Belgrade : Faculty of Philosophy University of Belgrade
Abstract
Serbia’s political positioning towards the Russia-Ukraine war is a highly contentious public
issue and thus there is importance in understanding the factors that predict attitudes in this
domain. In the current study we sought to examine individual differences in the sentiment
towards the Russia-Ukraine war with a particular focus on Militant Extremist Mindset
(subscales: Proviolence, Vile world, Divine power) and Big Five personality traits
(Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness and Conscientiousness). The sentiment
towards the war is operationalized through War Anxiety (WAS), positive and negative
emotions in relation to war (self-reported on a Likert scale), accountability perceptions of
different actors (Russia, Ukraine, NATO, EU, and USA) and attitude towards imposing
sanctions against Russia. The data was collected in Aprile 2022 by combining face-to-face and
online surveying, on a two-stage stratified (region and education) random sample of 917 adults.
The predictive power of personality predictors was tested after controlling for socio-economic
variables (age, education, urbanization). A total of 8% of variance in war anxiety (WAS) can
be explained with neuroticism (ꞵWAS = -.23, p < .01), agreeableness (ꞵWAS = .13, p < .01), and
Divine power (ꞵWAS = .13, p = .01). Emotions in relation to war can be explained by
agreeableness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, Proviolence and/or Divine power (7% of
variance in negative emotions and 16% of variance in positive emotions), with MEMS factors
being particularly predictive for positive feelings in relation to war (13% of variance
explained). Perceived accountability of the Ukraine, NATO, EU, and USA is positively
predicted by Vile World (ꞵ = .33, p < .01, 10% of variance explained), while Russia's accountability is negatively predicted by all MEMS factors (Proviolence ꞵ = -.14, p < .01, Vile
world ꞵ = -.12, p < .01, Divine power ꞵ = -.18, p < .01, 8% of variance explained).
Agreeableness predicted positive attitude towards imposing sanctions against Russia,
explaining 4% of variance (Wald = 5.35, p = .02). As expected, sentiment towards RussiaUkraine war reflects personality traits typically predictive of political behavior and even greater
extent radical and violent extremism mindset. Relatively small percentage of criteria explained
variation suggests that the explanations of the war related attitudes should be expanded to the
domain of more specific political attitudes, social identity, as well as social influence processes
shaping public opinion