Social Character: Issues of Methodology and Research Methods

Abstract

This article analyzes the methodological issues of the study of the phenomenon of social character. Social character is considered not as a typical (modal) individual character in society. As a systemic formation of social interactions, social character has non-additive (emergent) properties. Both individuals and various social communities are subjects of social character. At the individual level, social character is manifested as typical behavior traits in the process of communicating with different social groups. At the level of interpersonal, intergroup and mass communication, social character is a typical form of social interaction. Social character is the result of the mutual influence of subjects on individual behavior in the form of persuasion, suggestion, imitation and infection. The article analyzes the methods of measuring social character. It presents a test developed by one of the authors (R. B Shaikhislamov) to measure the degree of inner-, tradition- and other-directedness (according to D. Riesman’ stypology). The results of the measurement of social character in the course of interviewing residents of the Republic of Bashkortostan in 2015-2016 are presented. The authors come to the conclusion about the need for a comprehensive study of social character. The following problems are of great scientific interest. What are the emergent properties of social character in stable and unstable social situations? What are the trends of changes in the social character of Russians in the post-Soviet era? How significant are the differences in the social character of different generations, ethnic groups, residents of megacities, other cities and villages? We note that it is necessary to develop a system of indicators to measure social character. In addition to such indicators as inner-, tradition- and other-directedness, it is necessary to measure social character by such variables as "dominance – subordination", "productivity – non-productivity", "responsibility – irresponsibility", "cooperation – isolation", "trust – distrust", "Conformity – Innovation – Ritualism – Retreatism – Rebellion".