This report, intended for policy and decisionmakers, is the first of its kind to bring together interdisciplinary insights from the social and behavioural sciences on values and identities in the political process. Co-created with academia and policymakers, it has benefited from formal and informal input from scientific experts and policy practitioners, as well as representatives from international and civil society organisations. The state-of-the-art scientific review is complemented by findings from a dedicated EurobarometerI on values and identities commissioned for this purpose.

Why values and identities are important to policymaking and politics

Challenges for successful policymaking

Policymaking in democracies seeks to change behaviour for the greater good of society. What citizens desire is strongly influenced by what they perceive to be valuable. Valuable in this sense cannot be solely determined in monetary terms. Understanding what the greater good means requires not only an understanding of the facts and what is possible but also what is desired by citizens. There are political and financial consequences for policymaking if the values shaping policies fail to correspond with citizens’ values.

‘The most difficult political choices are not between good and bad but between good and good.’II Consequently, policymakers need to be transparent in their decision-making process to uphold trust in government, while recognising that it is an almost impossible task for policymakers to respect all citizens’ values equally.

Values-related issues are magnified when coupled with group identities, where winning or the domination of a group can be more important than living up to one’s own values.

The growing importance of values and identities in politics and in citizens’ lives

For most of the 20th Century, politics in Europe were viewed through the lens of the left-right divide relating to socio-economic interests. Today, individual values, attitudes and identities predict political behaviour better than traditional class affiliations. Increased material wealth, security and widespread education since WWII have led to a rise of ‘post-materialist values’ such as self-expression and self-actualisation.

In the new ‘cultural’ political conflict, group delineations based on ethnicity, norms, religions and values are increasingly demarcating identity in addition to socio-economic class. For modern democracies, the two main political conflict lines, on the economic dimension and the new powerful cultural dimension, now coexist.

The European project was developed at a time when the socio-economic class cleavage was predominant. Consequently, the EU institutions are well organised to address such issues, e.g. through EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Executive summary 4 economic impact assessments. However, as the cultural values cleavage emerges, the EU needs to acquire new tools to understand the new fault line.

This was recognised in the 2021 Communication on Better regulation: Joining forces to make better laws, that emphasised ‘to sustain trust in the European Union, EU policies need to take into account and reflect the values and concerns of citizens’.

Challenges for policymaking with convictions

On the issues people care about the most, their own values and views from their social groups automatically colour their views and beliefs in the facts themselves. It is very difficult to reach consensus on evidence for the most contested and consequently the most important policy issues. It is easy to find illogical arguments in others, but not necessarily in oneself. There is an urgent need to understand and recognise that others may simply have different value priorities that can legitimately lead both sides to conclude something different from the same evidence.

The myside bias, the tendency to favour information that confirms one’s preconceptions and convictions, presents a particular trap for the elites as it is not mitigated by intelligence, political sophistication or the tendency to display actively open-minded thinking; it is a central challenge to evidence-informed policymaking.

As a result, negotiating policy between policymakers, experts and politicians may well involve more value judgements than for ordinary citizens, even if more evidence is used at the same time.

Understanding the values and social identities of EU citizens

Unity in diversity?

Values are a blend of biological and evolutionary factors coupled with individual and societal histories.

Values are highly stable at the individual level and are mostly shaped by life conditions during childhood, adolescence and early adulthood through the influence of parents, neighbours, friends and schools. They are also potentially heritable. When values shift at a societal level, the shift is therefore slow and driven by cohort or generational changes.

Personal values describe the consistent priority people have for one's value direction over another based upon underlying stable, core motivations. The personal values concept of Basic Human Values developed by Schwartz – that forms the cornerstone for this report – has been validated in over 200 samples in 80 countries around the world. Personal values are stable, generally seen as positive but sometimes have an oppositional relationship to each other; these relationships are universal across societies. The relative importance of a value matters when forming attitudes or guiding behaviour, especially when a policy or action is related to conflicting values.

Personal values describe the consistent priority people have for one's value direction over another based upon underlying stable, core motivations. The personal values concept of Basic Human Values developed by Schwartz – that forms the cornerstone for this report – has been validated in over 200 samples in 80 countries around the world. Personal values are stable, generally seen as positive but sometimes have an oppositional relationship to each other; these relationships are universal across societies. The relative importance of a value matters when forming attitudes or guiding behaviour, especially when a policy or action is related to conflicting values.

The predominant values in a group or society as a whole become important in their own right because they have a normative social influence on the individual citizen. Group values are particularly relevant for publicly visible conformity behaviour and can override personal values preferences because citizens want to belong, identify with a group and fear being ostracised or punished.

From values to policy preferences, political orientation and affiliation

Due to their abstract nature, values still need to be contextualised. In many cases, there is a broad, common understanding of a value, but the connection can vary through an individual’s personal expectations and experience with media and culture. Political elites also wield considerable power over political framing to drive or magnify political conflicts over values and identities.

Clearly connecting values to behaviours and attitudes in policymaking has the potential to increase policy effectiveness in changing behaviour, while noting that different values may motivate the same behaviours. There is an established link between personal values over citizens’ political attitudes to explaining voting behaviour. Importantly, when parties change their positions, citizens partially also change their political attitudes while their personal values stay the same. Consequently, 'values are the "glue" of the political translation process that binds together citizens’ political attachments'III.

EU values and their relation to personal values

The EU values, enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaties, are important guiding principles for many policymakers in the EU. The meanings of the EU values resemble some of the psychological foundations of personal values, but do not represent the full spectrum of values diversity. According to the latest Eurobarometer data, the vast majority of EU citizens strongly supports EU values as laid out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights. There is no fundamental difference between EU countries when it comes to agreeing with the EU values.

Social identities as magnifiers of values and political conflict

Social identities as the foundation of modern ‘tribes’

There are two important components of identity: personal and the social identity. Personal identity is based on a person’s values, experiences and knowledge, and is mostly perceived to be unique. The relevance of personal identity for policymaking comes from the argument that values are at its core, therefore, when one’s values are threatened, it is also true that the sense of self is threatened.

Social identification can shift a person’s behaviour to align with the group by ascribing characteristics, values and qualities of the group to the self and depersonalising one’s personal identity. Identification of oneself and others into various social groups is human nature. Belonging to a group is a source of self-esteem and distinctiveness. The identification with a group can be an advantage for working together but can also be to the exclusion of others, as seen in many political conflicts of our time. The identification with one group often leads to a reduced willingness to interact and share with others and to perceive others as less positive.

One way to harness the positive effect of social identities without the negative by-product of out-group biases, is through highlighting a common identity or probably more successfully, dual identities.

Relationship between values and identities

How much and with whom citizens identify reflects their values. People also identify with groups when they share goals and values with other members. Shared values and goals are fundamental for people to sustain their belonging to a group, particularly for political parties.

As values are an integral part of group identities, if citizens see themselves excluded or antagonised by society as a whole, they can also try to identify themselves with groups that reject the prevailing values of society. When conflicts are based on social identities, the goal is to win, even if it costs one or both sides. When the conflict centres on values, the goal is about how to satisfy the needs and motivations behind values and compromise is more likely.

Identity politics, polarisation and values diversity

Social identities in politics

Each society has multiple culture-specific and cross-cultural groups and identities which citizens find important. Local (e.g. nationality), sectoral (e.g. health ministry), organisational (e.g. political party), demographic/biographic (e.g. gender) and informal identities (e.g. around specific events) are important categories to help map social identities in the political decision-making process. People have multiple identities but only a few of them are relevant to an individual at any one time. This relevance depends on the social status of the group, the similarity with other group members and the situation, e.g. where politicians and the media can make certain groups more relevant to a policy issue.

The prominence of partisan identity

Of all the social identities, partisanship is particularly relevant to the political decision-making process as it has the capacity to subsume other social identities, such as left-right, national, European and populist identities. Partisans are the most involved in politics and are therefore important for democratic citizen involvement in politics in general. Identity politics can involve many different identities because every characteristic can become the source of an identity and therefore of in-group cohesion and out-group bias.

Social identities are relevant to the self-concept and self-esteem of citizens. People protect their identity when threatened. There are many ways in which these identities can be threatened, resulting in increased tribalism and out-group discrimination. It is therefore highly relevant for policymakers to take identities into account in their decision-making processes. It is also important to note those identities considered particularly significant to European citizens, for example by avoiding actions that could be perceived as threatening towards them.

According to the Eurobarometer results, Family is the most important identity, followed by Nationality, while European identity, Religion 7 Executive summary Protesters topple a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston and pushed the figure into the River Avon. Bristol, United Kingdom, June 2020 and Political orientation seem to be relatively less important.

Social identities as magnifiers of values and political conflict

How diverse are the values within the EU?

Values diversity will always exist and is usually stronger within a country than between countries. This finding is generally corroborated by the Eurobarometer data.

The Eurobarometer shows that people who identify strongly with their political orientation polarise more strongly on values consistent with their political orientation on the political left-right spectrum. It therefore follows that the people most likely to be active in politics are the ones who most differ in their orientations of values, while those who are less political are rather similar.

In contrast to seeking a broader values base for developing policies, in a direct conflict situation, values should not be raised if a solution is sought. Focusing on interests has been shown to decrease people’s feelings of self-involvement and increase perceptions of common ground. Tackling interests can indirectly address values from different perspectives.

Evidence on polarisation in Europe

Political polarisation represents an extreme form of disagreement. There are two types of polarisation: Issue polarisation and Affective polarisation. Issue polarisation refers to differences in policy preferences and attitudes to concrete policy decisions – the substance of policy and political decisions. Affective polarisation captures how much people dislike other groups in the political context and how distant they feel from them in terms of commonality and liking.

The interrelations between both types of polarisation do not show a clear, predictable pattern, which means that strong issue polarisation does not require strong Affective polarisation and vice versa.

In Europe, from the limited data available, issue polarisation seems to be in decline or remain stable. In contrast, levels of Affective polarisation in Europe are similar to those in the USA. The landscape varies within Europe where southern and central-eastern Europe are highly affectively polarised when it comes to politics, reaching similar or higher levels than the USA. If citizens disagree on issues derived from values, policymakers can take these into account when designing policies, because they legitimately reflect peoples’ preferences, wishes and needs. When addressing Affective polarisation by contrast, policymakers need to develop policies and behaviours that reduce dislike, misperceptions and safeguard democratic institutions. There is evidence that political identities are becoming more important in peoples’ everyday life. The evidence from the Eurobarometer indicates that political orientation is already slightly more important than religious beliefs in the EU, yet not as important as several other identities.

Policymaking fit for the 21st Century

Policymaking under diversity

Policymakers have to constantly work with values diversity. If values are in opposition in a specific policy, successful resolution may not only focus on the outcome, but also on the way it was achieved.

Integrating values and identities into policymaking

As an overarching approach, a ‘Various Values View’ looks at a specific policy problem through different values lenses in support of policymaking.

  • Heightened understanding;
  • Co-creation; and
  • Communication

Go to tools page

References

I Special Eurobarometer 508 on Values and Identities of EU citizens, wave 94.1, 2020, https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/2230; doi:10.2760/206143

II Galston (1999, p.771) Galston (1999, p.771). Galston WA. Value Pluralism and Liberal Political Theory. Am Polit Sci Rev. 1999;93(4):769-778. doi:10.2307/2586111.

IIILupton et al. (2020, p.242), Lupton RN, Smallpage SM, Enders AM. Values and Political Predispositions in the Age of Polarization: Examin ing the Relationship between Partisanship and Ideology in the United States, 1988-2012. Br J Polit Sci. 2020;50(1):241-260. doi:10.1017/ S0007123417000370

All content © European Union, 2021, except for the following images: cover: graphic elaboration © marco iacobucci - stock.adobe.com; © Climing_Soloviova Liudmyla - stock.adobe.com; © Alexstar - stock.adobe.com; © Hands_pikselstock - stock.adobe.com; © Lightfield Studios - stock.adobe.com; © jolygon - stock.adobe.com; p. 9 © pogonici - stock.adobe.com; p. 5 © Kristi McCluer - theguardian.com; p. 7 © Social Media Keir Gravil via Reuters - stock.adobe.com; p. 16 © Denise Balibouse Reuters - stock.adobe.com.