Influence of Cohort Effect on Russians Social Sentiment

This research is connected with Russians social sentiment in the context of different socio-demographic characteristics and particularly the cohort effect. Incidentally, social sentiment are considered as individual’s form of cognition and world perception associated with their emotional assessments of all events in society, self-perception, social well-being and expectations about changing environment. Cohort effect, in turn, appears in case when we examine time (the historical period) and age (biological aspect) all together. It shows similarities in the behavior and way of thinking of people who were born and raised in the same cultural and historical conditions. The key concepts of this study are social sentiment, which will be presented as the Index of social sentiment; indices as superindividual aggregated indicators; generation and cohort as this research is based on K. Manheim generational theory and, finally, cohort analysis (APC-analysis, age-period-cohort) which allows to differentiate three effects – time, age and cohort. The main issue of this study lies in the ambiguousness of similarities/differences of Russians social sentiment who have reached a certain age in a different historical time period. It can be assumed that the conditions of socialization and cultural and historical context of time have an impact on individuals’ sentiment: those whose identity formation process took place in condition of stagnation or political difficulties in their country can express a greater pessimism in adulthood than those who grew up in favorable period. Thus, my study seems relevant because it is aimed at examination of Russians social sentiment dynamics over the period of 18 years (since 1996 to 2014) and recognition of its internal determinants, i.e. socio-demographic characteristics.