Nothing Ever Happened? Attitude Stability and Change in Ukraine Before and During the Full-Scale Russian Invasion

Do social crises change people's attitudes? And if so, do people become more conservative? Several theoretical traditions predict that severe crises should produce conservative shifts in attitudes toward greater conformity, tradition, and in-group solidarity. We examine attitude stability and change in Ukraine before and during the full-scale Russian invasion, using repeated cross-sectional data from the European Social Survey (Rounds 10 and 11) and panel data from the Life in War Survey. At the aggregate level, most attitudes in 2024 resembled pre-war levels. Short-term rally effects observed in 2022, including increased trust in domestic institutions and satisfaction with government, largely dissipated by late 2024. Most human values and outgroup attitudes remained stable, though in-group attachment increased and prayer frequency rose modestly. However, individual-level stability was low: pre-war attitudes poorly predicted wartime attitudes for most variables. Changes were bidirectional, with roughly equal shares of respondents shifting upward and downward, explaining why substantial individual movement produced minimal aggregate change. This pattern extends findings from disaster and trauma research showing heterogeneous responses to adverse events. That such severe threat produced only modest, temporary aggregate shifts suggests researchers should not expect major shocks to fundamentally reshape societal orientations, at least in the short term.