Personal values, perceptions of unfairness in social exchange and happiness among young voters and non-voters in Poland
Personal values, perceptions of unfairness in social exchange and happiness among young voters and non-voters in Poland

Summary/Abstract: In recent years, there has been increasing interest in phenomenon of poor political activity among young adults, manifested in large percentage of non-voters and politically non-engaged individuals. The aim of this study was to examine the relationships between voting behaviour and political preferences of young adults and their hierarchy of basic personal values, global subjective happiness and evaluations of fair and unfair treatment in social exchange. The results of the study indicate firstly, that the most important values were power, conformity and tradition, secondly, that the non-voters evaluated hedonism lower and security higher than the voters and thirdly, that value profiles for five groups of voters differed in preferences of conformity, tradition, security and hedonism. There were no significant differences between voters and non-voters in respect of global subjective happiness and evaluations of fair and unfair treatment. However, significant differences in these variables occured between electorates of specified political parties. The findings of the current research provide a psychological characteristic of young adults in terms of basic values, subjective happiness and perception of unfairness, allowing also to identify some of the possible indicators of poor political activity in this group.

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