Political participation and basic values in Europe: Replication and extension of Vecchione et al. (2015)

British Journal of Psychology. 2021. Vol. 112. No. 4. P. 879–901.

Rudnev M.

Vecchione et al. (Br J Psychol, 106, 2015, 84) demonstrated the effects of four higher‐order values on political participation across 20 European countries. In their Study 1, they found that political participation was related to three higher‐order basic values and that these associations were stronger in more democratic countries. The present study attempted a replication using a more rigorous modelling approach. Multilevel structural equation models with latent variables for both participation and basic values replicated the main effects of Self‐Transcendence and Conservation values but demonstrated negative effects of Openness values (vs. positive in the original study) and positive effects of Self‐Enhancement values (vs. ambiguous or insignificant in the original study), while cross‐level interactions indicated weaker effects of values in more democratic countries (vs. the opposite in the original study). These discrepancies appeared mostly due to the original study’s implicit assumption that basic values’ measurement errors were zero. The new results indicated a counter‐intuitive similarity of effects of supposedly opposite values. Self‐Transcendence–Self‐Enhancement is suggested to be a politically motivating value dimension, whereas Openness to Change–Conservation is a dimension that discourages political participation regardless of the preferred extreme.

Keywords: political participation, measurement error, basic values, European Social Survey, measurement invariance

Publication based on the results of: Within country diversity and uniformity of values and opinions (2021)