YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

General trends in young people’s values and attitudes  41 Nevertheless, relative shifts are not wholly negligible. Additional analy- ses reveal that the creativity value (“creativity, originality, fantasy”) and domination value (“having power over others”) have increased the most. At the same time, the individual success value (“success in school, ca- reer”) and the environment protection value have contracted the most. This is somewhat puzzling in light of the significant economic develop- ment Slovenia has achieved in the past two decades. One would expect modernization to increasingly drive young Slovenians towards post-ma- terialist values (Inglehart andWelzel, 2005), and indeed that has mostly been the case. But, as the somewhat increasing value of power and a somewhat decreasing interest in protecting the environment reveal, there have been movements in the other direction as well. The general trend towards individuality and the importance of the pri- vate sphere can be further probed and analysed. We can, for example, compare the shifts in mean scores that young people assign to various claims having to do with individualism (“I respect the principle of fair- ness, but only when it benefits me” and “if I have the chance to exploit others, I take it without significant feelings of guilt”) and collectivism (“I feel good when cooperating with others” and “my happiness is very dependent on the people around me”). Figure 1.3 clearly shows that to- day collectivist values are still stronger in comparison to individual- ism. Moreover, one of the items has been scored higher than in 2010 (see the mean score for “my happiness is very dependent on the people around me”).