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Shifts in Emancipative Values during Times of Crises: Longitudinal Evidence from the Covid-19 Pandemic in Russia
This study explores the dynamics of emancipative value orientations (EV) in Russia throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, using data for the period from June 2020 until December 2021 based on three panel waves of the international longitudinal survey “Values in Crisis”. Despite the profound impact that the pandemic has had on Russian society, we don't find any substantial decline in EV among our sample, in line with the “baseline stability theorem” in value research. However, we observe opposite trends for two components of EV: mean scores on choice values have been negligibly increasing over time, whereas the scores on equality values have been negligibly decreasing. Also, in line with the “baseline stability theorem”, we interpret these subtle value shifts as a periodic situational adjustment to Corona-specific infringements into people’s daily lives. As for within-individual dynamics, such indicators of the personal pandemic experience as (1) encountering the disease personally or in family; (2) losing а job/business, or (3) health-related anxiety, do not have any effect on choice values, although we find a weak positive association between equality values and (4) worries about a potential economic recession. In addition, latent growth mixture modelling suggests that considerable changes in EV occurred only among a very small fraction of the population (about 2% of the panel sample). Overall, our results are the first to demonstrate that the “baseline stability theorem” in value research holds even in the face of a most dramatic external shock, with radically new threats to the economic sustenance and physical health of everyone.