Successful communication requires the sender of the message to adjust its content to the cognitive abilities of the receiver. Messages that are too complex or not interesting can be easily ignored. Failing to reach the voters with a message during a campaign is troubling for the parties competing in the election. In this study, I explore whether parties in countries in which the voters are less politically sophisticated are more inclined to emphasize their valence traits during campaigns – as these are deemed to be more cognitively accessible – at the expense of discussions of their policy propositions. The results obtained using data collected in ten European democracies show that parties in countries where the general public is less interested in politics tend to devote more attention to exhibiting their valence traits, especially honesty. The level of education of the electorate is not relevant to the relative salience of valence.

Honesty in relationships with mechanisms of psychological protection in police officers with different levels of professional self-fulfillment

The analysis of domestic and foreign literature on the problem of police honesty in the context of their professional activities is covered. The specifics of the manifestation of this quality are revealed and the importance of this feature in the practice of policing is determined. In domestic psychology, honesty is considered by scientists as a moral component of the police officer’s personality, which testifies to the reliability, psychological stability and devotion to their profession. In foreign studies, honesty is interpreted through the effectiveness of activities, the quality of contacts with society and willingness to perform their activities at all times. The purpose of the study is to determine the psychological characteristics of honesty in the relationship with the mechanisms of psychological protection in police officers who have different levels of professional self-fulfillment (PS). The objectives of the study were: 1) theoretical review of psychological studies, which highlights the problem of honesty of police officers as one of the main competencies in police practice and an essential criterion in the formation of mechanisms of psychological protection; 2) determining the specifics of the manifestation of honesty in police officers with different levels of professional self-fulfillment (PS). The empirical basis of the study was 87 patrol police officers of special forces. The age of the subjects ranges from 22 to 50 years. Experience of practical work in police units ranges from 4 to 20 years. With the help of «Questionnaire of professional self-fulfillment» by O. Kokun and using the method of clustering according to the principle of k - means, we formed three groups of subjects: low, medium and high levels of PS. The first group included police officers with a low level of PS – 43 persons; the second group with an average level of SF was 20 persons, the third group of high-level of PS was 24 persons. Police officers with a low level of PS (first group) and with a high level of PS (second group) were involved in further research. To achieve this goal, the following were used: the “Honesty” questionnaire presented by the AZPS laboratory and the “Lifestyle Index” questionnaire by R. Plutchik, H. Kellerman & H.R. Conte. To identify the relationship between indicators, the method of mathematical statistics was used – Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. The correlation analysis allowed us to determine the place of honesty in the personality structure of police officers and to reveal the specifics of protective psychological mechanisms in police officers with different levels of PS. A group of police officers with a low-level of PS has two connections: one positive and one negative. Police officers with a high level of PS have two positive connections and one negative one.