Join us on June 23 for the next webinar co-organized with the Research Committee 20 Comparative Sociology of the International Sociological Association. In this webinar, Efraín García-Sánchez (University of Granada, Spain & Stanford University, United States), and Juan Diego García-Castro (University of Costa Rica) will discuss how economic inequality affects public trust in Latin America. The webinar will examine how both objective levels of inequality and people’s perceptions of income distribution as unfair are linked to lower political and social trust. Drawing on evidence from 23 years of data across Latin America, the presentation will address why inequality is not only an economic problem, but also a central challenge for democratic legitimacy, institutional confidence, and social cohesion.

Join us on June 17 for the next webinar, where Kirstie Hewlett and Paolo Morini explore how data on public values and attitudes can inform international policymaking. The webinar highlights the importance of integrating survey insights into policy design to better reflect societal preferences and improve governance outcomes.

Join us on June 30 for the next webinar, where Plamen Akaliyski (Lingnan University) will present recent research on individualism–collectivism and the measurement of cultural differences across societies. Drawing on data from the World Values Survey and European Values Study, the webinar revisits Hofstede’s widely used individualism–collectivism scores, examines their limitations, and introduces a new theory-driven index covering 102 countries and territories. The presentation will discuss the development and validation of the new measure and its implications for comparative research on culture, values, and societal development.

This book offers a geo-climatic explanation for the historical emergence of Western democratic institutions and emancipatory values. It identifies the Cool Water Condition—a combination of cool seasons, steady rainfall, and coastal proximity—as the ecological foundation for decentralized resource management. These conditions fostered traditions of self-governance across social groups, enabling bottom-up resistance to centralized authority and the formation of contractual state institutions. The authors argue that while rooted in specific environmental settings, the dynamics underpinning this development have broader global relevance today. The book is published by Springer and is available in open access.

The World Values Survey Association is pleased to announce the public symposium Author Meets Critics, dedicated to the recently published open-access book The Cool Water Effect: The Geo-Climatic Source of Western Exceptionalism by Christian Welzel, Stefan Kruse, Lennart Brunkert, and Steven A. Brieger. The event will take place on Saturday, 13 June, from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at SpinPlace, Rawa Club, University of Silesia in Katowice (Bankowa 5) and will also be available via online livestream.

Join us on May 29 for a WVS webinar co-organized with ISA RC20 Comparative Sociology on Globalization, populism, and climate skepticism: untangling varieties and pathways. Drawing on cross-national survey data, the talk will unpack how different forms of populist attitudes shape public responses to climate change and environmental policy.

Join us on May 26 for the next webinar, where Liwei Jiang (NVIDIA) explores whether language models can reason about individual human values and preferences, and what this means for pluralistic AI alignment. The session will present a new benchmark for evaluating how AI systems navigate disagreements, moral diversity, and personalized value judgments across users.

WVS webinar on May 18 where Karin Bage (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden) explores how reproductive agency relates to life satisfaction, health, and happiness, with important gendered implications across sub-Saharan Africa.

WVS webinar on April 15 with Ioannis Petrakis (Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University) discussing how subjective well-being reduces ideological radicalization. This study shows that higher life satisfaction can act as a psychological buffer against extremist attitudes. Drawing on World Values Survey data, it highlights the role of social cohesion and economic security in strengthening democratic resilience.

WVS webinar discussing with Patricia Justino (UNU-Wider, Finland) the global erosion of interpersonal and institutional trust, its impact on social cohesion and governance, and the challenges of rebuilding effective social contracts in uncertain times. Professor Patricia Justino is a development economist who works at the interface between Development Economics and Political Science. She is a leading expert on political violence and development, and the co-founder and co-director of the Households in Conflict Network. She is currently Deputy Director at UNU-WIDER and Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in Brighton, UK (on leave).