The value wheel, colored by which way each value bends politics

The ten Schwartz values at their theory-fixed positions on the circumplex. A dot's distance from the center is the strength of that value's within-country median correlation with left–right self-placement across the 18 countries of Western Europe; red dots pull Right, blue dots pull Left.

pulls Right (positive r with left–right) pulls Left (negative r) rings at r = 0.05, 0.10, 0.15

Takeaway: the conservation arc — conformity, tradition, security — lights up red on the right of the wheel; the self-transcendence arc — universalism, benevolence — lights up blue on the left. The two strongest signals, conformity (r = +0.118) and universalism (r = −0.190), sit almost opposite one another, exactly as Schwartz's circle predicts.

Each value's correlation is computed within each Western-European country (weighted), then the median across the 18 countries is taken so no large sample dominates. Angles are fixed by Schwartz (1992) theory; only the radius and color carry data. The PVQ-21 battery was fielded in ESS rounds 1–10; per-country cells require effective N ≥ 300. Source: European Social Survey, weighted.

The four axes of the wheel, tilted onto left–right

Each Schwartz higher-order axis's pooled correlation with left–right self-placement, in Western Europe (solid) against post-communist Europe (hollow). Conservation and self-enhancement lean Right; openness and self-transcendence lean Left — but only in the West.

Western Europe (18 countries) post-communist Europe (18)

Takeaway: in Western Europe (filled dots) the four axes fan out into a clear right-to-left spread; in the post-communist East (hollow dots) all four collapse onto the zero line. Conservation pulls right at +0.147 in the West but a near-zero −0.018 in the East; self-transcendence pulls left at −0.169 in the West and a flat −0.034 in the East.

Correlations are weighted Pearson r between each higher-order value axis and the 0–10 left–right scale, pooled within each group (Western Europe carries the cross-country survey weight). Western Europe (18) = AT BE CH DE DK ES FI FR GB GR IE IS IT LU NL NO PT SE; post-communist (18) = AL BG CZ EE HR HU LT LV ME MK PL RO RS RU SI SK UA XK. Source: ESS rounds 1–10, weighted.

Western Europe sorts on values; the post-communist East does not

One dot per country. Horizontal: how strongly conservation values track the Right. Vertical: how strongly self-transcendence values track the Left (plotted downward, so the lower-right is the strong-sorting corner). Western Europe pulls toward that corner; the post-communist East clusters at the origin.

Western Europe post-communist Europe neither (Cyprus, Israel, Turkey)

Takeaway: the warm Western dots gather in the lower-right — conservation pulling right, self-transcendence pulling left, both strongly — while the slate post-communist dots pile up near the origin, where neither value has any political direction. The average composite strength is 0.29 in the West against 0.135 in the East: the values sort people 2.1 times as hard where the spectrum is settled.

Each axis is the within-country weighted correlation of the value axis with the 0–10 left–right scale; cells require effective N ≥ 300 (the per-country pools run from 407 to 18,579). Cyprus, Israel, and Turkey are shown but excluded from the two headline groups. Source: ESS rounds 1–10, weighted.