Mode of Becoming (1998). Studies on social representations on U.S. genocide (“Accuracy of Basic Knowledge of Traumatic Historical Events: The Armenian Genocide.” Journal of Loss and Trauma, published online, May 11, 2016). He received a Fulbright award (1990-1991) at University of Iowa.

Jorge Manzi, is director of MIDE, Research Center for the Assessment of Educational and Organizational Systems.

Miyuki Katayama is professor of social psychology in the Faculty of Sociology, Department of Social Psychology, Toyo University in Tokyo, Japan. Her basic research interests are the process of maintenance of public order even in a state of emergency, and the origins of cognition filled in good will such as Japanese even in conflicting situations.

Tetyana Posnova is affiliated to Yuriy Fedkovich Chernivtsi national University, Ukraine.

Carmen Tabernero is professor of social psychology at the University of Salamanca, Spain. From a social–cognitive perspective, her main research interest is focus on the analysis of motivational processes at individual and collective level (e.g., self-efficacy beliefs, goals, emotional states, positivity, values) related to behavioral intentions and behaviors (decision making, acculturation processes, prosocial behaviors, proenvironmental behaviors, organizational and political behaviors).

Claudio Torres is a full professor at the Department of Social and Work Psychology at the University of Brazilia, Brazil, and head of the Institute of Psychology at the same university. He is affiliated with International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, where he was representative for Latin America. He lectures and has research interests in cross-cultural psychology, human values, and political psychology.

Markku Verkasalo is at the Department of Psychology and Logopedics, University of Helsinki.

Jan-Erik Lönnqvist, professor of social psychology at the University of Helsinki, has primarily focused on personality traits and personal values. More recent research interests are moral and political psychology.

Eva Vondráková is assistant professor at the legal department of the Department of Social Work and Social Sciences at Faculty of Social Sciences and Health Care, University of Constantine the Philosopher, teaches legal disciplines and is coauthor of publications dealing with social problems and human rights. Full list of publications is available at .

Maria Giovanna Caprara is professor of psychology at the Open University of Madrid (UDIMA), Spain, and she is director of the master’s program in social gerontology (2013-2016). Her research interests focus on psychogerontology and social gerontology, promoting active aging, and determinants of well-being in older people.

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