The Post-Material Turn

The Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, started out to create the best Internet search engine there is, not to make a ton of money. It took a while for them to accept the idea of ads related to searches as the path to generating revenue. The usual web ads that obnoxiously flash at you or fill up your screen Brin hated. Brin and Page instead happened on the brilliant idea of simple, unobtrusive text ads which turned out to be a gold mine. Simplicity, speed, and efficiency is what Brin and Page were after, not the money. They didn't like org-chart modes of business organization and chose a flatter more decentralized and chaotic form, but it worked. Informal meetings and intense, competitive recreation along with free food kept the place running. Brin didn't like marketing and wanted to use the marketing budget at one point to inoculate Chechen refugees against cholera because it would be a good thing to do and could bring attention to Google. Google's well known guiding moral standard is "don't be evil." On the job physical activity energizes life at Google—pool, ping pong, and, of course, roller hockey, the one most encouraged by Brin and Page. The original workspaces were filled with crash cots, funky second hand furniture, makeshift room dividers, exercise balls, and ever-present white boards for scribbling down the next big ideas. The annual ski trips for Googlers (i.e. Google employees) were legendary for their decompressing party atmosphere. Google is an offbeat place to work like no other, but to become a Googler means working long hours with others in small groups, accepting meritocratic values, and being assertive, creative, a risk taker, and playful. Constant anxiety about measuring up comes with the Googler territory.

In the world of high tech, it’s not your ethnic origin and social background that matters. It's the software code you have written lately or the successful new application or popular new gadget you have helped to create that confers status. Young techies are a tolerant lot; they judge according to merit and accomplishment, not according to appearance or skin color, and they delight in a wide range of behavior patterns and personal styles. Tattoos and body piercing jewelry are fine as well as unusual tastes in music, art, or sexual practices. The experience of life matters, not where one comes from or what one owns. 

The high tech world, despite its incredible financial success, embodies a modest beginning of a movement away from purely materialist concerns toward post-materialistic personal self-expression, social tolerance, and interesting life experiences. Seeking meaning in life boils down to adopting and pursuing purposes about which one cares passionately. If we have strong materialist inclinations, then we will find meaning predominantly in the economic arena where we will pursue wealth and material possessions. If we follow a post-materialist path, our actions in the world will take us beyond strictly economic pursuits. If you did nothing but look to advertising and the popular media, you might think that post-materialism is a utopian dream, but social scientists over the past several decades have detected a modest but persistent shift favoring values that take us beyond a predominant desire for wealth and consumption.

I don’t want to force you through a tedious, article-by-article, academic-style summary of the research to prove that post-materialism is indeed a significant trend that will take us into a new and different future, but I do want to give you a flavor of what the post-materialist idea is all about. What I am going summarize for you now is not philosophical speculation, but actual, real world research findings on human attitudes and belief. Before I do this, I want to acknowledge the one researcher responsible more than any other for discovering the post-materialist trend, University of Michigan professor, Ronald Inglehart, whose findings in the 1970s set off a wave of academic research that continues to this day. So, let’s get started with our post-material philosophy for the future.

Post-materialism is measured from data obtained through surveys that ask about respondent social priorities. Suppose you attach high priorities to such social goals as (1) protecting freedom of speech, (2) giving people more say in important government decisions, (3) seeing that people have more say about how things are done at their jobs and in their communities, (4) trying to make our cities and countryside more beautiful, (5) progress toward a less impersonal and more humane society, and (6) progress toward a society in which ideas count more than money. Then you are a post-materialist. Suppose instead you attach high priorities to such goals as (7) maintaining order in the nation, (8) fighting rising prices, (9) a high level of economic growth, (10) making sure this country has strong defense forces, (11) a stable economy, and (12) the fight against crime. In this case you are a materialist. If your priorities are mixed you lay on a spectrum in between. If your highest priorities are all materialist, that's what you are; if you highest priorities all go the other direction your are a post-materialist; if you have a mix of highest choice priorities you are neither.

(Early research on post-materialism used just two post-materialist priorities, (1) and (2) above, and two materialist priorities, (7) and (8). Survey respondents were asked to choose between (1) and (7) and (2) and (8). The percent of the sample placed in the post-materialist category chose (1) and (2), while the percentage who chose (7) and (8) were placed in the materialist category, and the rest were counted as mixed. Later, a more complex set of questions using all twelve items became the research standard for developing a more refined index for measuring post-materialism. Nonetheless,  statistical research has confirmed that the simpler 4-question approach performs almost as well as do the 12-questions in measuring post-materialism.)

If you are in your twenties, you are more likely to be a post-materialist than if you are in your seventies. If you are young, you probably grew up in a period of economic prosperity, and if you are older you most likely faced economic deprivations in your pre-adult years. In general, younger generations today in Europe, America, and the prosperous Asian countries experienced secure economic conditions in their youth while older generations suffered material challenges when they were growing up. Because our basic values are formed by the time we reach adulthood, whether or not we face economic scarcity or social upheavals in our youth matters. As we age, our orientations fluctuate to some extent with economic conditions, but our basic outlook doesn't alter much. Those with materialist leanings in their youth keep them for life just as post-materialists retain their basic values. If we look at a cross-section of society today, younger birth cohorts tend to be more post-materialist than older, and, as time passes and younger replace older cohorts, the ratio of post-materialists to materialists increases in affluent, industrialized countries. In the early 1970s, materialists heavily outnumbered post-materialists in Western Europe, but by 2006 post-materialists slightly outnumbered materialists, and in the U.S. post-materialists by this time outnumber materialists by a ratio of 2 to 1. The most post-materialist country of all, Sweden, possesses a 5 to 1 ratio for post-materialists to materialists. 

Beginning recently in the 21st Century, younger birth cohorts in European countries became slightly less post-materialist than their immediate predecessor generations, probably because economic crisis and stagnation reduced economic prospects for new entrants job market entrants. Among the youngest adult generation in the U.S., post-materialism is under threat as well because of rising unemployment (see the next post on Millennials). Nonetheless, the post-material turn in affluent countries still looks to have plenty of life left in it despite recent economic setbacks. The U.S. Economy is on the mend and economic optimism for the future is greatest among the youngest adults. Once Europeans get over their love affair with economic austerity and engage in expansionary government spending similar to the U.S., economic opportunities for younger generations will improve and they will likely recover from any angst about their material future and return to the post-materialist fold.

The brightest prospects for growth in post-material values lies in those countries that have yet to experience economic success. On the global stage, post-materialism bears a strong relationship to per capita incomes, as one would expect. Countries with high poverty rates and low income levels today have a strong materialist orientation, but as incomes increase across countries, the incidence of post-materialist values rises dramatically. As countries develop and create conditions of economic security and political stability for their younger generations, the incidence of post-material values expands, even where affluence is new and novel. In China, for instance, post-materialist values have arisen amongst an emergent middle class and look to be more prevalent there than even in more affluent and democratic Taiwan.

A shift to a post-material philosophy matters for everyday life. Post-materialism leads to a more outward social orientation and substantially enlarged demands for political expression, a consequence of inestimable importance around the world. Countries with a high incidence of post-materialism tend be strongly democratic, possess a high degree of tolerance toward homosexuality, promote gender equity, and rank high in interpersonal trust. For post-materialists, freedom of self-expression is a big deal. Post-materialists also give substantial political support to both environmental protection and improvements in the quality of life through public action. The Green Party in Europe garners much of its support from citizens with post-materialist leanings. Post-materialists are less supportive of older social issues involving unions and working class advancement, and don’t always place themselves on a liberal-conservative political spectrum. The rise of the "independent voter" and post-materialism coincide, to which politicians increasingly need to pay attention in order to win elections. This means giving less truck to class issues and more to advancing social tolerance and the quality of life for all. 

We all possess a wider range of value orientations than those covered by post-materialist research, an essential conclusion of well-regarded survey studies by Israeli social psychologist, Shalom H. Schwartz, on what he calls "basics human values." These values include attitudes towards "power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition, conformity, and security." Universalism for Schwartz means "understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare of all people and for nature," and benevolence refers to the "preservation and enhancement of welfare of people with whom one is in frequent contact."  The other basic values have their expected, ordinary language meanings in Schwartz's work. Although post-materialism encompasses a comparatively narrow range of social goals, it nonetheless correlates positively with the broader "basic human values" of universalism and self-direction, and negatively with a commitment to tradition and conformity, and a desire for personal security. In other words, many post-materialists express special concerns about both the welfare of all human beings and the natural world and put a high value on being self-directed, but don't like the straight jackets of too much security, social conformity, and tradition. Post-materialists also commonly lack strong attachment  to self-enhancement values, such as power and achievement. In short, post-materialists possess a broad “other orientation” in their personal outlook as opposed to materialists who express their strongest commitments inwardly to achievement, security, and social conformity.

(Indices for "basic human values," such as "universalism," are constructed by Schwartz and other researchers by asking survey respondents to rank specific values as a guiding principle in one's life on a 1 to 9 importance scale. A universalism index, for instance, is created by averaging scores for the specific values of equality, social justice, environmental protection, unity with nature, inner harmony, world at peace, world of beauty, wisdom, and broad mindedness.  Universalism, and other basic value indices, can in turn be correlated against a post-materialism index obtained from the same sample to test for statistical significance.)

Given their suspicion of orthodoxy and tradition, post-materialists don’t warm easily to conventional religious practice, but this doesn’t mean they lack spiritual inclinations. In Europe, where the trend to post-materialist values is especially strong, traditional religion is experiencing a sharp decline in popularity. Taking its place appears to be an alternative spirituality which picks and chooses from a range of notions about the sacred. Instead of buying into pre-digested religious doctrines and subordinating the self to allegedly transcendent truths about the nature of being, spiritual practitioners increasingly rely on their own creativity to develop their patterns of belief. For a time, the so-called “New Age” movement, rooted in such phenomenon as astrology, reincarnation, fortune-telling, and contact with the dead, gained sway as a replacement for traditional religion, but New Age beliefs are on the wane. Instead, spiritual practices have become more amorphous and pragmatic with a heavy orientation to improving one’s subjective experience of life where a connection to whatever is seen as a sacred is what really matters.

This new kind of spiritual phenomenon is variously referred to as post-Christian spirituality, or private or alternative religiosity, but it all is essentially the same phenomenon—a turn to spiritual beliefs and practices unaffiliated with any organized religion. Those who profess and practice an unaffiliated spirituality commonly hold post-materialist beliefs, including such untraditional views as support for gender equity, tolerance of a wide range of sexual behaviors, and the practice of non-hierarchical relationships within the family between parent and child. They often practice meditation and seek for a deeper and unconventional meaning of life free of existing doctrine, be it Christian or New Age. By contrast, religious traditionalists typically believe in a personal god, attend church, and belong to religious organizations, and new agers claim belief in astrology, reincarnation, fortune telling, or contact with the dead. Spiritual individualists are more prone to post-materialist opinions about social priorities, express greater support for environmental protection, and have a higher level of educational achievement than either new agers or religious traditionalists. One might think that post-materialists would be inclined to new age views, but New-Agers surprisingly have a conservative outlook on materialism akin to what one might expect of a low income, religious fundamentalism common in the U.S. 

Let’s take a moment to summarize post-materialism's content. Above all else, post-materialists value the right to self-expression in the lives of everyone and possess a high degree of social and cultural tolerance. Post-materialism itself is defined narrowly, but adherents oftentimes express other values that reflect an outward orientation to the world at large. The great modern challenge is finding common ground amongst a huge array of private interests and tribe-like attachments. Universalist values, which profess a concern for the welfare of humanity as a whole and for all of nature’s beings, ease this challenge, and, fortuitously, post-materialists  are often “universalists.” Even though they lack an interest in conventional religion, post-materialists are not a bunch of atheists, but instead tend towards  spirituality of an unorthodox kind. The big differences between liberal post-materialists and conservative materialists come in their respective attitudes towards society’s institutions. While both post-materialists and conservatives subscribe to freedom of expression and the elimination of political oppression, conservatives express stronger attachments than liberals to hierarchies and authority, group loyalty, traditional religions and values, and limits on the role of the state in the economy and society. Liberal post-materialists to the contrary are skeptical of authority, hierarchy, and organized groups of any kind, avoid organized religion, and often take an untraditional path through life. While post-materialists sometimes express libertarian attitudes towards government, many take a pragmatic position about the necessity of government for providing essential public goods, restraining the excesses of a free market economy, and limiting religious oppression.  

Yet another way researchers look at shifting philosophical outlooks is to employ questions from the World Values Survey to measure orientations on a spectrum between survival, at the low end of a scale, and self-expression, at the high end, based on scaled response questions about (1) one’s post-materialist-materialist orientation, (2) degree of happiness, (4) willingness to sign a political petition, (5) presence of a positive (as opposed to a negative) attitude toward homosexuality, and (6) level of trustfulness of others. A positive (high scaled) response to these items indicates a self-expressive orientation, while the opposite (low scaled) infers a survival orientation. Those who worry about survival are materialists, unhappy with their lives, unwilling to participate in politics, lack tolerance for homosexuality, and don’t trust others, and self-expressers hold the opposite attitudes. The self-expression measure includes post-materialism, but goes beyond it. Studies using the World Values Survey confirm self-expresser support for gender equity, autonomy in the workplace, political freedom, and environmental protection, all of which comply with a “universalist” outlook for personal values. In survey research, the World Values Survey is a big deal because it covers so many countries with comparatively large population samples for each.

Philosophical values documented in the World Values Survey turn out to not only fall on survival-self-expression continuum, but spread out along a traditional-secular/rational spectrum as well. Traditionalists see (1) belief in God as important in their lives, (2) think children should be taught religious faith and obedience as opposed to independence and self-expression, (3) see pride in nationality as important, (4) have substantial respect for authority, and (5) oppose abortion. Rational secularists express the opposite values. Countries with strongly traditionalist values tend to score low on the survival-self-expression scale, but many of these, nonetheless exhibit a modest but steady trend to a self-expressive, post-materialist outlook over time. Specific religions score at different levels on the traditional-secular/rational scale, with Protestants tending to score high toward the secular end of the scale, Muslims low toward the traditional end, and Catholics in the middle. Religion matters, but religious orientation does nothing to reverse the trend over time toward more prevalent self-expression values as more youthful post-materialist birth cohorts expand their population share. This is the case even for a highly traditionalist society such as Egypt.

This doesn’t mean that deeply Muslim countries will become bastions of liberal democracy and personal freedom anytime soon, but, simply, that there exists an underlying modest but inexorable movement of values in a more post-material, self-expressive, universalist direction. Nor does this mean that the red-blue state division in the U.S. will disappear quickly. The trend to post-materialism by its nature moves at a modest pace, especially in the U.S. and Europe where a strong contrary trend of population aging dampens political and cultural liberalization. The future will be post-material, but it won’t arrive overnight.