Особенности Я-концепции и образа героя у современной молодежи

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Introduction. This article describes the image of the “hero” as perceived by modern youth. The authors analyze the structure and specifics of the connection between the image of the “hero” and the images of “I-real” and “I-ideal” among high school students. Materials and methods. The study was conducted on a sample of 176 high school (grades 10 and 11) students in Belgorod Region. The study was carried out according to a quasi-experimental design. In the first part of the study, the subjects wrote an essay to answer two questions: “Who can be called a hero today and why?” and “Who is an ordinary modern person and why can they be called so?” In the second part, the subjects filled out the tests “Who am I?” and “Who is the Hero?” (both are modifications of the test by M. Kuhn and T. McPartland). In the third part, the subjects filled out the Aspects of Identity Questionnaire (AIQ-IV) by J. M. Cheek and L. R. Tropp for the “real I”, and its modifications for the “ideal I” and the image of the “hero”. Conclusion. The study revealed that high school students often choose real people as images of “heroes”. The images of “heroes” are not included in the ideas of young people about the ideal and do not play an essential role in the identification processes. Modern young people want a calm, balanced and unremarkable life. Their lives do not involve striving for lofty ideals and restless heroism. The experiment also revealed that high school students consider the hero to be an active figure who is in the public eye. “Willingness to sacrifice something for the sake of others” was found to be the leading quality in the image of the “hero”. In the subjects’ view, the hero has nothing to do with work, and labour is the lot of an ordinary modern person. The respondents tend to consider the image of the “hero” to be outside of time or in the past. They view this image as having almost no ties to the context of modernity.