Collective feelings about significant social phenomena: Russian orthodox universities vs secular students’ groups comparative analysis

Abstract

Collective feelings have been analyzed as one of the components of large social groups psychology. The mentality role in expressing collective feelings has been researched. Religiousness as a type of mentality has been identified. The research has been aimed at detecting differences in youths’ collective feelings about significant social phenomena depending on their religiousness. The respondents sample consisted of orthodox universities students group (58 individuals, 51% girls, 49% boys) and the secular ones (60 individuals, 54% girls, 46% boys). The primary method was interview which consisted of two stages. The first (qualitative stage) included free recalling by respondents significant social phenomena, events and feelings they evoke. The second (quantitative) stage included scale assessment for general list of phenomena and events through intensity of the feelings evoked. For compiling socio-psychological portraits of both groups the following methodologies have been used: “Social Identity”, “Scale of Happiness”, “Value Orientation”, author’s questionnaire “Political Preferences”. All data have been processed in SPSS 22.0 software. Some significant differences in collective feelings of orthodox universities students vs the secular ones have been detected. Higher intensity of feelings have been detected in orthodox universities students. This affected both positive and negative modalities of feelings. Specifically, feelings of annoyment and anger are less typical for them than for secular students, because these feelings are seen as sin. At the same time, feeling of compassion was stronger for orthodox students. The markedly expressed feelings of belonging to their country in connection with military industry strengthening has been shared by 43% of these respondents (as compared with 8% of seculars). The detected differences in assessments are being explained by the groups’ specific mentality, particularly by more intensely expressed patriotic feelings of orthodoxes (love of motherland), their more intense emotional life, their exclusion of deeply negative feelings.