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Research Article | Special Issue: Psychology of Pushback

War, what is it good for? Propaganda, value-instantiating beliefs, war support and resistance in Russia

Vladimir Ponizovskiy ORCID, Marie Isabelle Weißflog ORCID, Evgeny Osin ORCID, & Lusine Grigoryan ORCID
https://doi.org/10.56296/aip00054
Published: April 8, 2026
Copyright: The authors (CC BY 4.0)

Ponizovskiy, V., Weißflog, M.I., Osin, E., & Grigoryan, L. (2026). War, what is it good for? Propaganda, value-instantiating beliefs, war support and resistance in Russia. advances.in/psychology, 1, e825539. https://doi.org/10.56296/aip00054

Ponizovskiy, Vladimir, et al. "War, what is it good for? Propaganda, value-instantiating beliefs, war support and resistance in Russia." advances.in/psychology, vol. 1, no. 1, 2026, e825539. https://doi.org/10.56296/aip00054.

Ponizovskiy, Vladimir, Marie Isabelle Weißflog, Evgeny Osin, and Lusine Grigoryan. 2026. "War, what is it good for? Propaganda, value-instantiating beliefs, war support and resistance in Russia." advances.in/psychology 1 (1): e825539. https://doi.org/10.56296/aip00054.

Ponizovskiy V, Weißflog MI, Osin E, Grigoryan L. War, what is it good for? Propaganda, value-instantiating beliefs, war support and resistance in Russia. advances.in/psychology. 2026;1(1):e825539. doi:10.56296/aip00054.

Ponizovskiy, V. et al. (2026) 'War, what is it good for? Propaganda, value-instantiating beliefs, war support and resistance in Russia', advances.in/psychology, 1(1), e825539. Available at: https://doi.org/10.56296/aip00054.

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Public support and resistance in authoritarian contexts are often attributed to (in)effectiveness of propaganda – yet whether the state interpretations of events are actually internalised is rarely examined. We surveyed 973 Russian citizens in August 2022 to assess how they construed the war in Ukraine in terms of its consequences for their core values, such as security, benevolence, and achievement. We first show that individuals systematically vary in the meanings they assign to the war: consumption of state (vs. independent) media was associated with seeing it as more protective of conservation values – security, conformity, and tradition – and less beneficial for self-enhancement and stimulation values. Latent profile analysis identified two patterns of construals: one interpreting the war as preserving the social order (representing 31% of participants) and another as undermining it (representing 69% of participants). The former was associated with more positive attitudes towards the war and stronger intentions to take part in political action in support of the war, even after accounting for authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and national identity. Our findings identify value-based construals as a novel psychological dimension that connects propaganda research with the motivational psychology of values. Because the sample was collected in a wartime repressive context, we also discuss the possibility of sampling and response biases.

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