24th World Congress of Political Science

On July 23–28, Poznan hosted the 24th World Congress of Political Science, organized by the Polish Association of Political Science and Faculty of Political Science and Journalism of Adam Mickiewich University in Poznan. The student of HSE master program “Applied Social Psychology” Yana Maria Priestley took part in the Congress.

The event brought together more than 3000 researchers and experts of political science and related fields from all over the world. Scientists and students from the Faculty of Social Science of Higher School of Economics also took part in the Congress.

Participation in such large conference is a very valuable experience for the young researcher – it allows you to receive the constructive criticism regarding your research and take a breath of inspiration from more experienced colleagues. Also, is is important not to limit yourself to just one narrow field when you choose the conference – in fact, they unite various disciplines and different. This time I finally could meet scientist from all the fields I’m working within – I got my bachelor degree in Political Science and now I’m getting the degree in Social Psychology, while working in the Laboratory of Applied Network Research. 

Yana-Maria Priestley
student of HSE master program “Applied Social Psychology”

The variety of topics were discussed within the session of political psychology – from the cross-cultural specifics of political rhetorics to the analysis of personality traits of political leadership. On July 26, there was held the panel “A sentimental democracy?” devoted to the relationship between emotions, personality traits and political views”. The student of HSE master program “Applied Social Psychology” Yana Maria Priestley presented her research project “Joint Development of Political Attitudes and Social Networks Among Students”:

“Political attitudes may to change in critical and unstable times, especially among young minds. Social environment of individuals, mostly presented by their social networks, has significant impact on their evaluations. The relationship between political views and social affiliations is difficult to analyze: do people influence each other’s opinions so that they shift over time, or do their political attitudes act as a ground for attraction of individuals to each other?

In this research, we use longitudinal attitudinal and network data on a sample of sixty-three first-year students, collected twice during two study years. Social network analysis methods, logistic regression and structural equation modeling were used to investigate the nature of social influence and social selection processes. Significant tendencies to conformity in regards to political attitudes were found, driven by friendship more so than study relationships. We discovered that social selection based on political attitudes’ similarity has almost no impact for friendship formations, but affects the development of study social network. Also, we accessed retrospective evaluations of previous political attitudes to examine the congruency between actual and recalled attitudinal data”.