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American scholars have concluded that values that emphasize the importance of tolerance and individualism have diverged sharply around the world over the past 40 years, especially between high-income Western countries and other nations.
Cultures differ not only in their customs and traditions, but also in their values. One of the main points that sociologists pay attention to is the attitude of representatives of different peoples to collectivism and individualism, rejection of social dependencies (emancipation) versus maintaining attachment to them, and faith versus skepticism. Understanding these differences is the goal of studying culture, since differences in social values give rise to international conflicts, shape legal norms and the economic climate.
Sociologists have long debated the nature of cultural change in the modernized world of globalization. Some philosophers believed that national cultures would converge by adopting the moral values typical of Western democracies. Others, on the contrary, are sure that cultural differences will not only persist, but even increase over time.
Thus, modernization theorists, inspired by the philosophy of Marx and Hegel, assumed that the end of the Cold War and the growth of globalization will become catalysts for the worldwide spread of "universal civilization" with liberal values of individualism, which emphasize the supremacy of the rights and freedoms of each individual. That is, the global spread of industrialization will destroy traditional culture and replace it with "modern" class structures and values characteristic of Western countries.
However, sociologists later became more skeptical of this point of view as conflicts based on clashing cultural values began to arise throughout the world during the 21st century.
Scientists from the University of Chicago (USA) decided to learn more about these competing hypotheses and presented their findings in the journal Nature Communications They suggested that, on the one hand, there should be a gradual convergence of values in high- and low-income countries due to globalization, but on the other hand, this feature may only be characteristic of those countries that have become richer over time.
The researchers analyzed survey data for the period from 1981 to 2022, in which 406 people - representatives of 185 different national cultures - participated. The scientists examined their differences in cultural values, among which were: attitudes to emancipation and obedience, homosexuality, the right to suicide, as well as the justification of euthanasia, divorce and/or abortion, prostitution.
Experts measured how similarities and differences in values between countries changed over the studied 41 years. They found that values emphasizing the importance of tolerance and individualism diverged most sharply, especially between high-income Western countries and the rest of the world. Residents of states with the same level of GDP per capita adhered to similar values throughout the studied period. Geographic proximity of regions has become an increasingly strong correlate of similarity of values. This means that they diverged globally, but converged at the regional level.
Scientists have assumed that globalization alone cannot lead to convergence of cultural and social values. Income levels may also affect them differently in different regions. For example, Hong Kong and Canada saw similar increases in per capita wealth from 2000 to 2020, but the latter country saw homosexual acceptance grow at a faster rate. At the same time, the importance of work ethics decreased in Canada, but increased in Hong Kong.
