What you say is a truism, of course. But more specifically, the overt stance towards values across different cultures is one of the best researched topics in th

What you say is a truism, of course. But more specifically, the overt stance towards values across different cultures is one of the best researched topics in the social sciences. For example, you can download data from http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/ http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/ and http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/ http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/, and http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org and these are just the top links from Google when you look for value surveys. This kind of data is based on surveys with all the caveats these come with. (People do not necessarily report what they really think in surveys.) I believe Ronald Inglehart was one of the first to start with extensive empirical surveys of this sort. Nowadays they are conducted world-wide by vast number of organizations and there are also yearly summary publications in book format. I was admittedly too lazy to check the values in Sweden vs elsewhere, just wanted to add to your comment that what values people endorse (or at least overtly report to endorse) in various countries and regions of the world is not unknown at all and it is not hard to look up data from reputable sources. How people act upon the values they report (if at all), is a different matter, of course.