Perception of Foreign and National Political Leaders in Russia

Abstract

The present study aimed to determine the composition of factors that underlie the images of foreign and domestic political leaders among Russian youth and therefore play a major role in shaping social representations. The research was conducted within the theoretical and methodological framework of the psychosemantic approach, which seeks to reconstruct systems of meanings, both individual and collective, through the investigation of implicit as well as explicit categories of perception. The study comprised two stages, in which participants were administered a psychosemantic questionnaire to evaluate political leaders according to some professional and personal characteristics. The first part was conducted in 2015–2016 with a student sample (n = 147) using a set of political leaders from various countries. In the second part, carried out in 2017–2018, the participants (n = 200) also filled out a questionnaire, this time evaluating modern Russian leaders. A principal component analysis was performed on each of the data sets, revealing that two categories—namely, morality and professional characteristics—are present in both factor structures, whereas other factors are different. Several important theoretical and practical implications are discussed.