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The Inglehart–Welzel cultural map of the world is a scatter plot created by political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel based on the World Values Survey and European Values Survey. It depicts closely linked cultural values that vary between societies in two predominant dimensions: traditional versus secular-rational values on the vertical y-axis and survival versus self-expression values on the horizontal x-axis. Moving upward on this map reflects the shift from traditional values to secular-rational ones and moving rightward reflects the shift from survival values to self-expression values.
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."
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.
Analysis of the World Values Survey data by Inglehart and Welzel asserts that there are two major dimensions of cross-cultural variation in the world.
"Replacement of religion and superstition with science and bureaucracy as the basis of behaviour and authority relations in a society".
The map is a chart in which countries are positioned based on their scores for the two values mapped on the x-axis (survival values versus self-expression values) and the y-axis (traditional values versus secular-rational values). The map shows where societies are located in these two dimensions. Clusters of countries reflect their shared values and not geographical closeness.
Traditional values emphasize the importance of religion, parent-child ties, deference to authority, absolute standards and traditional family values. People who embrace these values also reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide.
Societies that embrace these values have high levels of national pride and a nationalistic outlook.
Secular-rational values have the opposite preferences to the traditional values. Societies that embrace these values place less emphasis on religion, traditional family values and authority. Divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide are seen as relatively acceptable.
The shift from traditional to secular-rational values has been described by Engelbrekt and Nygren as "essentially the replacement of religion and superstition with science and bureaucracy as the basis of behaviour and authority relations in a society".
The map is a chart in which countries are positioned based on their scores for the two values mapped on the x-axis (survival values versus self-expression values) and the y-axis (traditional values versus secular-rational values). The map shows where societies are located in these two dimensions. Clusters of countries reflect their shared values and not geographical closeness.
Traditional values emphasize the importance of religion, parent-child ties, deference to authority, absolute standards and traditional family values. People who embrace these values also reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide.
Societies that embrace these values have high levels of national pride and a nationalistic outlook.
Secular-rational values have the opposite preferences to the traditional values. Societies that embrace these values place less emphasis on religion, traditional family values and authority. Divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide are seen as relatively acceptable.
The shift from traditional to secular-rational values has been described by Engelbrekt and Nygren as "essentially the replacement of religion and superstition with science and bureaucracy as the basis of behaviour and authority relations in a society".
"The shift from survival to self-expression also represents the transition from industrial society to post-industrial society."
A 2017 version of the map had countries divided into nine clusters: the English-speaking, Latin America, Catholic Europe, Protestant Europe, African-Islamic, Baltic, South Asian, Orthodox and Confucian clusters. In previous studies, the African-Islamic cluster was split into two (the African cluster and the Islamic cluster) and the Baltic states did not have their own cluster. Another proposed way to cluster the societies is by material wealth, with the poorer societies at the bottom of both axes, and richer at the top.
Out of Western world countries, the United States is among the most conservative (as one of the most downwards-located countries), together with highly conservative Catholic countries such as Ireland and Poland. Simoni concludes that "On the traditional/secular dimension, the United States ranks far below other rich societies, with levels of religiosity and national pride comparable with those found in some developing societies."
Asian societies are distributed in the traditional/secular dimension in two clusters, with more secular Confucian societies at the top, and more traditional South Asian ones at the center of the map.
Russia is among the most survival-value oriented countries, and at the other end, Sweden ranks highest on the self-expression chart.
It has also been found that basic cultural values overwhelmingly apply on national lines, with cross-border intermixtures being relatively rare. This is true even between countries with shared cultural histories. Additionally, even cultural clusters of countries do not intermix much across borders. This suggests nations are culturally meaningful units.
The cultural map has generally been well received and it is often cited or referred to. In 2009 Arno Tausch described it as "one of the most famous pieces of Inglehart's research tradition".[18] Likewise, a number of scholars have referred to it as famous (Niels-Christian Fritsche in 2009,[19] Elisabeth Staksrud in 2016,[20] Manfred Buchroithner in 2020,[21] Luigi Curini and Robert Franzese, likewise in 2020)
Despite its popularity, several[which?] scholars, have questioned whether the two dimensions represent adequate and useful measures of cultural differences.[citation needed]. In 2007 Majima and Savage have questioned which measures of culture are most adequate and whether the measured change over time is real,[23] and Bomhoff and Gu in 2012 have argued that East Asian attitudes and values are not adequately reflected.[24]
