Perceived vs. Actual Consensus on Views and Values in Contemporary Russia, 2014 – 2021

The study explores to what extent people in the contemporary Russia perceive their views and values as shared by the majority. The research hypothesis is that this perceived consensus in Russia is rather high, is positively related to various dimensions of national identity, subjective wellbeing, and social trust, and rather weekly related to actual consensus. The research was carried out on the data of the two waves Russian Social Research conducted by CESSI (Institute for Comparative Social Research) in 2014 and 2021. The survey contains a question aimed at identifying the level of perceived consensus: “It seems to me that most of those who live in our country share my views and values” with the answer options “completely agree”, “rather agree”, “neither agree nor disagree”, “rather disagree”, and “totally disagree.” Various indicators of commitment to the country and feelings of closeness to people from different groups were used as correlates. Predictors (in a regression model with perceived consensus as a dependent variable) were socio-demographic parameters and values of objective consensus on various issues. The resulting variables (in models with perceived consensus as an independent variable) were indicators of subjective well-being and trust. The research results show that, as hypothesized, the level of perceived consensus in the contemporary Russia is quite high, although between 2014 and 2021 it grew somewhat lower. Also as expected, perceived consensus is at its highest in those with the strongest commitment to the country. Those who are glad to be living in Russia, and not in any other country, are most inclined to see their compatriots as like-minded people. Also as expected, people who believe that their views and values are shared by the majority of the population, tend to trust others more, because for them, this environment mainly consists of supposed like-minded people, and are more satisfied with their lives and the state of affairs in various spheres of life. The relation between perceived and actual consensus, however, was found to be different from what was hypothesized. Not only did perceived consensus fail to mirror the actual similarity in views and values, but it was found to be mostly based on misperception. All statistically significant effects of objective consensus on perceived consensus (with one exception) were negative. This means that the perceived consensus is higher for those whose views actually differ more from those of the majority of the population. This may be due to the effect of the "information bubble", when the bearers of views that differ from the views of the majority are more inclined to unite into groups of like-minded people, so that in their information field, precisely such views are represented to a greater extent, and eventually, they begin to feel that such views prevail in society as a whole.