The Place of Hope and Worrying in the Structure of Socially Significant Feelings (on the Example of Odessa)

Abstract

The article provides an analysis of the background emotional states, dominant in the Ukrainian society, such as «anxiety, worry» and «hope», as well as their place in the structure of socially significant emotions. Different aspects of social well-being, based on people’s opinion about the quality of life, are revealed on the analysis of the pollings on a large scale. Emotions (feelings) are interpreted as «results of social processes» and as «reasons» of social processes, essential for «explanations of social behaviour» (J. Barbalet). Using cluster analysis the author demonstrates that it is meaningless to share different emotions. They don’t appear in their pure forms. The article also considers the impact of the «hope and «anxiety» on assessment of different aspects of life quality. The empirical base, for the resolving problem of sociological interpretation, was representative pollings, carried out in Odessa between 2004 and 2017.