Tracing Cultural Constraint in Europe: Whether and How Attitudes Converge

Abstract Have people in Western societies become more aligned in their views on cultural issues? Although the idea of a growing cultural divide is widely discussed, we know surprisingly little about whether mass attitudes of this type have in fact become more coherent. Using European Social Survey data from 2002 to 2022, this study examines how closely attitudes toward environmental protection, immigration, homosexuality, international cooperation, and climate change move together across countries, a property known as constraint . Constraint is conceptualized as the degree to which these attitudes are interconnected, measured by the average absolute correlation among them. The results reveal a general increase in constraint across national contexts since 2012. Effect-size simulations suggest that this change is modest: if about 10% of respondents held fully coherent cultural attitudes in 2012, the share would be closer to 12% by 2022. This trend appears to be driven by right-leaning individuals, older cohorts, and the politically engaged (that is, partisans and those reporting high political interest). Additional analyses indicate that climate change has become the issue most tightly woven into broader cultural outlooks, suggesting that it is especially likely to ignite conflict and amplify cultural tensions.