Informational technologies in the structure of personal identity: opportunities and limitations of graphic methodic

Abstract

In contemporary world information technologies (Internet, mobile phones, TV) serve as an essential part of human life, through which the whole range of his interests and activities is refracted. Researchers suggest that the information technologies are associated with a reduction in the role of families and direct interpersonal communication in the formation of the personality, as well as with changes in the role of values and the difficulty of identification. In this paper, we use graphic methodic to assess perception of technologies. We demonstrate that after taking into account the individual drawing style of respondents, the proximity of technological objects to the 'Self' has been associated with a large distance between family, personality traits, interests, values to the 'Self'. Close patterns of results were obtained on two samples of students and adults (n1 = 161 and n2 = 123) for the three objects - the Internet, mobile phone and TV. A deeper analysis of graphical methodic shows that this result should be interpreted in general terms of personal relationship to various spheres and aspects of her life, whereas psychological content and consequences of changes in the structure of objects should be further studied. Moreover, identification with the Internet, mobile phones and TV do not mediates relationships between subjective distance of the family from the “Self” and subjective well-being / ill-being and coping. The possibilities and limitations of the use of graphical methodic to assess perception of technologies are discussed.