Applying the science of language for social and ecological change
New Research:
Doing Values Differently
research summary
Doing Values Differently
A summary of key findings from:
Ryan, T. (2026). Doing values differently: A linguistic analysis of values expressed in the parliamentary speech of Community Independents and the Liberal Party parliamentarians they defeated in recent federal elections. Words for Change.
Doing politics differently is measurable in parliamentary speech
“Doing politics differently” is the animating ethos of the Community Independents movement. A key difference in how politics is done lies in the emphasis placed on values. Since 2013, Community Independent candidates have repeatedly won federal seats previously held by the Liberal Party, raising a distinct research question: how does the language of parliamentary representation differ between Community Independent parliamentarians and their Liberal Party predecessors, particularly in the prevalence and orientation of values expressed in speech?
To address this question, the study applied a matched-pairs design comparing the parliamentary speeches of nine Community Independent parliamentarians with the nine Liberal Party parliamentarians they defeated in recent federal elections. This design allows expressed values to be examined both electorate by electorate and as broader differences between the two groups.
The analysis drew on nearly 240,000 words across 180 speeches. The speech corpus comprised each parliamentarian's first speech to parliament plus nine speeches over 1,000 words randomly selected from Hansard. LIWC-22 (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count), a program that quantifies linguistic and psychological features in text, was used to systematically examine the speech corpus, with additional analysis conducted through the Personal Values Dictionary, the extended Moral Foundations Dictionary and the Pro-social Dictionary. Frequency data were aggregated to speaker means; only adjusted p-values below .05 are described as statistically significant.
Values are expressed through language and operate as a system of motivational compatibilities and tensions
Values are widely acknowledged as important guiding principles in politics, but they are rarely measured empirically as patterns in political language.
This study operationalises the construct of values, as defined by the Schwartz Theory of Human Values, using the Personal Values Dictionary. Schwartz identifies 57 fundamental human values that coalesce into ten basic value types: Universalism, Benevolence, Conformity, Tradition, Security, Power, Achievement, Hedonism, Stimulation and Self-Direction. These types form a circumplex (Figure 1), in which proximity conveys motivational congruence and compatibility, while opposition reflects motivational conflict and tension, capturing the system’s dynamic, relational structure.
Understanding these relationships matters for political communication because values are encoded, expressed and activated through language. Activating values in one region of the circumplex can strengthen the salience and accessibility of nearby, compatible values, while making values on the opposing side less cognitively available as frames through which people perceive and reason about social and political life.
The findings discussed in this summary focus especially on Universalism and Benevolence, which together form Self-Transcendence, a broader values orientation towards care for others, collective wellbeing and concern beyond the self. They also draw on Social Focus values, which turn attention outwards; Intellectual Openness, which combines Universalism and Self-Direction; and Anxiety-Free values, which move towards possibility and growth.
Figure 1. Circular continuum of human values, adapted from Schwartz (2012). Values positioned close together are motivationally compatible; values positioned opposite each other are in tension.
Adapted: Schwartz, S. H. (2012). An overview of the Schwartz theory of basic values. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1).
Community Independents expressed a clear, consistent and coherent values profile
In the parliamentary speech examined in this study, Community Independent parliamentarians differed from their Liberal Party predecessors in the orientation, strength and coherence of expressed values.
The Community Independents’ values profile was marked by significantly higher levels of Universalism and Benevolence values and, at the higher-order level, stronger expression of values characteristic of Self-Transcendence, Social Focus, Intellectual Openness and an Anxiety-Free, possibility-focused orientation towards change.
Conformity values also trended higher for Community Independents and appear to reflect attention to collaborative norms and collective responsibility rather than obedience to authority or preservation of hierarchy.
Sanctity produced the largest effect, reflecting civic and institutional integrity in this corpus
Across all five Moral Foundations, Community Independents scored significantly higher than their Liberal Party predecessors. Sanctity produced the largest single effect in the study. The Sanctity finding here appears to reflect civic and institutional integrity rather than religious or purity-based references. In this corpus, Community Independents’ Sanctity language includes transparency, accountability, integrity and trust, as well as the violation of these through corruption.
Community Independent speech was more prosocial, empathetic and deliberative
Community Independents scored significantly higher on Prosocial language, consistent with a cooperative, other-regarding orientation. They also used significantly more feeling language, such as feel, care, concern and hope; need language, such as need, require and essential; and mental process language, such as think, know, consider, reflect and understand. This pattern is consistent with a representational style that is empathetic and deliberative.
The values shift mostly held electorate by electorate
The values differences identified in the overall results mostly held pair by pair across the nine electorates. Universalism- and Benevolence-based language was significantly higher for Community Independents, and most electorate pairs showed the same direction of difference. Notwithstanding meaningful individual variation within both cohorts, this indicates that the finding is not an artefact of averaging, but reflects a consistent pattern of values expression across different electorates, election years and elected representatives.
The contrast clarifies the Community Independent values profile
In contrast, the parliamentary speech of the Liberal Party predecessors showed no comparably coherent values profile within this speech sample and analytic framework. No value, higher-order dimension or composite measure was significantly higher for Liberal Party predecessors. Hedonism was higher at trend level, while Achievement and Power also showed higher mean scores. None of these differences reached significance, but the pattern is consistent with a more individually oriented motivational profile. The only communicative style variable significantly higher for Liberal Party predecessors was determiner use, a pattern associated with a more formal and referential speech register.
Values coherence in a changing political landscape
Values are systemic; they are never engaged in isolation. Drawing attention to one cluster of values tends to activate adjacent, complementary values while inhibiting attention to opposing ones.
A documented values perception gap provides important context for the findings of this study. Australians personally prioritise Benevolence and Universalism values more than they think others do, and overestimate how important Security values are to other Australians. With its emphasis on Benevolence and Universalism values, the Community Independent values profile identified in this study therefore reflects and represents the values Australians themselves prioritise most highly.
The qualities and conditions associated with this values profile, such as care, curiosity, integrity, broadmindedness, stewardship and democratic accountability, are non-rivalrous: they are not depleted by being shared; their expression by one person does not diminish their availability to others.
Repeated expression of these values in parliamentary speech and other forms of political communication can help make them more visible and available as shared conditions for trust, care and social cohesion. Their continued and consistent expression may therefore resonate with and energise both existing Community Independent supporters and moveable voters. It may also help correct the documented misperception that Security dominates Benevolence and Universalism in the Australian values landscape.
A contest of values
The same values activation effect can also operate in the other direction. Fear-based political communication that invokes or reinforces a threat state, such as when genuine resource anxiety and precarity are amplified and redirected towards cultural and social targets, can make Anxiety-Based values more prominent, shifting attention towards what is finite, positional or vulnerable to loss. Over time, repeated activation and reinforcement of such values can make Benevolence and Universalism less accessible as shared values for social and political reasoning.
Although this study examined past changes in political representation, the analytical approach also offers a framework through which evolving challenges, such as the apparent rise of One Nation, can be examined. Pending empirical research, preliminary close reading through a Schwartz circumplex lens suggests One Nation’s political communication operates within the Tradition, Security and Power regions of the circumplex in a contracted and exclusionary form. If so, it would activate a values profile motivationally opposed to that expressed by Community Independents in this study. This pattern warrants further analytical attention, particularly in a political environment where Australians already overestimate the importance of Security values to others, and where societal stress and uncertainty may make those values more readily available and easier to activate.
Activation and repetition can normalise a values orientation as ‘common sense’
Consistent, repeated foregrounding of a coherent values orientation strengthens the cognitive frameworks through which perception and reasoning occur. Over time, the values orientation that is most clearly and repeatedly activated is more likely to become shared ‘common sense’ through a process of social learning that operates to reinforce and normalise perceived societal values.
Measuring expressed values strengthens political communication strategy and practice
This pilot study illustrates the utility of the Schwartz values framework for understanding values as patterned, measurable and politically significant dimensions of language. When combined with computational linguistic analysis and statistical modelling, the framework offers a replicable way to identify, compare and interpret expressed values across political text and speech. For campaign teams, community organisers and advocates, this makes it possible to examine whether communication is coherently foregrounding intended values, and how those values differ across candidates, parties, issues and election cycles.
Author: Dr Trudi Ryan, Words for Change
Disclaimer: This research was designed and conducted independently and has not been peer reviewed. It is not intended as campaign advice. The findings and interpretations are those of the author alone. This pilot study is limited to a sample of parliamentary speech and should not be taken as a comprehensive assessment of the values or character of any individual parliamentarian.
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