UP Study Shows PHL Shifting Toward Self-Expression Values

By Eunice Jean C. Patron

The Philippines remains culturally traditional but is steadily shifting toward self-expression values, according to a new study by physicists from the University of the Philippines Diliman.

Researchers from the National Institute of Physics at the UP College of Science found that while the country continues to uphold religion, family ties, and authority, it increasingly supports environmental protection, gender equality, and civic engagement.

From 1996 to 2019, the Philippines showed a slight decline in traditional values and a rise in self-expression, based on cultural data from more than 300,000 survey respondents across 120 countries.

Interestingly, the study revealed that the Philippines is culturally closer to Latin American countries like Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico, and Nicaragua than to its East or Southeast Asian neighbors—a link likely tied to its colonial history under Spain.

The findings were based on data from the Integrated Values Survey, which combines responses from the World Values Survey and European Values Survey across seven waves from 1981 to 2022.

To analyze the data, the researchers applied principal component analysis (PCA), a method often used in statistical physics to reduce large datasets into two main cultural dimensions—tradition versus secularism, and survival versus self-expression.

UP physicists John Lawrence Euste, Hannah Christina Arjonillo, and Dr. Caesar Saloma created two types of maps: a country-level map showing how national values evolved over time, and a respondent-level map visualizing cultural differences within each country.

In the country-level analysis, each country was plotted as a point in a two-dimensional space, allowing the researchers to track how cultural values shifted over decades.

To reflect internal diversity, the team projected individual survey responses onto the same map using a transformation matrix derived from PCA.

They used the standard deviational ellipse (SDE) to measure how spread out the respondents were—larger ellipses indicating more cultural diversity and self-expression, smaller ones suggesting cultural uniformity and traditional leanings.

“For example, the Philippines isn’t culturally homogeneous—it doesn’t make sense to represent it with just one cultural profile,” Euste explained.

“This method ensures that the outputs from both levels are consistent,” Arjonillo added.

Dr. Saloma said their approach falls under sociophysics, which uses physics-based tools to quantify social behavior.

“From our perspective as applied physicists, we wanted to detect and measure how culture has evolved, which is usually only described anecdotally,” he said.

Euste noted that while theoretical models exist, few are built on large-scale empirical data.

“I realized that there weren’t many models examining real-world cultural dynamics based on actual data,” he said.

The physicists believe their method can aid policymakers by aligning programs with a country’s evolving cultural values.

“Policies work best when grounded on scientific data and findings,” Dr. Saloma said.

Arjonillo emphasized that their work is ongoing, with the goal of building robust tools to measure social change.

“This is what we hope to evaluate and continue improving—not just in physics, but wherever we can find useful data,” she said.

References:

Euste, J. L., Arjonillo, H. C., & Saloma, C. (2025). Time-resolved culture maps derived from the integrated values survey data (1981–2022). Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 659, 130317. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2024.130317