VALUEHOST is a three-year research project funded by the Lithuanian Research Council. We explore changing Lithuanian values, with a focus on emigrants and their experiences in their host countries. In this post, I introduce some interesting findings from one of our studies on changing values at home.

We have analyzed data between the years 2010-2020, from the European Social Survey database on individuals’ values. In this study, we were interested in exploring whether values can change in the short term. Scholars have long held that values are enduring, and that they are very slow to change. In societies, this change would be steady, and progressive over generations. Typically, we notice these differences by comparing our own values with those of our parents’ generation.  

But much of the research on values change has been in the context of relatively stable advanced economies. Generations here have labels which we all know: Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, etc.  Societies in the former USSR, though, have had different social, political, and economic transformations. Their process of modernization has been quite different.

In our study, we distinguish between generations which we link to political eras. People who grew up in these different eras in Lithuania acquired their values during vastly different historical periods. Some periods were more turbulent than others. We label them the Stalin generation for individuals born before 1945. The Soviet generation includes those born between 1945 and 1969. The late Soviet generation comprises those born from 1970 to 1989. The Independent EU generation includes individuals born after 1989. One of our aims was to compare the values of these different political generations to one another and over time.

Here we look at one of the results on Openness to Change values, derived from the work of Shalom Schwartz. This is a measure that combines three personal values: self-direction, stimulation and hedonism. Self-direction encompasses the extent to which individuals value independence in thought and action. Stimulation reflects how much people value excitement, novelty and challenges in life. And hedonism refers to the pursuit of personal pleasure or immediate gratification.

We compared six rounds of surveys across more than 11,000 individuals, starting in 2010, and every two years thereafter.

In the figure, we can see that openness to change appears to fluctuate over the years. Some generations are quite similar, but one stands out – the Independent EU generation. These are individuals, who, at the time of the survey, were between the ages of 18 and 30.  For the other generations, openness to change declines slightly but increases over time by survey round 10 in 2020. We see the opposite in the youngest generation. Here, openness to change declines steadily over the years. In the final survey round, there is a slight increase. But overall, openness to change has declined for this generation during the 10 years up to 2020.

We would be interested in hearing your thoughts about why this has happened.