Conferences

Much longitudinal research on value change has shown that the strong economic development in western society has given way to a persistent shift towards more appreciation of personal autonomy. The decreasing power of religious and other traditional authorities have gone together with an increasing focus on self-expression and personal autonomy. The question I set out to answer in this paper is to what extent the increasing focus on personal autonomy has gone together with decreasing levels of social behaviour and solidarity. Using the four Netherlands’ waves of the European Values Study (1981, 1990, 1999, 2008), I will use a cohort perspective to study the contributions of population turnover and intra-cohort developments to the explanation of macro-level changes in personal autonomy and in social behaviour. In the second part of my analysis, I will study (developments in) the association between personal autonomy and social behaviour on the individual level. Social behaviour will be measured by (a) solidarity, (b) support of civic values, (c) unpaid work for voluntary organizations, and (d) political participation. The results will be presented during the conference.