Comparing cultural differences with domain-specific differences of appreciating and understanding values

Abstract

Human endeavors such as promoting science or creating art have a close connection to underlying values and virtues. For example, creativity, curiosity or objectivity provide orientation when working as scientist or artist, outlining the ultimate aim of practitioners active in those domains. The appreciation and interpretation of domain values are expected to depend upon the domain, which should less be the case for moral values. This study investigates differences in the semantics, perceived importance and interpretation of 10 domain and 10 moral values in two domains (art and medicine) and two cultural settings (US, N = 336; Switzerland, N = 554). It is shown that the semantic understanding of values is robust with respect to culture and domain and that the appreciation of values varies in dependence of the domains but not the culture. Cultural factors have a greater impact compared to the domain for domain value interpretation, but not moral value interpretation.