The relationship between personality authenticity and parental images: psychosemantic analysis

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between the subjective perception of parental images and the authenticity of the individual using psychosemantics methods. A brief overview of approaches to understanding the relationship between the authenticity of the individual and society according to S.K. Nartova-Bochaver is provided. Based on the theory of Ch. Osgood, the identified approaches and previous studies, the put forward two hypotheses as follows: 1) the assessment of parental images has the qualitative characteristics of strength, evaluation and activity; 2) greater expression of the authenticity of the individual is facilitated by both strongly positive assessments and strongly negative assessments of parental images. Methods. The study sample consisted of 154 respondents (96 women and 58 men, M = 23.3 years), age with data collected using an online survey. Subjective images of mother and father were studied using the adapted version of the semantic differential of parent–child relations by M. V. Deriugina (2013). The level of authenticity of respondents was determined by the Moscow Authenticity Questionnaire (Nartova-Bochaver, Reznicenko, Irkhin, 2021) and the brief version of the Kernis–Goldman Authenticity Questionlowing methods: descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis and correlation analysis (Spireman criterion). Results. As a result of the psychosemantic study of the images of parents, three main categories for assessing the father and mother were identified: ‘Alienation’ ↔ ‘Meeting’, ‘Permissiveness’ ↔ ‘Discipline’ and ‘Disharmony’ ↔ ‘Harmony’. The identified factors are consistent with the results of previous studies. Correlation analysis of the obtained scales with the components of personality authenticity revealed some significant relationships. Thus, the overall level of authenticity and ‘consciousness’ as its component are positively related to the subjectively perceived ‘Meeting’ and ‘Harmony’ in the image of the mother. Authentic behavior is inversely proportional to the image of ‘Discipline’ of both parents, but positively correlates with the ‘Harmony’ of the mother’s image. The image of the ‘Meeting’ of the mother is also positively related to the authentic attitude. No connection was found between authenticity and the image of the father. Thus, both hypotheses of the study were confirmed.