Open access
DEHUMANIZATION OF REALITY? COMPARISON OF SUBJECTIVE REALITY REFERENTS OF SELECTED CONCEPTS IN 1989, 2004 AND 2020
Krzysztof MUDYŃ1
Civilizational transformations – from theory to political practice
Publication language: Polish
Journal article
Transformations No. 1 (108) 2021, Publication date: 18 March 2021
Keywords: subjective reality, diachronic approach, disease, virus, health, soul, sin, satan
Abstract The aim of the presented research was to compare the assessments of the degree of realness of referents of 40 different concepts and to track the changes that took place between 2004 (previous research) and 2020. The results of similar research from 1989 were also taken into account. Each time the subjects were beginner students of psychology at the Jagiellonian University. The original method of "Words and Things" (Słowa i Rzeczy, SiR) was used. In the last study participated 135 students. Two hypotheses were formulated: 1) Concepts related to health (Disease, Virus, Health), if considered together, will obtain higher ratings for reality compared to the 2004 research, 2) Concepts with religious connotations (Soul, Sin, Satan, Destiny) taken together, they will lose their subjective reality. The Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis' rank Anova were used for intergroup comparisons. The first hypothesis was rather not resolved as the difference found oscillated on the border of statistical significance (p=0.058). Nevertheless, a significant increase in subjective reality was noted in relation to the referents of the concept of Disease (p=0.01). In the case of the second hypothesis, the differences turned out to be very significant (p=0.001). Of the remaining concepts, Public opinion significantly lost its reality (p=0.026), while Dwarf gained (p=0.001), which was presumably due to the work of J.R. Tolkien and film adaptations of his novels. In conclusion, the author suggests that the projective SiR method can be used to monitor changes taking place in groups of interest to the researcher, as well as in relation to larger communities. Changes in the subjective reality of the designata of concepts can be considered in terms of latent values. SiR can be treated as a complementary tool to direct methods or can be used independently.
Akademią Ignatianum, Kraków, Polska
ORCID: 0000-0001-6177-7241
E-mail: km.krzysztof.mudyn@gmail.com