Beyond Personal Values: The Influence of Third-Order Values on Belief and Action

• In Event: 50806 - The Role of Culture, Institutions, and Power in Moral Action

Abstract

Sociology has long grappled with how collective phenomena shape individual beliefs and actions. Values are often employed, sometimes controversially, as key mechanisms linking individuals and ‘culture’. Critics argue that conventional constructs, particularly Schwartz’s value model (Schwartz et al., 2001), rely on aggregated individual preferences and thus inaccurately measure group-level cultural dynamics. This study introduces the concept of third-order values, defined as beliefs about what one’s salient social group values, as a framework that bridges individual-level preferences and collective cultural representations, and demonstrates the utility of an improved measure of third-order values. Using cross-national survey data from the United States, France, Turkey, and South Korea, we examine how the third-order importance of Schwartz’s values predicts theoretically related outcomes such as religious belief, religious actions, conservatism, and political engagement. Results from multivariate regression and multi-categorical mediation analyses indicate that third-order values have a direct influence on these outcomes, with personal values mediating part of this effect. This supports two distinct pathways: an identity-based indirect pathway, in which third-order values shape outcomes through personal value internalization, and a schema-based direct pathway, where third-order values independently guide beliefs and actions. We also found that, in several cases, third-order values explain more variance than personal values, underscoring their explanatory utility. These findings suggest that third-order values represent a distinct cultural mechanism through which group-based moral schemas shape individual beliefs and actions. By shifting the analytical and measurement focus from individual to perceived group-level values, this study contributes to sociological theory on the relationship between culture, morality, and action.

Authors

• Donghyun "Henry" Kim, University of Iowa

• Steven Hitlin, University of Iowa