engleski

National and European Identity and Attitudes toward the European Integrations

In the context of European Integration, the construct of European identity is becoming increasingly popular in social studies and for social psychologists there most relevant issue is its relation to national identity. The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between national and European identity when measured with various instruments. The second goal was to assess the level of national and European identity and attitudes toward European Integrations depending on participants’ age, gender and educational level. Citizens from two European countries, not yet members of the European Union, Croatia and Serbia and Montenegro, participated in this study. The total of 400 participants from each country were selected according to their gender, age and educational level. The questionnaire consisted of Cinnirela’ s European Identity Scale and National Identity Scale, NAIT (Čorkalo and Kamenov, 1998) and STEIN (Franceško et al, 2003) Results suggest orthogonal relation between national and European identity when measured with Cinnirela’ s scales and low negative correlation when measured with NAIT and STEIN scales. The letter result confirms our hypothesis that European identity and attitude toward European Integrations are not the same construct. Participants from both countries express higher level of national than European identity, which was expected because national identity salience is one of the well-documented consequences in the aftermath of war. Although generally men, older participants and those with of lower educational level show higher national identity, significant interactions of age, gender and educational level were found. Results will be discussed taking into account recent social identity theories and socio-economic and political situation in the two countries.

national identity; European identity

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