Abstract

Social and political psychology research has demonstrated individuals’ political stances through self-reported political orientations (liberal-conservative), partisan identity, issue-focused political attitudes, and more. The current study proposes that a value-driven approach has a unique contribution to understanding individuals’ political orientation as well as complicated modern political situations, beyond a conceptual distinction between liberals and conservatives. We developed a conceptual model of political values for the Korean political context based on a theoretical background and explored the patterns of endorsement of political values among Korean voters in 2024. Latent profile analyses showed five different types of Korean voters, each representing unique patterns supporting seven political values, followed by their self-attributed political orientations, ideologies (social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism), and attitudes toward current political issues in Korea. These results suggest the need to understand Koreans’ political orientation with a more nuanced approach rather than a liberal-conservative dichotomy. We discuss the implications of our findings regarding political and affective polarization in Korea and future directions of social psychological research on political attitudes and behaviors.