INTERPERSONAL POLITICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TENSION AMONG THE POPULATION OF UKRAINE

The deputy director of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine, Doctor of Sociological Sciences Serhii Dembitskyi prepared a press release on the topic:

«INTERPERSONAL POLITICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TENSION AMONG THE POPULATION OF UKRAINE».

 In it he reported that between 22 February and 6 March 2023 the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted its own all-Ukrainian public opinion survey «Omnibus». Using computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) on the basis of a random sample of mobile telephone numbers (with random generation of telephone numbers and subsequent statistical weighting), 985 respondents living in all regions of Ukraine (except the Autonomous Republic of Crimea) were surveyed.

Main conclusions:

1) The overall situation, compared with December 2021, has not changed fundamentally; in particular, more than half of those surveyed feel one or another level of interpersonal political and psychological tension.

2) Comparatively stronger interpersonal political and psychological tension is characteristic of residents of the East and South of Ukraine.

3) A trend is recorded towards an increase in the overall number of people without a sense of interpersonal political and psychological tension as age rises.

4) The strongest interpersonal political and psychological tension is observed among potential voters of the political party «European Solidarity».

First, it appears that IPPT is more a function of stable personality traits than of social processes in society. Otherwise it is hard to explain such stability of the indicators during such social upheavals. Second, we seem to see a radicalisation of the «European Solidarity» electorate. But in my view this change is illusory. The reason for this illusion is the shrinking of the ES electorate - the calmer ones have dropped away, the more tense ones have remained.

Eight charts and two appendices are provided.