Abstract
The possibility of using psychosemantic methods in political psychology is considered. One such method is the reconstruction of categorical structures, through the prism of which man perceives the world and events happening in the world. The psychosemantic approach is associated with building multidimensional semantic spaces that serve as an operational model of categorical structures of the human conscious and subconscious. It is useful for studying the perception of political and sociocultural problems, helping to reveal in-depth setups and stereotypes that are reflected poorly, or concealed due to their social undesirability, and therefore, are hard to diagnose. Examples of using this approach in the study of psychosemantic consciousness are given.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
V. F. Petrenko and O. V. Mitina, “The attitude of Russia’s citizens to reforms and the typology of political setups,” Psikhol. Zh., No. 5, 31–61 (1997).
O. Mitina and V. Petrenko, “Russian political mentalities: A psychosemantic study of the political mind of the contemporary Russian political elite,” Politics, Culture Socialization 4 (1), 35–50 (2013).
W. R. Ashby, An Introduction to Cybernetics (Wiley, New York, 1956).
D. Kahneman, Attention and Effort (Prentice Hall, 1973).
E. Abashkina, B. Egorova-Gantman, Yu. Kosolapova, et al., No One Is Born a Politician: How to Become and Remain an Efficient Political Leader, in 2 vols. (Antikva, Moscow, 1993) [in Russian].
L. Ya. Gozman and E. B. Shestopal, Political Psychology (Feniks, Rostov-on-Don, 1996) [in Russian].
O. S. Deineka, Economic Psychology: Sociopolitical Problems (SPbGU, St. Petersburg, 1999) [in Russian].
G. G. Diligenskii, Sociopolitical Psychology (Nauka, Moscow, 1994) [in Russian].
I. G. Dubov and S. R. Panteleev, “Perceiving the personality of a political figure,” Psikhol. Zh., No. 6, 25–33 (1992).
M. M. Lebedeva, Negotiations Lie Ahead of You (Ekonomika, Moscow, 1993) [in Russian].
A. P. Nazaretyan, “Political psychology: Subject, conceptual foundations, tasks,” Obshchestv. Nauki Sovremennost’, No. 1, 154–162 (1998).
D. V. Ol’shanskii, Basics of Political Psychology (Delovaya Kniga, Yekaterinburg, 2001) [in Russian].
V. F. Petrenko and O. V. Mitina, “Semantic space of political parties,” Psikhol. Zh., No. 6, 55–77 (1991).
L. A. Radzikhovskii, “Fear of democracy,” Sotsiol. Issled., No. 3, 75–88 (1989).
N. M. Rakityanskii, Seventeen Moments of Democracy: Russia’s Leaders through the Eyes of a Political Psychologist (Rossiiskoe Ob"edinenie Izbiratelei, Moscow, 2001) [in Russian].
G. A. Satarov, Mathematical Methods and Computers in Historical-Typological Studies (Nauka, Moscow, 1989) [in Russian].
E. B. Shestopal, Personality and Politics (Mysl’, Moscow, 1988) [in Russian].
A. G. Shmelev, “The psychology of political opposition: A social-worldview test,” Psikhol. Zh., No. 5, 26–36 (1992).
A. I. Yur’ev, An Introduction to Political Psychology (Izd. Sankt-Peterburg. Gos. Univ., St. Petersburg, 1992) [in Russian].
E. B. Shestopal and G. G. Diligenskii, “Political psychology,” Large Psychological Dictionary, Ed. by B. G. Meshcheryakov and V. P. Zinchenko (Praim-Evroznak, St. Petersburg, 2003) [in Russian].
H. D. Lasswell, Psychopathology and Politics (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1977).
Profiling Political Leaders: Cross-Cultural Studies of Personality and Behavior Constructs, Ed. by O. Feldman and O. Linda (Praeger, Westport, Conn., 2001).
G. A. Kelly, The Psychology of Personal Constructs (Norton, New York, 1955).
The Psychological Assessment of Political Leaders with Profiles of Saddam Hussein and Bill Clinton, Ed. by J. Post (Univ. of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2003).
W. T. Schultz, Handbook of Psychobiography (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2005).
http://www.proshkolu.ru/user/hvatov83/blog/336052. Cited March 9, 2015.
C. Osgood, C. Susi, and P. Tannenbaum, The Measurement of Meaning (Univ. of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1957).
G. A. Kelly, A Theory of Personality: The Psychology of Personal Constructs (Norton, New York, 1963).
F. Fransella and D. Bannister, A Manual for Repertory Grid Technique (Academic Press, London, 1977).
V. F. Petrenko, Basics of Psychosemantics, 2nd ed. (Piter, St. Petersburg, 2005) [in Russian].
O. Mitina and V. Petrenko, “Attitudes toward political parties,” in The Russian Transformation, Ed. by B. Glad and E. Shiraev (St Martin’s Press, New York, 1999).
V. Petrenko, O. Mitina, and R. Brown. “The semantic space of Russian political parties on federal and regional level,” Europe-Asia Studies 47 (5), 835–857 (1995).
V. F. Petrenko and O. V. Mitina, Psychosemantic Analysis of Public Consciousness Dynamics (a Case Study of Political Mentality) (Izd. MGU, Moscow, 1997) [in Russian].
V. F. Petrenko, O. V. Mitina, and I. V. Shevchuk, “Sociopolitological study of the public consciousness of the citizens of Kazakhstan,” Psikhol. Zh., No. 1, 53–88 (1992).
V. F. Petrenko and O. V. Mitina, “A Psychosemantic approach to the study of meanings,” in Conception of Meaning, Ed. by S. Kreitler and T. Urbánek (Nova, New York, 2014).
V. F. Petrenko and O. V. Mitina, “Defining the structure of political values with different types of political self-definition,” in Man and His Values in the Modern World. The VI International Scientific and Practical Conference, October 16–17, 2014 (Zabaikal’skii Gos. Univ., Chita, 2015) [in Russian].
F. Abraham, O. Mitina, and V. Petrenko, “Construction of system dynamics from multivariate date,” in Nonlinear Dynamics in the Life and Social Sciences, Ed. by W. Sulis and I. Trofimova, NATO Science Series. Series A: Life Sciences (IOS Press, 2000), vol. 320, pp. 325–332.
O. V. Mitina, “Mathematical methods in psychosemantics,” in Cognitive Studies, Ed. by V. D. Solov’ev (Izd. Ins. Psikhol. RAN, Moscow, 2006), pp. 69–93 [in Russian].
O. Mitina, F. Abraham, and V. Petrenko, “Dynamical cognitive models of social issues in Russia,” Int. J. Modern Phys. 13 (2), 229–251 (2002).
O. V. Mitina and V. F. Petrenko, “Dynamics of political consciousness as a self-organization process,” Obshchestv. Nauki Sovremennost’, No. 5, 103–115 (1995).
V. F. Petrenko and O. V. Mitina, “Russians’ ideas of the quality of life under different governments,” Vestn. Ross. Akad. Nauk 82 (2), 124–130 (2012).
A. I. Solzhenitsyn, How Are We to Rebuild Russia? ‘Can Do’ Considerations (Sovetskii Pisatel’, Leningrad, 1990) [in Russian].
J. W. Berry, “Psychology of acculturation,” in Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1989: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Current Theory and Research in Motivation, Ed. by J. J. Berman. (Univ. of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1990), Vol. 37.
H. Tajfel and J. C. Turner, “The social identity theory of intergroup behavior,” in Psychology of Intergroup Relations, Ed. by S. Worchel and W. G. Austin (Nelson-Hall, Chicago, 1986), pp. 7–24.
H. C. Triandis, Culture and Social Behavior (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1994).
L. M. Drobizheva, A. R. Aklaev, and G. U. Soldatova, Democratization and Images of Nationalism in the Russian Federation in the 1990s (Mysl’, Moscow, 1996) [in Russian].
V. Petrenko, O. Mitina, and K. Berdnikov, “Russian citizens representations of the country’s positions in the geopolitical space of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Europe, and the world,” European Psychologist 8 (4) (2003).
A. P. Nazaretyan, Nonlinear Future: Megahistory, Synergetics, Cultural Anthropology, and Psychology in Global Forecasting (Argamak-Media, Moscow, 2015) [in Russian].
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Original Russian Text © V.F. Petrenko, O.V. Mitina, 2017, published in Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk, 2017, Vol. 87, No. 1, pp. 50–64.
RAS Corresponding Member Viktor Fedorovich Petrenko is a Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Communication Psychology and Psychosemantics at the Faculty of Psychology, Moscow State University. Ol’ga Valentinovna Mitina, Cand. Sci. (Psychol.), is an Associate Professor and Leading Researcher at the above laboratory.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Petrenko, V.F., Mitina, O.V. A psychosemantic approach to reconstruction of political mentality: Research methods and examples. Her. Russ. Acad. Sci. 87, 49–62 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331617010038
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331617010038