Goals and expectations as elements of attitudes toward political parties

Abstract

The main goal of presented research has been testing of the expectancy-value theory (which originally connects level or strength of motivation of an individual to stand for particular goal, at one side, and product of belief that desired goal is reachable and value or valence of that goal, at the other side), or more exactly, to see is it possible and in which degree, to apply this theory to attitudes toward political parties in Serbia. To accomplish this, 255 subjects has estimated importance of 18 social and 19 personal goals, then they estimated expectancies of main political parties to fulfill those goals, and finally subjects has been questioned about their attitudes (global evaluations) toward the parties. Results confirm assumption that products of expectancies from the parties and acceptances of appropriate goals (both social and personal) are in positive correlation with attitudes toward those parties. However, the assumption that attitudes and products of expectancies and goals would correlate higher than attitudes and only expectancies has not be confirmed. This means that expectancy has more importance than goal in the expectancy-goal product. As a conclusion, there is a tendency of alignment between affective relationship toward parties and expectancies (as cognitive elements) that parties can manage to fulfill different goals. .