"Countries where people tend to value autonomy and harmony the most tend to drink more alcohol, our latest study shows. And countries where people are more likely to value hierarchy, security and obedience, tend to drink less alcohol."
Really? I guess it's time to pour myself a large vodka and drink a toast to Mother Russia, avatar of that famously harmonious society where everybody's too busy enjoying their world-beating levels of personal autonomy to get uptight about heavy stuff like hierarchy, security and obedience:
"Alcohol consumption in Russia stays among the highest in the world. According to the WHO in a 2011 report, annual per capita consumption was about 15.76 litres, fourth highest volume in Europe."
It's not too hard to guess where this study went wrong, just from skimming the article about it. This, for example, looks like a clue:
"We found that countries with populations that valued autonomy and harmony, such as France and Germany, tended to have higher average levels of alcohol consumption. However, countries such as Iran and Senegal, where people hold more traditional values dear, such as hierarchy and being part of a collective, drank less alcohol."
So people in rich countries like France and Germany are drinking more than people in theocracies where alcohol is banned, and/or poor countries where many people couldn't afford to drink as much, even if they wanted to? This doesn't exactly convince me that where a nation sits on the liberal/authoritarian spectrum is likely to be the most useful predictor of how much booze the people there are drinking.
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