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Study On Virtual Self And Self-Discrepancy Between The Virtual And Real Self In Adolescence

Posted on:2015-03-13Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:L ChenFull Text:PDF
GTID:1225330464951108Subject:Basic Psychology
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
The advance of digital technologies and evolution of cyberculture have changed the way people work, play, and communicate. They also provide people with a new different virtual community(VC). In a virtual community, anonymity and lack of social cues enable the individual to create an alternate identity(virtual self) in contrast to his or her actual identity(real self). Virtual self refers to the recognition and evaluation of own attributes in virtual cyberspace; real self refers to the recognition and evaluation of own attribute in real space. While there are important similarities, there are also significant differences between virtual self and real self.Based on the results of previous literature and self discrepancy theory, the present study provides a comprehensive research of virtual self in cyberspace and self-discrepancy between the virtual and real self in adolescence through literature review, questionnaire, interview and experimental methods. First, this study examined the structures and characters of virtual self and real self of adolescents respectively. Secondly, development features of virtual self, real self and self-discrepancy between the virtual and real self of adolescents were analyzed. Thirdly, virtual-real self discrepancy acted as a key mediator in the relation between parenting styles and negative emotion as well as between internet addiction and negative emotion. Fourthly, the Self-reference effect(SRE) also existed on the virtual self. Finally, this study focused on the attention bias for emotional information of adolescents with different virtual-real self discrepancy.The primary conclusions were as follows:(1) Adolescent Virtual Self Questionnaire and Adolescent Real Self Questionnaire both consists of 29 items within five major dimensions of Interpersonal and character self, self-control, self-confidence, moral self and learning-self. And the psychometrics indicated that two questionnaires are valid and reliable. Adolescent Virtual Self Questionnaire aims to assess the virtual self of adolescents and Adolescent Real Self Questionnaire aims to assess the real self of adolescents. Because these two questionnaires have the same structures and contents, it is feasible to combine Adolescent Virtual Self Questionnaire and Adolescent Real Self Questionnaire into one questionnaire-Adolescent virtual-real self discrepancy questionnaire which permits assessment of the discrepancy between virtual self and real self in adolescence.(2) Adolescents evaluated their own real self positively. the highest evaluation within five major dimensions of real self is moral self, followed by Interpersonal and character self, self-control, learning-self and self-confidence. The level of evaluation of real self in adolescence increased significantly from 7th Grade to 8th Grade in the first place, then decreased from 8th Grade to 8th Grade, and increased slowly finally. Female adolescents evaluated their own real self significantly higher than male adolescents. Adolescents did not think much of their own virtual self. The highest evaluation within five major dimensions of virtual self is interpersonal and character self, followed by learning-self, self-confidence, moral self and self-control. The level of evaluation of real self in adolescence increased significantly according to their online history. Male adolescents evaluated their own real self significantly higher than female adolescents. The level of evaluation of virtual self in adolescence is significantly lower than the level of evaluation of real self. The discrepancy between virtual self and real self in female adolescence is significantly larger than discrepancy in male adolescence.(3) There were negative and significant correlations between positive parenting styles and negative emotion, and virtual-real self discrepancy. There were positive and significant correlations between negative parenting styles and negative emotion, and virtual-real self discrepancy. There were positive and significant correlations between internet addiction and negative emotion, and virtual-real self discrepancy. Latent variable structural equation model analysis showed that parenting styles and internet addiction significantly predicted negative emotion, and virtual-real self discrepancy acted as a partial mediator in the relation between parenting styles and negative emotion as well as between internet addiction and negative emotion.(4) In the depth of processing and incidental encoding research paradigms, the Self-reference effect(SRE) also existed on the virtual self and real self. In the depth of processing research paradigm, the level of internet addiction affected the virtual self reference effect significantly, while the level of internet addiction did not affect the virtual self reference effect in incidental encoding research paradigm. In conclusion, processing priority about self-related information can be extended from real world to the virtual online environment; therefore the structure of self composed the virtual self.(5) In the dot-probe task paradigm, all the subjects paid more attention to emotion stimulus; subjects of high virtual-real self discrepancy were more sensitive for negative stimuli than subjects of low virtual-real self discrepancy. In the word selection task, all the subjects chose the positive words most which showed a cognitive choose tendency of which is “happy approach”. Subjects of high virtual-real self discrepancy selected more negative emotion words than subjects of low virtual-real self discrepancy and the reaction time for negative emotion words of subjects with high virtual-real self discrepancy was shorter than the subjects with low virtual-real self discrepancy.In the general discussion and conclusion, according to a series of empirical studies, this dissertation concludes and analyzes the findings, lists some disadvantages of the study and put forward future prospects.
Keywords/Search Tags:Adolescents, Virtual Self, Real Self, Self Discrepancy
PDF Full Text Request
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