Psychosemantics of «soft power» in geopolitics

Psychosemantics of «soft power» in geopolitics


Petrenko V.F.

Dr. Sci. (Psychol.), Prof., Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of the Laboratory of Psychology of Communication and Psychosemantics, Faculty of Psychology, Moscow, Russia. victor-petrenko@mail.ru

Mitina O.V.

Cand. Sci. (Psychol.), Leading recearcher, Laboratory of Psychology of Communication and Psychosemantics, Faculty of Psychology, Moscow, Russia. omitina@inbox.ru

Gladkikh N.Y.

Cand. Sci. (Psychology), Assos. Prof., Moscow State University of Psychology and Education, Moscow, Russia n.gladkih@gmail.com

ID of the Article:


For citation:

Petrenko V.F., Mitina O.V., Gladkikh N.Y. Psychosemantics of «soft power» in geopolitics. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2018. No 1. P. 40-51




Abstract

Psychosemantic approach is mostly in demand when it comes to collective research representations, allowing to identify the underlying attitudes and stereotypes that are poorly reflected upon, or hidden because of social undesirability, and therefore difficult to diagnose. Country’s image perception is just such an example. The article deals with a number of images of countries which are well known among student audience in South Korea. Author’s psychosemantic technique “The image of a country” was used to obtain empirical data. 107 subjects (females and males) took part in the survey. The study included analysis and interpretation of primary answers on items of the questionnaire, confirmation of universal categories of countries images perception, determination of average scores for all countries from the questionnaire for all categories, reconstruction of integral rating of the positive attitudes toward the countries. For data analysis methods of multivariate statistics were used (principal component analysis and discriminant analysis).


Keywords
political psychology; psychosemantics; image of the country; categories of country image perception; methods of multivariate statistics; South Korea

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