Study highlights Hungarians' "Balkan" attitudes

The majority of Hungarians can be described as being generally distrustful of institutions, undermotivated in self-assertion and rational thinkers who share more with "orthodox" cultures of the Balkans than with Western European values, a study by research institute Tarki presented on Monday revealed.

The study discussed at a conference of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences sought to discover the deeper social-cultural roots behind the poor performance of the Hungarian economy over the past few years, with particular attention to value structures in society, one of the study's initiators, commercial banker Peter Felcsuti said.

The responses showed that Hungarians generally have a low trust of each other as well as institutions, yet expectations about services the state should provide are high. Compared with more than 50 countries world-wide, Hungarians were most prone to think that there was no way to decent success in their country and that the only way forward was to be born "in the right family", the study said.

The proportion of Hungarians resentful of the high wage gap in their society was higher than the European average.

Compared to Western-European social values, Hungarians appeared less protective of civil and human rights, showed low political interest and activity, were less tolerant of non-mainstream ideas and were the largest group among EU members to regard education as having a small role in success, the study revealed.

• Email
• Save to My Caboodle