Influence of Stimulus Material on Social Representations: Euthanasia Case

The problem of euthanasia’s legalization and decriminalization tend to become a burning issue of the discussion in the society, especially as long as more countries entrench it in terms of legislation. Euthanasia is not legal in Russia, nevertheless, the concept of death with dignity incorporates wide range of attitudes and individual representations, which need to be studied. Consequently, the primary purpose of this work is to identify which social representations and attitudes towards euthanasia are typical of Russian population. More than that, this paper is an attempt to discover if stimulus material might transform such representations of individuals and it is of great theoretical interest as such experiment has never been conducted on such sensitive topic. The expected methodological implication is possible extension of the list of methods for measuring social representations, as well as extension of theoretical assumptions on which peculiarities of sensitive and stigmatized topics should be taken into consideration in order to get valid results and avoid bias.