There is examined the process of internalization of the personality of socio-political values and values of small social groups, which outlines the prospects and forms of political behavior, and considered as the main channel of transformation of political values into the process of political socialization into stimuli and motives of practical political behavior. The reasons for this process are identified: identification with the group oriented on this value, and practical participation in the joint activity, motivated by this value. Attention is drawn to the fact that new, in comparison with the family and the school, instruments of political socialization – informal youth groups – play an alternative role regarding to the former institutions of political socialization. It was found out that the personality’s value system occupies an intermediate position between the motivation-needs sphere and the internal settings on the model of political behavior. It is shown that the system of political orientations of youth is variable, because it is largely conditioned with the changeable social environment and the actual level of personality development, and the formation of political values of youth occurs under the influence of complex ethnic, domestic and other factors, which are the background to the forming of psychology of group political behavior. It is noted that participation in youth political organizations, educational work in higher educational institutions sometimes create misconceptions about the surrounding political reality, which reflects the inaptitude of a young person to distinguish the true values of democracy from the negative phenomena with which one sometimes encounters in life. It is concluded that all this affects the perception of politics: in some cases, it promotes the absorption of democratic values, in others it creates psychological obstacles for the process of the basic principles of political behavior forming.