Emelyanova T. P., Zinina A. A. Levels of Representing the Aged People in Russian Society
The article was written within the framework of the project “Aged People in Mundane Consciousness of Student Youths and Working Adults: The Responsibility Factors" (supported by the Russian Foundation for the Humanities, grant No. 14-06-00434).
Abstract ♦ The current increase in the number of aged people in Russia and all over the world leads to many problems associated with their social status, adaptation as well as the intergenerational communication. These problems are very acute in our country, with its current reform of the social sphere. In such environment full of transformational changes both personal and group identities construct a consistent picture of the world through social representations. In these conditions, social representations — both on explicit and implicit levels — contain some conflicting elements. Therefore, researching the levels of representation while analyzing attitudes to aged people allows for a more detailed study of existing belief systems within mundane consciousness.
The goal of our empirical study, held in Moscow in 2013, was to analyze the social representations of the aged in the minds of students and working adults. A special focus was made on the analysis of levels of representation. 150 people agreed to be our respondents: 10 for the exploratory stage and 140, for the main stage. The explicit level of social representations was studied by means of a set of scales developed by the authors. The "Psychological drawing" and "Unfinished sentences" techniques provided the tools for analyzing the implicit level of representation.
The outcomes of the empirical research proved that the social representations about aged people are different in various sociodemographic groups, and also have a negative orientation. Furthermore, at the cognitive level working adults emphasize only the negative elements, while students include some positive and neutral elements in the core of the representation. Qualitative methods have shown the opposite: negative metaphors and categories of content analysis dominate in the students' responses. Working adults recognize aged people positively.
The data obtained has allowed us to prove the existence of certain differences between the explicit and implicit levels of representation. In addition, we have empirically identified five types of respondents: the "Negative type", "Optimistic type", "Worried type", "Activity-oriented type" and "Mixed type". The analysis of these showed no unambiguous correlation between the emotive and cognitive components. The outcomes of the study indicate the existing problems within societal consciousness and have a moral importance.
Keywords: social representations, explicit and implicit levels, aged people, marginal status.
Emelyanova Tatiana Petrovna, Doctor of Psychology, Professor, Professor of the Department of Social and Ethnical Psychology, Moscow University for the Humanities. Postal address: B. 6, Yunosti St. 5, Moscow, Russian Federation, 111395. Tel.: +7 (499) 374-56-11. E-mail:
t_emelyanova@inbox.ru
Zinina Anna Aleksandrovna, postgraduate, Department of Social and Legal Psychology, Vygotsky Institute of Psychology, Russian State University for the Humanities. Postal address: 6 Miusskaya St., Moscow, Russian Federation, 125047. Tel.: +7 (499) 251-36-97. E-mail: . Research adviser: Tatiana P. Emelyanova, Doctor of Psychology, Professor.
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