Liberals vs. Conservatives on the Schwartz Values Scale
I had to do a presentation relating some of my current work on yourmorals.org to some of the history of moral psychology and in doing so, I created this graph. It doesn't include all the respondents on yourmorals.org as we changed our politics measure at one point and this graph only represents our newest subjects. Still, it's interesting as it confirms elements of the 5 foundation theory using a well validated measure (the Schwartz Values Scale) which has been previously used on representative samples of thousands across various cultures.
Notable results, IMHO, are that conservatives appear to value power, tradition, conformity, and security more than liberals. Liberals appear to value universality and stimulation more and to a lesser degree self direction and hedonism. All of these results seem to confirm conventional wisdom. From a liberal perspective, the fact that conservatives score as highly (or even a bit higher, though I'm not sure if the difference is statistically significant yet) on benevolence is perhaps surprising....but only to liberals...:)
btw, the green bar represents my scores and obviously I've interpreted the scale instructions differently than most...or else I just don't value anything...
Comments
Main Themes of This Blog
- •Post-Materialism: People are increasingly motivated by values and higher order psychological needs.
- •Book Reviews – Consilience between psychology and books I read.
- •Hypermoralism – Morality causes ordinary people to do immoral things.
- •What are the psychological differences that make people liberal democrats, conservative republicans, or libertarians?
Vote for the Best Psych Books
Categories
- book reviews
- business of psychology
- civil politics
- consilience
- consumer psychology
- data science
- differences between republicans and democrats
- drug laws
- gross domestic product
- hypermoralism
- justice and fairness
- libertarians
- Links
- main themes of this blog
- misc
- moral confabulation
- moral confabulation in the news
- moral emotions
- moral foundations
- moral imagination
- moral psychology
- news commentary
- political psychology
- positive psychology
- Post Materialism
- ranker
- replications of other studies
- technology business
- the old polipsych
- unpublished results
- War and Peace
- yourmorals.org
Blogroll
- AboutMyJob.com
- Consumer Psychology Self-Tests @ Beyond The Purchase.Org
- Pilates Anytime – Online Pilates Classes
- Ranker Votable Lists
- Ranker's Data Blog
- Tal Yarkoni's Psychology/Informatics Blog
- Tara Met Blog
- The Music is Over – Musician Obituaries
- YourMorals.org
Explore
academia
aggression
big 5
big data
civility
coherence
conservatives
consilience
differences between liberals and conservatives
disgust
empathy
equality
equity
fairness
hypermoralism
idealistic evil
incivility
jon stewart
liberals
liberals and conservatives
libertarians
libya
mitt romney
moral absolutism
moral foundations
moral maximizing
moral psychology
neuroticism
new york times
obama
openness to experience
partisanship
peace
peer review
personality traits
political psychology
religion
romney
social dominance orientation
social psychology
stephen colbert
sxsw
technology
votehelp.org
war book reviews (10)
business of psychology (17)
civil politics (16)
consilience (18)
consumer psychology (7)
data science (3)
differences between republicans and democrats (20)
drug laws (3)
gross domestic product (1)
hypermoralism (11)
justice and fairness (6)
libertarians (9)
Links (1)
main themes of this blog (4)
misc (1)
moral confabulation (10)
moral confabulation in the news (8)
moral emotions (3)
moral foundations (4)
moral imagination (2)
moral psychology (28)
news commentary (47)
political psychology (70)
positive psychology (13)
Post Materialism (7)
ranker (5)
replications of other studies (8)
technology business (1)
the old polipsych (4)
unpublished results (26)
War and Peace (7)
yourmorals.org (84)
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.
Archive
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- April 2009
- September 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- June 2006
- May 2004
- April 2004
Consumer Psychology Posts
- The Costs and Benefits of ?Living for Now?
- You are Not That Great
- Money and Happiness: The Costs and Benefits of Living for Now
- The First International Day of Happiness
- Money and Happiness: Materialists Not Happier When Purchasing Life Experiences
Last 10 Posts:
- May 7, 2013
Personality Types in Business: Conscientious CEOs & Open Technologists - April 25, 2013
Big Data Stocks? Invest in Data, not in Tools. - April 4, 2013
The Moral Foundations of Environmentalists - March 26, 2013
Your Values Predict the Stories You Choose - December 14, 2012
How to Prevent Mental Illness: Help others with their stressful life events - November 24, 2012
When is investment banking immoral? A review of Greg Smith’s book, Why I left Goldman Sachs. - November 21, 2012
On Mitt Romney and The X-Files - November 18, 2012
The Gaza Conflict and Being Pro-Peace rather than Anti-War - November 8, 2012
Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin and Paul Krugman need to get out of Maslow’s Basement. - November 5, 2012
Early Voting is a Social Influence Tool, so tell everyone when you vote!
Civil Politics Posts
- The Driven Snowe: Centrist as Outsider May 17, 2013 Beau Lebette
- Millennials: Not Immune to Extreme Partisanship May 8, 2013 Beau Lebette
- A Civil Exploration of Religion May 7, 2013 Connor Wood
- Does President Obama Golf Enough? April 30, 2013 Beau Lebette
- Ever Redder More Truly Blue: The Fate of States April 25, 2013 Beau Lebette
Popular Search Terms
- libertarian psychology
- Brother sister incest stories
- Brother and sister incest story
- real brother sister incest stories
- real brother sister incest story
- http://www polipsych com/2010/12/29/tony-washington-brother-sister-incest/
- examples of limitations in psychology experiments
- hypermoralism
- brother sister incest true stories
- the differences between gross national happiness and gross domestic product

January 17th, 2008 - 14:58
This does not surprise me. In fact, Schwartz’s Values Typology allows for differentiation between the social and fiscal conservatives (with former scoring higher on CONFORMITY-TRADITION-SECURITY dimension, and latter ranking higher POWER-ACHIEVEMENT values), and can bring out interesting division between 2 types of liberals: “hippies” (HEDONISM, STIMULATION, SELF-DIRECTION) and more regular liberals (ranking higher Self-Direction and Universalism). Benevolence always clang better with traditional values, both in multi-dimensional space and common sense, but in general it always has bee a very vague construct (although idea to differentiate between caring for all people, universalism, and caring for only those you know, benevolence, is absolutely great).
February 8th, 2012 - 07:37
I agree Konstantin, but I would also note that there is a big difference between caring about everyone and being willing to sacrifice for everyone. Some people prefer to give charity to those they know, based on whether they see value in that person. For instance, if my neighbor is a good person who fell on hard times, I would be more willing to sacrifice to help him out than if I know him to be using drugs, cheating on his wife, wasting what little money has by going to the bar, etc…
However, I see Liberal charity as not providing negative feedback to those who fail. I am in favor of safety nets, but I also subscribe to the Benjamin Franklin idea that the best way to help somebody out of poverty is to make that poverty as uncomfortable as possible. I personally know liberals who think it is the government/people’s responsibility to make sure that all people are comfortable. I can’t even explain how absurd that is. Think about this. You have two adult children. You tell one child that you will provide them with everything that they need to be comfortable. The get to live in the main house, have A/C, eat very good food, hot showers, big plush bed, cable TV, internet, nice clothes, etc… The other has to live in the garage. You provide him with plain but nutritional food. No A/C or heat, no cable TV, no extras. In short you help him sustain life, b providing basic food and shelter but that is it.
Which one is going to be more motivated to succeed and which is more likely to not succeed? I use this example because if we were to use two different parents, one rich and able to provide extras and one poor and not able to, some would interject that the rich spoiled kid would be more likely to succeed, but many would mistake why. It would be because daddy has connections and runs in circles where people have money. Think Kim Kardaschian or Paris Hilton. Obviously neither of these girls would be near as successful today if not for their wealthy parents. Even where there parents didn’t help, the simple fact is it opened doors for those kids.
My example makes you confront the reality of normal people. If you aren’t willing to work, you shouldn’t succeed. The more you provide for some people, they less they are motivated to provide it for themselves.
When I took economics, I was surprised to learn how social programs always have consequences in the economy, and often make things worse for the average person. Here’s a good example. A price ceiling on rent. Sounds great, right? Wrong. It reduces the quality and amount of housing because you reduce the supply. Who is going to provide housing if they are losing money? This is just scratching the surface.
OK, I’m rambling so I’ll stop there.