Relationship Between Individual Values and Conceptions of Typical and Ideal Russian's Values

Researchers use self-, group- and culture-referenced ratings in order to make judgments about values prevailing in particular culture. Empirical evidence suggests, however, that these three types of values often overlap only modestly or do not overlap at all. Russian culture is one of the vivid examples of such inconsistency, since literary and scholarly views on Russian cultural values do not agree with personal values endorsed by real people living in Russia. Among potential factors that might produce such discrepancy the following are discussed: socioeconomic status of individual, interpersonal trust, and national identification. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to determine the relationship between self-, group- and culture-referenced values of Russians and estimate effects of socioeconomic status, national identification and interpersonal trust. Data was collected via survey. Participants (N = 297, age range 16-73 years, M = 41.1, SD = 12.2; 76.4% females) rated their personal values, values of typical Russian and values of “ideal Russian” using modified version of Schwartz PVQ-21. In order to investigate relationship between self-, group- and culture- values distinctive profile correlations were calculated. Effects of national identity, socioeconomic status and trust were estimated using structural equation modelling. Finally, latent profile analysis was applied to identify groups with similar patterns of relationship between self-, group- and culture-referenced values. Obtained results suggest, that religiosity is positively associated with similarity between self- and group-referenced values and with similarity between group- and culture referenced values, while socioeconomic status is positively related to similarity between self- and culture-referenced values and negatively related to similarity between group- and culture-referenced values.