Norwegians have become more liberal

Norwegians have adopted a more liberal view of homosexuality, prostitution and euthanasia over the past 15 years. On the other hand, ethics in regard to accepting bribes, buying something you know is stolen or demanding public benefits you are not entitled to receive have not changed, studies of values from 1982 to 1996 show.

Among other things, the studies contain questions about to what degree various actions can be justified. The answers are to be given on a scale from one to 10 in which one means that the actions can never be justified and 10 means that it can always be justified.

There are signs that traditional values have softened in regard to several types of actions since the first survey on values was conducted in 1982, to the third study in 1996. While the question of whether it is justifiable to shorten the life of a person who is terminally ill had an average ranking of 2.8 in 1982, the value rose to 4.2 in 1990 and 5.3 in 1996. Men have a somewhat more liberal attitude to euthanasia than women, younger people are more liberal than older persons, and people who do not regard themselves as religious are more liberal than religious people. The liberalization of views since 1982 has been fairly parallel in all of these population groups.

The material also shows a gradually more tolerant opinion of homosexuality and prostitution. Women are more tolerant in their view of homosexuality than men, younger persons more than elderly and non-religious people more than religious. A liberalization of attitudes has taken place in all these groups, and the distance between religious and non-religious persons is less today than 15 years ago.

New Statistics

Values in Norway 1996.
The first results of the survey are given in ISS Report no. 49: Values in Norway 1996. Study Description and Codebook (Department of Sociology and Political Science, NTNU-Norwegian University of Science and Technology). Documentation of data acquisition is found in the Statistics Norway series Notes 97/19. More information: Ola Listhaug, tel.+47 22 43 60 40, e-mail: Ola Listhaug, e-mail: Ola.Listhaug@sv.ntnu.Listhaug or Hanne Marit Teigum, tel. +47 21 09 46 62, e-mail: hte@sb.no.

Weekly Bulletin issue no. 33, 1997