Chapter 1 explained the theoretical relevance of emancipative values, whereas Chapter 2 showed how these values are measured and how they distribute over different social groups and across societies. In this chapter, we explore the social forces that shape emancipative values at different layers of reality: human individuals, national societies, and culture zones. The chapter is organized into three sections.

Section 1 pays closer attention to two universal determinants of emancipative values: birth cohort and formal education. I demonstrate that the emancipatory impulse of these two characteristics amplifies with the abundance of action resources in a society. Section 2 deepens this theme into multilevel models, showing that it is the part of action resources that most people in a society have in common, rather than what individuals have on top of others, which strengthens emancipative values. Among the three types of action resources, material ones strengthen emancipative values less than intellectual and connective resources do. Section 3 addresses the formative power of culture zones over emancipative values.