Nastiness, Morality and Religiosity in 33 nations

• Psychological constructs of social attitudes & values were assessed in 33 countries
• Three factors were found at pancultural level: Morality, Nastiness and Religiosity.
• The largest cross-cultural differences were on Religiosity, followed by Nastiness.
• South East Asia, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa score high.
• Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Anglo score low on all three factors.

This study aimed to identify the main dimensions of social attitudes across 33 countries. Altogether, 20 social attitude scales were administered, mostly to university students (N = 6938). A series of factor analyses showed that three factors exist at the pancultural level: Morality, Nastiness and Religiosity. Furthermore, Morality and Nastiness did not correlate with each other, but Religiosity correlated with both Morality and Nastiness. This suggests that one can be religious and both moral or nasty. Only one factor – Conservatism – emerged at the ecological level (i.e., between-countries analysis). The largest cross-cultural differences were found on the dimension of Religiosity, followed by Nastiness and then by Morality. The clear distinction emerged between South East Asia, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa on one hand, scoring high on all three factors, and Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Anglo regions on the other, scoring low on all three factors.