A PORTRAY OF THE BRAZILIAN POLITICIAN
Abstract
The study of political stereotypes has been neglected
by social psychologists. The present research tests the hypothesis
that Brazilians have a negative attitude toward politicians.
Secondary objectives of this study were: (a) to test the possibility
of utilizing the telephone as a means of data collection in
Brazil; (b) to explore the correspondence between the answers
given by university students and those offered by several strata of
the general population. 533 Ss of both sexes took part in the study;
they were all residents of the state of Rio de Janeiro. 273 of them
were reached by telephone and chosen by a systematic random
sampling procedure; the remaining were university students. The
results confirmed the existence of a strong negative image of the
Brazilian politician. They are perceived as ambitious (for personal
purposes), insincere, oportunistic, ill intentioned, irresponsible, incompetent, etc. None and All were the most frequent responses
to the questions: (a) which politician is closest to your ideal of a
politician? and (b) which politician is further apart from your ideal
of a politician? The use of telephone interview proved to be adequate
and university students and the rest of the population sampled
gave similar responses.
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