Youth Attitudes towards Corruption as a Manifestation of the Economic Mentality of Russians

Abstract

In the study of legal problems, their psychological aspects are of great importance. The paper presents the main areas of research on corruption. It is noted that in modern legal psychology, the prevention of unlawful behavior of young people in the field of economic crimes is still given little focus. The paper presents an analysis of the attitude of young people, as the most promising social group, to corruption offenses. The research was carried out using surveys among the students of higher education of Moscow. The data obtained were processed with content analysis, expert analysis as well as quantitative analysis of keywords and attitudes under topical areas chosen by the authors. The main results of the study can be summarized as follows: young people's perceptions of corruption are largely formed at the household level and do not reflect the specifics of macro-social processes in the society; students highlight the cultural and historical factors in the spread of corruption, which, in their opinion, act as a historically established social obstacle to overcoming the corruption situation in Russia; oftentimes students assess corruption not on legal grounds, but on psychological ones (on the principles of respect, politeness, mutual agreement, etc.), which does not always allow them to adequately identify corrupt behavior. With this approach to the problem, the research results require serious attention from psychologists, teachers and lawyers (in view of legal education of young people), which is a promising plan for future research.