POLITICAL IDENTIFICATION AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL MECHANISM OF STUDENTS SELF-DETERMINATION IN THE CONTEXT OF POLITICAL CULTURE

Abstract

Analysis of the phenomenon of political culture in many cases inevitably linked to the concepts of “political identity” and “political identification”. This article clarifies how the concepts of “identity” and “political culture” relate. It is stated that political identification is an integral part of the socialization of the individual in the process of which political culture is formed. The latter, in turn, forms the basis for the unification of individual and collective identities. On the other hand, political identity is shaped by the influence of political culture formed in society. Thus, the notion of “identity” can serve as a meaningful issue in the analysis of political culture.
Political identity as a psychological concept is a part of the personality identity, its self-concept, and is regarded as one of the components of the personality structure (E. Erickson, J. Marcia). From a socio-psychological point of view, identity is the result of identifying a person or a group of people with a particular social community. Identity becomes political when the individual (and the reference community) becomes involved in the activities of establishing a particular political order or choosing ways of social development.
An empirical study of the political identification of the students youth has been carried out in the context of mechanisms of political and ideological self-determination, based on a questionnaire by G. Tsyganenko aiming to find out the peculiarities of a young person’s self-determination regarding the political sphere. This can influence the political activity of individuals.
It was found that in the process of assimilation of political and ideological values in the study group there take place such social and psychological characteristics of the personality: flexibility of thinking, compliancy, willingness to cooperate with others (scale of regulatory intransigence); appreciation of independent autonomous behavior, high level of self-esteem (scale of dominant autonomy); the desire to defend their positions (scale of positional competition); awareness and realization of the need for social power and subordination to others (scale of self-affirmation); the predominance of rational comprehension of the situation over intuitive feeling (this mechanism is expressed somewhat less).
The mechanism of political identification, which responds to the attempts to determine its political and ideological preferences, is up-to-date. At the same time, average results on some other scales indicate that there is a perspective in the development of political culture of the studied sample of student youth.