Politics
Jagoda Savić tried to insert the Ethics in political life in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to build ethical point of view among voters. Jagoda Savić hoped that moral optics can help to voters to make more proper political choices ant to understand better the reality they live.
1.“How to observe political candidates“
This research tried to offer basic guidelines to voters to assist them to evaluate a real nature of moral idetity of political candidates, in order to clarify the idea if they can believe to a candidate or should be suspicious. A question to answer was if voters can recognize moral Self of candidates, distinguishing it from their false moral presentation.
In short words, it is not pure linguistic analysis, but develops the idea about what voters can conclude about a candidate though a link between verbal ethical terms used by candidate and his inner moral structure.
The focus of the analysis is a connection between candidate's thinking and his verbal expression .
In the centre of attention is a content of the sentence, that represent moral message. Voters should identify key words in a speech of political candidate and code his moral message. This extracted ethical content is, at the same time, a heart of candidate's moral attitudes, moral feelings and moral behaviour.
One part of this research was dedicated to moral compromitation of political enemies and their elimination from politic life of the country. Such vocabulary had a role to destroy social position or a source of income of political enemy, and presented key words belong to so called “punishment speech“. So, voters should recognize if a public moral attack on someone is artificially produced or it is real moral failure of attacked person.
The research was published as the serial of newspaper articles within daily newspaper“Večernji list“ from 13. 06. To 19. 09. 1998 . A list of articles you can find in link “Published articles“, and electronic version af all articles in link “Ethics“
Article published on 22.08. 1998
2. “Preelectorial messages“
Jagoda Savić made a research in order to define a profile of typical Bosnia voter and to predict the results of elections in 2000 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The research was focused on dominant ethical and value orientations and dominant voters' criteria in Bosnia society. As well as on voters' vision for future and possible electorial choice. It included criteria such as “be honest“, “be powerful“, “be successful“, “be rich“ and “be believer“ .
Bosnia voters have no structured and defined moral criteria. Cognitive, affective and behavioural component of their ethical system doesn't function. Voters have a lack of so called “good reason“ in ethics, a lack of emotional connection with a justice and a lack of mechanism that attributes to them active moral role.
Money is still the most preferable value, power is respected while being successful is not reccomended. According to voters, good work results can put skilled persons in very embarrasing situations. Being honest is evaluated as “not adapted“ and “disorientated action“, and there was also a lack of critical distance regarding believers. It is enough to present yourself as believer to be socially accepted.
The research also registered an significant resistence agains mental and social changes. The research was published as the serial of newspaper articles within daily newspaper“Večernji list“ from 04. 03. To 15. 04. 2000. A list of articles can be found in link “Published artices“ and electronic version of articles in link “Ethics“
Article published 04.03.2000
3. “How to prepare a candidate for elections“
This project intended to find right political candidate, to work with him to develop his skills and assist him to winn the elections. The project was focused on candidate's self- perception, on so called question “Who I am“. Candidate should enter deeply in Erikson's optics “how I see my Self“, “how other people see me“ and “what I think how other people see me“. A cognitive restructuration had a task to correct wrong perception and false self- identification.
Beside that, a project included a work on communication between candidate and voters, such as mental projection into voters, achieving a position of psychological dominance upon voters and suggestive effects on their minds.
There were also a knowledge about collective conscious, instructions how to handle voters' apathy , their depression, a lack of vision for future and how to rise emotional tonus of voters. At the end, a project included technics of persuasion, transparency of pre- electorial messages as well as correlation between psychological sample of a candidate and psychological sample of voters. It was dealing also with voters' expectations from future and expectations from candidate.
This project was never implemented due to a lack of right person.