ON THE INDIVIDUALIST IN MODERN SOCIETY (O indywidualistach w spoleczenstwie wspólczesnym)

Individualism is seen as an important orientation of peoples in modern and postmodern societies. Accordingly, many authors maintain that we can expect growing number of 'individualists' in contemporary societies. It is also assumed that 'individualists' are characterized by a coherent set of 'individualistic' values, opinions and attitudes. The main objective of this contribution is to test empirically the hypothesis of growing proportion of the 'individualists' in modern society. The project was based on the data coming from the comparative longitudinal research projects European Values Survey and World Values Survey conducted in the years 1981-2000. The subset of analyzed data covers seven countries the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Hungary and Poland. The results of the analysis challenge the idea of the growing number of 'individualists' in modern societies. It was impossible to trace a group of people whose answers reflected the coherent ideal pattern of an 'individualist'. Preferring an individualistic attitude in one respect was not necessarily connected with a preference for individualistic stances in other domains. The conclusion is that differentiation of values, attitudes and beliefs observed at the level of macro analysis, should be explained by other factors. .