Emotional and rational trust of the Russian student youth’s trust in governing bodies: problems of images of the authority

Abstract

Background. The problem of the trust of Russian students in governing bodies is especially relevant in modern geopolitical conditions. After all, it is the level of trust of the active and educated part of the youth that determines the implementation of tactical and strategic plans for state-building, successful political, economic, social and socio-cultural development of the Russian Federation. Measuring public confidence in public authorities will help to respond promptly to the growth or decline of protest activity of student youth, will help to form a deeper methodology for educating a state-oriented personality, prevent-ing harmful and dangerous social transformations. The purpose of the study was to identify the semantic specifics of the emotional and rational image of state power, to determine the vector of evaluation of public authorities based on these images and to determine the fea-tures of the emotional and rational trust of Russian students in public authorities. Materials and methods. The following methods of sociological research were used: quantitative method (mass questionnaire survey); projective method (semantic differential method). The mass survey was conducted by the authors’ collective in February-June 2023 with a volume of 2,641 people aged 17 to 25 years. Results. In the course of sociological research, it was revealed that the institute of the presidency and the personality of the President of the Rus-sian Federation have the highest indicators of rational trust. Further, depending on the sub-jective perception of Russian students about the importance, relevance and necessity of political institutions and leaders, indicators of rational trust decrease. The rational image of political power has such characteristics as: “strongˮ, “creativeˮ, “rationalˮ, “professionalˮ, “energeticˮ, “leadershipˮ. The emotional image of power has practically identical charac-teristics from the level of the President to the level of the regional executive power. Con-clusions. The author’s sociological research revealed the presence of several types of imag-es of power among Russian students: emotional and rational. If rational images of power can vary in the public consciousness of Russian students depending on many reasons, then the emotional image is constant. There are some differences in the rational semantic charac-teristics of the rational image of authority among Russian students. The level of rational trust decreases depending on the power hierarchy. Emotional and rational trust, images of power are influenced by mental characteristics, socio-demographic characteristics, tem-poral, situational characteristics. The emotional image of power is constant for Russian students, regardless of the subject of the federation. It has an anticipatory character based on the basic mental characteristics of Russian society. The rational image is based on a ra-tional assessment and demonstrates conventional forms of adaptation to political realities.

Keywords

• institutional trust
• image of power
• student youth
• authorities
• emotional and rational trust