A Survey of Social and Psychological Factors Affecting the Political Participation of People in Tehran

Political participation is one of the important types of participation which has been discussed frequently. Political participation in legal and conventional frameworks has been considered as a main characteristic of political development in countries around the globe. It seems that in a society where citizens don’t take part in political activities effectively, there is not much of feeling of commitment and dependence on political system and they won’t act as supporters of the system in critical situations. This article seeks to study the extent of political participation and effective factors on political participation in Tehran. The method adopted for this study was to conduct a survey. The research population was people aged 18 and more who lived in Tehran. The sample size was 1943 people who have been selected by stratified sampling proportionate to sample size. Our findings show significant correlation with 99% confidence level between each of the following variables with political participation: age, marital status, education, religious flexibility, religiousness, life satisfaction, political freedom, political legitimacy, political confidence, political friends, feeling of political efficiency, feeling of political powerlessness, political alienation, distribution of responsibilities, political family, political consciousness, political isolation, use of media, social confidence, satisfaction of government function, contents of candidates’ slogans, having free time in polling day, stability in party sympathy, importance of outcome of election, and importance of public control