Political self-determination of young people: social and psychological characteristics

Abstract

The relevance of the article. Political phenomena affect both spheres of any individual, its rational and emotional parts in particular. Therefore, being a political person involves understanding politics, having knowledge, attitude, perception, sensing politics and showing reaction to political processes to some extent. The vast majority of people are being somewhat politically oriented. It is not only the attribute for those belonging to a certain political party, or those being active in political life of the country. Viewing from this point, the study of the political self-determination of each citizen is a topical research issue, given his or her social and psychological characteristics.

The article provides for a theoretical analysis of the political self-determination phenomenon of young people and at the same time, it examines basic approaches explaining social and psychological reasons for political self-determination. When thinking about political self-determination we normally understand a specific political and psychological phenomenon, manifesting itself in the thoughts, words and activities of the individuals.

The purpose of this article lays down in the identification of psychological characteristics which form up political self-determination of young people (their participation in the elections included) which act with same level of social, age and gender characteristics.

The studies resulted in highlighting several peculiarities of the political self-determination of young people. These are namely, (1) motivational and valuable (like orientation, claims, etc.), (2) emotional and strong-willed (like experience, feeling about possible participation in political processes, impressions after such processes, willingness to make political decisions, etc.), and (3) cognitive and reflexive (like perception, analysis of political information, ideas and knowledge of the electoral law and its implementation, etc.).

The practical value of the article lies in identifying specific psychological characteristics, which have to be studied empirically, since they have the same impact on political self-determination formation of young people as the social ones, including participation in the elections.