DYNAMICS OF THE STUDENTS PERCEPTION OF AN IDEAL POLITICAL LEADER applying L. Sondi’s test

The article presents the author's empirical study outcomes that show students' subconscious perceptions of an ideal political leader. Such perceptions are the integral part of the public political consciousness and they can be studied on the basis of L. Sondi's test. Besides, the test helps identify latent features of the voters' attitudes (which are actually expectations). The study was conducted in 2003 among students in Chernihiv city (n = 120) and in 2019 among students in two regions of Ukraine – Donbas (Starobilsk, n = 60) and North-East Ukraine (Chernihiv, n = 67). It focused on studying the dynamics of youth perceptions about an ideal political leader during a certain period of time and based on the current regional features of these perceptions. Chernihiv student youth demonstrated a certain dynamics of preferences towards the ideal leader. The study showed that along with ‘Feminine' political leaders (who were mostly elected a decade and a half ago) today young Ukrainian citizens prefer also ‘masculine' leaders who are active, decisive, and powerful. When young Ukrainians in Chernigiv and Donbass examined the portraits of potential leaders, a certain tendency was documented. Thus, in both groups the portrait of an extroverted, emotional, active, decisive, and ready for competition leader turned out to be popular. Moreover, men were painted in all popular portraits. It should be noted though, the East Ukrainian students (for example, from Starobilsk) were expecting also to see ‘ethical-humanistic' and ‘active-aggressive' type of men as a political leader, while the students form Chernihiv preferred ‘erotic-humanistic' leader. The obtained results can be of interest for psychodiagnostics, in view of L. Sondi's test adaptation or creating a new specialized political-psychological methodology, not only for political psychology (revealing the specifics of everyday political consciousness and regional political subcultures). Focusing on specifics of subconscious (irrational) perception of political leaders by other regions representatives, as well as other age groups appears to be promising for further research.