Humans show marked diversity in cultural values, beliefs, and preferences. Here, we analyze survey responses from 640,110 individuals in 117 countries (representing 89% of the World’s population), and 2,333 sub-national districts, surveyed in the World Values Survey and the European Values Study. Across multiple sets of comparable cultural traits, we find that religion consistently emerges as the cultural trait that exhibits the largest cross-country divergence (measured by the Cultural Fixation Index or simple variances). For example, personal emphasis on religion varies 5-10 times more across countries than emphasis on family, politics, or work effort, and religion is the most divergent quality valued for raising children. Likewise, differences in religious group membership across countries exceed those in other voluntary affiliations. These cross-country differences in religiosity stem partly from differences between religious traditions, but mostly from individual differences in religious involvement intensity. Our findings underscore the importance of religion in shaping cultural differences across societies.
Bentzen et al. (Mon,) studied this question.