ABSTRACT
This chapter clarifies what values are when they exist as well as to indicate how a few values occur with people today. It discusses Converse’s thesis that values as value orientations are merely patterns of attitudes in order to suggest an alternative position. The chapter deals with the micro and macro relationships between values. It searches for evidence that supports this claim about the extrinsic importance of value change for society and politics. Value orientations cannot be the direct cause of outcomes, as there must be a mechanism that translates values into outcomes. The value orientations of the population are distant from social, economic and political outcomes. Postmaterialist value orientations have been said to offer much of the foundation for the emergence of new politics, being linked to new preferences at odds with traditional politics, such as environmentalism, feminism and egalitarianism.
