Internet In The World-Image Of Students

Abstract

The concepts and origins of the development of the psychology of everyday life are considered. The necessity of consciousness and structuring of its subject and field of study in the framework of psychological science is proved. The individual qualities that are manifested in the psychology of everyday life are analyzed. The connection of everyday life with synergetic processes and psychodynamic qualities is shown. The role of everyday life in the coordination of the world-image and self-image in a crisis situation (social and personal) and small, but constant changes of the norms, values ​​and standards of the surrounding world is revealed. The concepts of transitive and digital everyday life are introduced, which are especially relevant for modern youth. This new form of daily life occurs in various online communities of FB, VKontakte, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram. So everyday life now include not only new names, but also new forms of interaction with the world, with others, with one-self. The role of art and cultural capital in the individualization of everyday life is shown. Everyday life from the perspective of psychology plays a role not only in the individualization of everyday life, but also in its transition to being, becoming a synergistic support for the individualization of being and the expression of existence. Various lifestyles in everyday life are described and their connection with the individuality of a person is analyzed.

Keywords: Digital daily lifeidentityeveryday lifesynergetic

Introduction

Scientific concepts of everyday life

Everyday life was considered from different standpoints, from the way to equip life, reading, walking, dressing and eating, to options for playing with the body, city, work, other people. But at the same time, all authors implied that everyday life, if considered as a frame, is aimed at minimizing one's own personality, preserving the habits and traditions of other, usually older generations, of the general way of life. This understanding of everyday life implies the importance of arranging one's own everyday life, which, in fact, is already becoming personal lifestyle (Adler, 2002).

All studies devoted to different areas of everyday life are extremely important for structuring the subject area of «everyday psychology as an independent part of» psychological science. The variability and uncertainty of social contexts pose for a person a task to cope with the difficult life situation of modern everyday life, and here the field of everyday psychology is closely related to the problems of resilience, coping strategies, and value orientations. A cardinal change in life contexts in a situation of globalization makes the question of maintaining the usual everyday way of life one of the central ones for positive socialization. And here the psychology of everyday life is connected with the problems of linguistic and stigmatized identity, culture and tolerance.

Such unity of everyday life with various psychological problems of our existence in the world, survival and self-realization in it, becomes the reason for the separation of everyday life from the general flow of researches about people's lives. Cardinal breakdowns call into question not so much everyday life as being, the but as very existence of people in the world. Hence, apparently, the natural observation that social crises are associated with personality crises, with questions about how to survive, what is the meaning of this existence.

But constant changes lead to the actualization of the desire for peace, stability. Therefore, we can say that people are tired of uncertainty, transitivity, want to hide from it in everyday life, in ordinary life, to find stability in what they liked or did not like before.

Areas of everyday life

Works concerning the psychology of everyday life that began in recent decades have mainly addressed topics that are somehow related to specific periods of ontogenesis Thomae (2017), or communication in different areas of the world around (Hoffman, 2000). These are the problems of aging, handling toys and the world of things in general, individual and general attitude to household things, food, and relaxation. To a greater extent, everyday life was in the focus of psychological, sociological and cultural studies that addressed the everyday world around people. Among these works for psychology, perhaps, became mainly important the works of de Serto (2013), who examined the influence of a big year not only on everyday life, but on people's mentality. But at the same time, to one extent or another, the authors implied that everyday life is associated with minimizing one’s own personality, maintaining habits and traditions. Therefore, apparently, the psychology of everyday life, in the first place, is associated with the individual.

From the point of view of many scientists, the most natural basis of the psychology of everyday life is connected with the psychology of the individual, since people always strive for rooting, which is provided by everyday life with a simple habitual way. But simplicity and everyday life today do not always subsidize to the emergence of rootedness and emotional comfort. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to understand the differences from the point of view of psychology, between the concepts of everyday life, rootedness and simplicity.

Yes, everyday life is often simple in terms of preserving the energy potential, since the ritualization of habits allows you to preserve the energy necessary for over-situational activity. Therefore, often the simplicity of life is associated precisely with its rootedness.

Problem Statement

To what extend everyday life is connected with a person’s individuality and how individualization and stereotyping of everyday life are related to each other in a crisis situation is an important psychological problem and one of the main challenges of our time.

Research Questions

In recent years, studies on various aspects of everyday life began to appear with enviable regularity. This raises the question of defining the subject of the psychology of everyday life and, no less important, the questions of why these works began to appear right now and what psychology of everyday life can give to psychological science as a whole.

Purpose of the Study

The study of factors influencing the actualization of the psychology of everyday life in modern science, as well as factors determining the individualization of everyday life.

Research Methods

In the research were used methods of comparative-analytical and inter-disciplinary investigation as well as historical-genetic approach to the development of everyday life.

Findings

History of family and life

First of all, it can be stated that, compared with the period of the end of the last century, there is a shift of interest in history in its more private, chamber version. That is, this is not an interest in chronicles, the history of the country as a whole, as in the 1990s, when people read out the works of works of the most prominent and important for that time historians. Now people are interested in the past life, fashion, habits, clothes. Therefore, various memoirs, descriptions of the way of life of different strata of society in the XVIII-XX centuries, in the Soviet period of the middle of the last century, are very popular. It seems that in this case we can ascertain the desire to restore some vital everyday identity — not I was and will be — but I saw, wore, ate, looked ... My parents, grandparents also saw it, wore, looked. Hence the nostalgia for the past, Soviet times and idealization of the very, in reality, uncomfortable, everyday life of that time is clearly observed among many, even young people.

Everyday life makes it possible to build some protective personal area, personal everyday life, fenced off by a barrier from the general chaos of the surrounding. After all, the daily routines of even close people vary considerably both in the daily routine and in preferences in food, clothing, and leisure. And here it is important to emphasize that such an attitude to everyday life is individual in itself, and this shows the inconsistency of contrasting everyday life and individuality, which is revealed in the analysis of the internal form of the psychological chronotope (Martsinkovskaya, 2017).

Rootedness and synergetic

Rooting in everyday life is correlated with synergistic trends. The study of the process of self-development and self-organization of the psyche in the natural and artificial world is associated with an analysis of what significant differences arise during the transition from a natural to a cultural person and to what extent we can generally speak about synergetic / entropy trends in this case. It is necessary to find some starting point from which to consider the process of self-organization of the human psyche, a determinant that would also build the process of self-development. This may be the desire for integrity (holism), or, on the contrary, its violation, the desire for the hierarchy of needs optimal for survival in the physical and social world, the hierarchy of activities, the desire for self-actualization, the balance of identities, the acquisition of the meaning of life, the formation of mental models or congruence of world image. The incentive that includes the processes of self-development is the inadequacy (lack of congruency) of the world-image and a violation of the balance of identities. It seems that as such a factor that determines the direction and dynamics of the synergetic / entropy processes in the development of the psyche can be considered the everyday life, which is the core of all the above parameters. After all, it is in everyday life that there is a fairly stable congruence between the familiar world and self-image. In it, of course, there is a familiar hierarchy of activities and needs: where to go, how to spend time, what to eat and drink, what objects and how to handle. These needs and activities are habitual - habits, and give awareness of the simplicity of the world, and its stability. And from this point of view, for the individual, indeed, we can talk about a harmonious connection of rootedness, everyday life and simplicity.

Small groups in everyday life

Materials obtained in our studies (Martsinkovskaya & Ayanyan, 2018), show that in today's unstable and uncertain reality, the family becomes the most important rooting factor in everyday life. Apparently, this is due precisely to the fact that in a situation of changes, the most stable group remains the family, which plays the role of asylum, care and support. The following places in hierarchy of identity’s groups are occupied by the groups “I as a representative of my generation”, “I as a representative of my gender” and “I as a citizen of my country”. Identification with a large group can testify the desire of people to find support in a significant, but poorly structured community (boys / girls, citizens). Such identities create the illusion of community and emotional support for the majority. The fact that the group is informal and often not personified does not destroy this illusion, which is often dispelled by contacts with specific representatives of a large group. (Martsinkovskaya & Kiseleva, 2018)

The leading role of the family as a socialization group is growing significantly for all respondents who have moved to another country. It can be assumed that the role of the family as an emotional defense and support in a changed, that is, rigid transitivity, significantly increases, providing emotional comfort and supporting the usual way of life, everyday life, even in a small family space. In general, we can say that people are dominated by social emotional experiences associated with the desire to "hide" from the difficulties that always arise in the process of socialization, especially socialization in a complex and changing world.

At the same time, there is certain regularity, expressed in the fact that an increase of external influences activates the stabilization potential of everyday life, which can perform a synergistic function that balances the destabilizing negative environmental influences and individualizes a person’s life style. Apparently, this connection to some extent reflects the same reciprocal relationship between the sign of emotional influence and its depth and meaningfulness, as in the law of emotional development by Stern (1998) - negative emotions stimulate the development of reflection and awareness of the environment, while positive ones stabilize the image of the world.

Personalization of daily life

Individualization of everyday life is associated with our individual typologies, with the psychodynamic qualities that determine our lifestyle, including everyday life. For example, aggressiveness helps a person in any everyday situation to insist on his opinion, achieve the desired results, and organize different activities. Therefore, this quality is a necessary component of leadership and can be considered as one of the phenomenology of the style of everyday life. In the same way, anxiety in everyday life can help a person, improving his reactions, increasing his observation, organization of activities, contributing to the formation of the necessary knowledge and skills. However, with all the importance of these qualities, for everyday life, apparently, the most significant are such features as impulsivity, reflexivity, rigidity, plasticity, emotionality.

It is these properties that not only individualize everyday life, but also determine to a large extent the ability of a person to change his usual life, sometimes, under the influence of circumstances, change intensely. Psychodynamics determines not only the usual reactions to the usual stimuli, but also the usual ways of solving not even the most ordinary problems. For example, impulsive people know that it is more convenient for them to quickly do something, though not quite right, and then correct their mistakes. Often such people choose their work style, postponing the solution of the problem until the last moment. Naturally, for reflexive people such style causes rejection and in everyday life they definitely need a reserve of time for reacting and solving a problem. It is also natural that in transitivity, especially during crisis periods of sharp changes, these people have a lot of difficulties in unusual situation. Rigid people also have many difficulties in crisis because, unlike plastic ones, they are not able quickly rebuild. Therefore, we can say that everyday life becomes for a person with pronounced psychodynamic qualities, an important defense, helping to build the surrounding reality in their style.

It seems that it is the rootedness in a complexly built individualized everyday life that helps or prevents people from accepting changes in the environment and evaluating the multidimensional nature of these changes. According to Grishina (2019) adherence to stereotypes of everyday life can be considered as an indicator of a person’s tendency to simplify reality. She also emphasizes that a person’s attitude toward changes or maintaining immutability is connected with his attitude toward accepting the complexity of the world or constructing its simplified picture. And these materials, at a different level of analysis, confirm our data.

Digital daily life

Modern everyday reality for a very large part of young people is connected to the Internet. The new generation does not separate the real and network spaces from each other, linking on-line and off-line into a single everyday life. Interestingly, that at the same time, to a large extent, the individualization of everyday life in the network significantly reduces the individual characteristics of everyday behavior in reality. An increase in confidence to the information from the Internet leads to ambivalent consequences. If most young people consider digital space a continuation of off-line life with a set of new functions and capabilities, there is a serious danger that they do not divide their world into virtual and real. Another danger is that the new on-line daily routine leads to a serious discrepancy between different generations. Given that the family during the period of transitivity is one of the most important factors of emotional well-being and rooting, this becomes a serious problem for maintaining emotional well-being.

Digital daily life can now be considered a new form of everyday life, which occurs in various network communities of FB, VKontakte, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram. So the everyday life embraces not only new names, but also new forms of interaction with the world, with others, with one-selves. At the same time, the older generation notes as the most important advantages of the new digital everyday life the possibility of independent choice of information appropriate to the interests, while younger people note that networks are needed as a platform for communication, downloading music and video content. Older users in contrary from younger ones do not appreciate the speed of communication and freedom of expression.

Culture and daily life

New trends penetrated in home daily culture: furniture, interiors, and decorations, demonstrating new symbols of the era, individual tastes of man and new everyday life. No wonder that one of the directions in the research of Hoffmann (1990) was precisely the study of the possibilities of everyday use of objects and their transformations.

About the usual clothes and food has already been mentioned. But clothing is a marker not only of individuality, but also of changing fashion. That is, we can say that through fashion, everydayness and variability, transitivity are connected. At different times, fashion changes, reflecting a change in the modes of being, for example, the transition from crinolines to long skirts, then to short and even mini ones. But fashion reflects not only everyday life, but also the psychological characteristics of the era. In the middle of the last century, such a reflection of the new era was not only humanistic or existential psychology, but also a new fashion introduced by Christian Dior. C. Dior showed a fundamentally new style, new flying dresses, free suits, and his collection became a kind of manifesto of the transition to a new life after the war. But this has become not only a new fashion, but also a new daily routine.

The breakdown of everyday traditions is associated not only with a change in the standards of perception and assessment of the situation, but also with a change in the attitude to these standards. In fact, we are talking about the internal form of the psychological chronotope, when a change of attitude leads to a change in standards and, in the final stage, a change in culture as an everyday situation of being.

A separate page in the psychology of everyday life should, apparently, be a city, a megalopolis, as one of the phenomena of a new, urbanistic everyday life. Here we can state the division between individual and generalized everyday life. After all, a new fashion, like a new way of life or pace of life, does not suit everyone from the point of view of an individual lifestyle, and not just rigidity of attitudes. The city of utopian or urban space de Serto (2013) reflects not only a change in tactics and practices, but also a change in everyday life as a form of being.

Conclusion

The psychology of everyday life provides material for the development of many areas of psychological research. It can help to realize the degree of psychological comfort / discomfort of a person, analyzing the degree of immersion in different areas of everyday life. Moreover, various aspects of everyday life can be considered as different areas of the psychological chronotope, including the ratio of personal and sociocultural identities and the crystallization of social and individual experiences. Analysis of crystallized emotion experiences of a person or a specific group of people can become one of the options for diagnosing a person or a social group.

No less significant are studies on the relationship of everyday life with the levels and areas of cultural capital.

The content of everyday life can help in understanding the laws of formation of both: an individual person and a large group of people, since in the everyday life organically connects the past, the new shoots, and the problems leading to frustration. That is, in everyday life there are sources of both pathology and personal growth at the same time. An analysis of the psychology of everyday life allows us to connect the life path of a person and society, helping not only to better understand the present, but also partially to predict the future.

We can also say that everyday life in psychology fulfills two functions of a barrier: supporting the congruence of the external and internal world and helping a person to maintain the integrity of his identity, becoming the boundary of the exist-sphere. So frustration can be analyzed as a forbidden entry into the personal space, into the exist-sphere.

As a whole, we can stand the directions of further researches of the psychology of everyday life: the individualization of everyday life, the connection between everyday life and self-realization, the frustration of everyday life.

Acknowledgments

The study was supported by Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project 20-013-00075.

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15 November 2020

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94

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Psychology, personality, virtual, personality psychology, identity, virtual identity, digital space

Cite this article as:

Martsinkovskaya, T., & Preobrazhenskaya, S. (2020). Internet In The World-Image Of Students. In T. Martsinkovskaya, & V. Orestova (Eds.), Psychology of Personality: Real and Virtual Context, vol 94. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 451-458). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2020.11.02.55