RESEARCHERS from the National Institute of Physics at the University of the Philippines Diliman have developed a data analytical technique to track temporal cultural evolutions using time-dependent culture maps.

Caesar A. Saloma, John Lawrence Euste, and Hannah Christian Anjonillo authored the study titled “Time-resolved culture maps derived from Integrated Values Survey data (1981-2022),” an information retrieval method to analyze cultural shifts over time.

The study utilized data from the Integrated Values Survey, combining the World Values Survey and European Values Survey. The dataset spans seven survey waves from 1981 to 2022 across more than 120 countries.

Using principal component analysis, the researchers generated two types of culture maps for each survey wave: a cross-country map and a respondent-level map.

In the cross-country map, countries are plotted as points in a two-dimensional cultural space, while in the respondent-level map, individual respondents are depicted relative to a mean location.

Further analysis revealed that the cross-national map highlighted cultural differences between countries, while the individual-level map displayed variations within a specific national population, as indicated by randomly chosen respondents.

The researchers emphasized that tracking subtle changes in cultural values over time could foster mutual understanding between nations and help prevent unnecessary conflicts, including loss of life.

The study is published in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications. The paper is available online at Physica A.