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Values Maps
Every surveyed society placed on two axes — and the cultural zones that emerge when you do.
What it is
The World Values Survey, mapped by Inglehart and Welzel, reduces national culture to two axes and plots the world on them. Where Hofstede gives six dials, the WVS gives one memorable picture of how societies differ and drift.
Movement on the map is not random: as economies develop and security rises, societies tend to slide from survival toward self-expression and from traditional toward secular values — a directional signal, not just a snapshot.
Going deeper
Placement on the Inglehart–Welzel map is not static. As economies develop and existential security rises, societies tend to slide from survival toward self-expression and from traditional toward secular-rational values. The map is therefore a forecast as much as a snapshot: it says which way a developing society is likely to drift.
The cultural zones are not geographic accidents; they track shared history, religion and development path. Protestant Europe, the Confucian sphere and the African-Islamic cluster each cohere because their members travelled similar routes — which is why culturally close nations sit together even when they are far apart on the globe.
The most useful read is longitudinal: plot a nation across successive survey waves and watch it move. A society sliding toward self-expression is liberalising in a measurable way; one stalling or reversing under stress shows it too. The trajectory carries more signal than any single point.
Religion, family and authority versus secular, rational values.
The vertical axis: traditional societies emphasise religion, parent-child ties, deference to authority and national pride; secular-rational ones place less weight on all of these. It tracks the shift from agrarian to industrial.
Economic/physical security versus tolerance, trust and participation.
The horizontal axis, and the more consequential one: survival values emphasise economic and physical security with low trust and tolerance; self-expression values emphasise environmental protection, tolerance, gender equality and participation. It tracks the shift from industrial to post-industrial.
High secular-rational, high self-expression.
The Nordic and Germanic Protestant societies sit at the far secular, far self-expression corner — high trust, high tolerance, strong institutions. The reference case for post-materialist values.
Very high secular-rational, moderate on survival–self-expression.
East Asian Confucian-heritage societies score the most secular-rational of all, paired with a more survival-leaning position — a distinctive combination of pragmatism, education and social order.
Moderate-traditional, high self-expression.
The Anglophone societies cluster with relatively high self-expression but more traditional (often religious) values than Protestant Europe — individualist and tolerant, but less secular.
Traditional, moderate self-expression.
Latin American societies lean traditional — strong religion and family — while scoring surprisingly high on self-expression relative to their development, reflecting distinctive social warmth and life satisfaction.
Traditional and survival-oriented.
The African and Islamic-heritage cluster sits toward the traditional, survival corner — strong religion, family and authority with security-focused values, consistent with lower average development and security.
Read it honestly
The map is an average of averages and its cultural "zones" are broad generalisations that hide real internal diversity and change. Its strength is the directional insight — that development moves societies predictably across the map — not a precise placement of any country, and certainly not of any person.
Take Values Maps from reference to the live system.