Hi Reddit! We are Vladimir Ponizovskiy and Evgeny Osin, researchers investigating the psychology behind political influence and propaganda. We are here to talk about how propaganda shapes the way citizens construe political events, specifically looking at public support and resistance in Russia. We both lived in Russia, worked in psychological research at the Higher School of Economics, and left for political reasons - Vladimir in 2014 and Evgeny in 2022.
In our recent paper "War, what is it good for? Propaganda, value-instantiating beliefs, war support and resistance in Russia" (https://doi.org/10.56296/aip00054), we surveyed 973 Russian citizens in August 2022 to assess how they interpreted the war in terms of its consequences for their basic human values. We found that individuals systematically vary in the meanings they assign to the war. Those who primarily consumed state media were more likely to view the invasion as protecting conservation values like security, conformity, and tradition. Through latent profile analysis, we identified two distinct groups: one interpreting the war as preserving the social order, which represented 31% of participants, and another seeing it as undermining the social order, representing 69% of participants. Crucially, the group that saw the war as preserving social order expressed significantly more positive attitudes toward the war and stronger intentions to support it politically. This held true even when accounting for broader ideological stances like right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation.
Why might this happen? Our findings suggest that authoritarian propaganda works not just by spreading misinformation, but by offering moral interpretations that make state actions feel consistent with people's core values. We are essentially introducing value-instantiating beliefs as a novel psychological link between propaganda exposure and political mobilization. Feel free to ask us anything about this research, propaganda in authoritarian contexts, or the psychology of values! We will try to answer your questions as best as we can.
A bit more about us: Vladimir Ponizovskiy is a researcher based at the Department of Psychology at Durham University and Evgeny Osin is based at the University of Paris Nanterre. Together with our co-authors from Ruhr University Bochum and the University of York, we aim to better understand the psychological dimensions of political behavior.
This AMA is being facilitated by advances.in/psychology, the open-access journal that published our article in their Psychology of Pushback Special Issue. The journal champions a new publishing model where reviewers are financially compensated for their work.
We will be on between GMT 5:00 pm and 7:00 pm (12:00 pm and 2:00 pm ET), AMA!
Usernames: u/VladimirPonizovskiy and u/No_Wallaby5042
