The thesis for the scientific degree of Doctor of Science in Psychology, in specialty 053 - Social Psychology, Psychology of Social Work. Institute of Social and Political Psychology, the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine. Kyiv, 2021.
The theoretical and methodological foundations of the psychology of social-cultural interaction among generations were generalized; a concept of generations was proposed. This concept revealed the features of certain social-cultural styles and their formation by actors. A theory was developed on the basis of the complementary duality of “text” and “context” categories; this theory explains the patterns, features, mechanism and resulting effects of social-cultural interaction among generations.
The basic scientific positions, used in the framework of two definitions: a generation as a product of history and history as a result of generations’ actions, were highlighted. The works developed in the context of the “pulse” hypothesis were discussed; the alternative examined approach was the “imprint” hypothesis.
Within the developed concept, a generation was interpreted as a network of people having common social-cultural experiences, years of birth and historical context of their formation. A model of generational unity was developed; a socio-psychological space of generational unity was understood as a fragment of reality; sub-spaces of generations’ coexistence were described. To reveal the psychological characteristics of generations’ interaction, the social-cultural analytical aspects were used: institutional, positional and cultural. The methodological basis for research on cultural unity, dynamic fields of coexistence, features of generations’ texts / contexts was developed on the base of the proposed social-cultural aspects.
The step-by-step methodology for the experimental study was examined according to J. A. Maxwell’ the validity system. The data triangulation strategy and methodological triangulation were chosen and substantiated to build a construct of the research subject. The research methods and examination tasks were described (used questionnaires, content analysis, cluster analysis, Miles & Huberman’s method for matrix analysis, the Grounded theory (applied in K. Charmaz’ version), the methods of discourse analysis and data integration). The procedure for conclusions at the final research stage was described: the obtained data were generalized using an integration strategy with further substantive argumentation of revealed patterns.
The conceptual provisions and assumptions were tested with the proposed methodological triangulation and corresponding triangulation of obtained empirical data. The primary clustering of contemporary generations was carried out and five segments of age cohorts were identified. Factors of interactions significant for cohort groups were determined. The grouping into a generation of cohort segments (previously identified using cluster analysis) was confirmed. Parallels of social (contexts) and social-psychological (texts) processes, appearing, changing, functioning and disappearing with changes in social-cultural styles, were formulated. The psychological dominants of generations’ interaction were determined by discourse analysis. The triangulation of the obtained empirical data confirmed existing two-way influences: integration, as context transformation into texts during interactions and disintegration, as text transformation into context.
The performed theoretical and empirical research allowed us to develop the theory of social-cultural interaction between generations. The categories “text”, “context”, “social-cultural interactions” were analyzed. The psychological metaphor of “waves” was proposed to describe mutual influence of social-cultural styles of different generations. The idea of possible social changes due to text/context (non-) congruence of generations and a corresponding social situation was substantiated. The mechanism balancing socio-cultural styles in interactions among generations was described. According to the proposed theory of social-cultural interaction among generations, reality is a combination of independent systems - generational spaces. The intersection of waves composed by contemporaries’ social-cultural styles is the place where historical paths of contextual changes depending on text / contextual patterns are modelled.
