Youth Culture Features in the Light of Preferred Role Models and Life Styles

Introduction

Theoretical Background

The concept of self is most often associated with the group's membership and is realized through interaction with others. People tend to describe themselves more often in terms of members of a group (family, class, profession, etc.) than in the terms of the value judgment. Therefore, individuals in self-evaluation of personal values ​​will most often self-evaluate and invoke the values ​​that nurture and prefer the primary reference group - the family in the first place, and then spreads social and cultural circles. Therefore, the individual is most often self-assessed according to the level of accomplishment of the goals that the group it prefers. Since identity is created by the complex and dynamic processes of interaction between different roles, but also the inner layers "I", "ME", "SELF" and "MIND", according to Georg Herbert Mead (1973), in the "generalizing other" the difference between personal and social identity is developed. While in a functionalistic perspective identity represents a compromise between personal and social, the authors of other theoretical orientations clearly distinguish these two identities. Kamler (Lüdtke, 1987, after Tomić-Koludrović and Leburic, 2002: 42) explains these two identities using the concepts of life philosophy and lifestyle. While life philosophy represents a personal identity in the terms of individual forms of personal values, moral, political and religious beliefs, the lifestyle implies a social identity based on socially recognized, conventionally established values ​​and views.

All of these theoretical starting points emphasize the importance of the social context for the development of the individual and show that other people can be an important source / role model of social behaviour. In this sense, learning by model on the basis of examples, has been shown to be one of the most effective forms of social learning: person will much more willingly mimic an example of another person, especially if he/she respects him/her, he/she loves or if he/she is close to him/her and considers him/her to be similar to himself/herself be guided only by advice or warnings (Rot, 2008). After Rot, learning by model includes three forms of learning: learning by identification, learning by imitation, and learning of the roles.

The Aim of the Research

The aim of this research was to determine to what extent different variables describe everyday life of youth (in this study of students) and their family background related to the choice of models, preferences of lifestyles, level of empathy, intercultural sensitivity, and resistance to stressful situations, depression and anxiety. In this sense, in addition to general data on examinees, gender differences were identified, the assessment of parental dimensions of control and emotionality (family circumstances), empathy level, intercultural sensitivity, and resistance and tendency to depressive, anxiety states and stress. This research is characterised by an interdisciplinary approach, through insights into different of scientific fields relevant to researches in culture, social pedagogy and psychology. The research is a continuation of the research in which we, on the same sample, separately considered the optimism and the pessimism among the students (Alić, Cerić and Habibović, 2018). At the same time, the results on this sample were compared with the results of the study of lifestyles and empathy of students collected on the other sample three years ago (Alić, Cerić and Habibović, 2015).

Methodological Framework of Research

The research has elements both qualitative and quantitative analysis. In the study, a non-experimental empirical transversal plan was used in which we relied on interviews with individuals, survey using standardized scales of assessment, analysis of theoretical structure and statistical data processing. The field survey was carried out in the spring of 2017, the input and processing of data in the autumn of 2017, and the first analysis of the data processed at the end of 2017. The empirical part of the research included a sample of 457 examinees, undergraduate students at the University of Zenica and the University of Sarajevo, with a total of 9 faculties and 10 departments covering technical, natural, social sciences in the humanities. At the University of Zenica we conducted the research at the following faculties: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (38 examinees), Faculty of Polytechnic (57 examinees), Faculty of Metallurgy and Technology (34 examinees), Faculty of Law (44 examinees), Faculty of Philosophy 69 examinees), Faculty of Economics (22 examinees) and Faculty of Medicine - General Medicine and Health care (77 examinees); and at the University of Sarajevo: Faculty of Political Sciences (74 examinees) and the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (42 examinees). An insight into the gender structure of the sample suggests that the survey covered 328 female students and 129 male students.

The following questionnaires has been used in this research: a questionnaire on general information of examinees, scale of parental perception of family relations (Vulić-Prtorić, 2000) including 25 items by which the examinees evaluate the dimensions of emotionality and control of both mother and father – Alpha Cronbach for emotionality of mother is 0.809, for emotionality of father 0.857, for mother's control 0.766, while for dimension of father's control, Alpha –Cronbach coefficient is 0.76; scale of empathy (Baron-Cohen, 2012) Alpha-Cronbach coefficient in this research is 0,867; Intercultural Sensitivity Scale / containing sub-scales: Interaction Engagement, Respect for Cultural Differences, Interaction Confidence, Interaction Enjoyment, and Interaction Attentiveness (Chen, G.M., & Starosta, W.J., 2000, after to Fritz, Mollenberg & Chen, 2002) - Alpha Cronbach coefficient is 0,833; Scale of optimism / pessimism (Penezić, 2002) – Alpha Cronbach for subscale of optimism is 0,789, for subscale of pessimism 0.806; Life Style Preference Questionnaire - constructed as a five-step Likert type scale, which measures the intensity of the preference of ten lifestyles (Popadić; 1995; Luković and Čizmić, 2012; Mladenovska-Dimitrovska, Dimitrovski, 2015; Knežević, 2016); and DASS21 –Alpha Cronbach coefficient in this research for anxiety scale is 0.847, for stress scale 0.839, and for scale od depressiveness 0.863. The Alpha Cronbach values has shown for most questionnaires applied equally high scores as well as in our previous researches (Alić, Cerić and Habibović, 2017, 2018).

Analysis of Lifestyle Results

In this research, for the purposes of examining the value orientations and lifestyles, we used the Life Style Preference Questionnaire - constructed as a five-step Likert type scale, which measures the intensity of the preference of ten lifestyles: utilitarian style, family-sentimental style, egoistic orientation, popularity orientation, hedonistic orientation, power orientation, Prometheus activism, altruistic orientation, cognitive style and religious-traditional style (used in numerous researches: Popadić, 1989; Popadić, 1990; Luković i Čizmić, 2012; Mladenovska-Dimitrovska, Dimitrovski, 2015; Knežević, 2016). Descriptions of these lifestyles provide a broad framework of understanding current trends among youth, especially within the student population. In comparison to other surveys conducted in neighbouring countries, the results of our research show dramatic changes in terms of preferenced lifestyles¹.

Taking into consideration the fact that the overview of the preference of lifestyles that youth choose as those styles they currently live, provides numerous information about the individual and collective status of a society, we were interested to what extent is particular style present in terms of students' preferences (Table 1).

Table 1. Distribution of results regarding the preference of lifestyles by gender and on the entire sample

On the entire sample, hedonism is most preferred lifestyle (26.6%), and this lifestyle is equally presented in male (23.7%) and female examinees (27.6%). It is interesting to note that hedonism currently present in more than a quarter of students, indicating the dominant concept of youth, the desirable state of things, as well as the value orientations of young people that are dominant in our society and in an individual, but also in the collective sphere within the subculture of youth². For the purpose of graphic visualization of the representation of life styles and student value preferences, Figure 1. shows the obtained distribution of results.

Figure 1. Percentage chart of preferred lifestyles and student value orientations

The second style of representation is religiously traditional, on the whole sample it appears within 13% of the observed population, 15.3% in men and 12% in female examinees.

It is interesting that in the students covered by this research, the cognitive style appears in only 12.7% of the examinees in the overall sample (12.7% in both men and women), which indicates a complete lack of readiness for learning, acquiring knowledge and research work. This trend could be considered worrying since student years are the era when the tendency to learn and professional development should be far more pronounced, especially if we take into account that the sample of young people covered by this research, as we already said, consisted exclusively of the student population (and not those who decided to work or other activities after high school). The next, fourth in the ranking, is the egoistic orientation (9.8%), which is more pronounced than the family-sentimental (9.5%) and altruistic orientation (9.5%). After activism (7.5%), the least present styles are popularity orientation (4.5%), power orientation (3.7%) and utilitarian style (3.2%). Such results remind us of what Tomić-Koludrović and Leburić, referring to Shelsky, called the "sceptical generation" in similar research in Croatia (Tomić-Koludrović and Leburić, 2001) ³.

In the continuation of the analysis of the collected data, we were interested in which of the observed variables correlate the preferences of lifestyles, since the relationship between values, lifestyles, family / family status and other considered variables could indicate the characteristics of the subgroup.

Therefore, the calculation of the relationship between the observed criteria of the variables was made using the Spearman's rho coefficient of correlation, since the correlation ranking was to be determined. Using Spearman's rho coefficient of correlation, the possible correlation between variables was examined: general student data (based on which the role model was sampled), assessment of the dimensions of father and mother emotionality, level of empathy, intercultural sensitivity, tendencies of anxiety, depressive moods, stress, and all compared to the results achieved with regard to the preference of lifestyles.

Based on the analysis of the derivation from the correlation matrix for lifestyles and variables of the tendency to depressed moods, stress, anxiety, level of intercultural sensitivity and empathy, a number of extremely interesting correlations have appeared (Table 2).

So, a propensity to depression correlates to P <0.01 in subjects who do not prefer the family-sentimental lifestyle (r = -0.180; p = .000), and the same result is also established in terms of the correlation between non-preferring the family-sentimental lifestyle and tendency anxiety at P <0.05 (r = -0.095; p = .045). This would mean that those students who do not live and do not prefer the current family-sentimental lifestyle are also part of a sample that is more inclined to depressive and anxious moods.

Table 2. Abstract from correlation matrix for life styles and criteria variables

In students with higher scores on the scale of intercultural sensitivity, there is a correlation at the level P <0.01 with regard to the preferences of family-sentimental lifestyle (r = 0.171; p = .000), altruistic (r = 0.263; p = .000), cognitive orientations (r = 0.378; p = .000), and in terms of utilitarian (r = 0.161; p = .001), egoistic orientations (r = 0.164; p = .001); readiness for activism (r = 0.135; p = .004), but also hedonism (r = 0.198; p = .000). In students with higher scores of intercultural sensitivity, there is a negative correlation with respect to popularity orientation (r = -0.218; p = .000). It is interesting that the level of intercultural sensitivity is not in correlation with the religious-traditional style.

The higher the scores on the empathy scale, the more likely they are correlations at the level P <0.01 with family-sentimental (r = 0.193; p = .000), with a religious-traditional style (r = 0.124; p = .009) altruistic (r = 0.212; p = .000), cognitive style (r = 0.193; p = .000), and at P <0.05 activism (r = 0.098; p = .038). Negative correlations between higher scores on empathy scale were found in popularity orientation.

These data at the same time mean that more intercultural sensitivity and empathy can be expected among young people who prefer: family-sentimental, religious-traditional, altruistic, cognitive, hedonistic style, and the inclination to social activism. Among the set lifestyles, all styles other than hedonistic were expected, which should be investigated in more detail.

We also tried to determine possible correlations with regard to the assessment of the dimensions of parental behaviour and the preference of lifestyles (Table 3).

As we expected the correlation at P <0.01 level, it was established between the father's emotionality with the family-sentimental (r = 0.143; p = .004), the religious-traditional style (r = 0.144; p = .004) level P <0.05 with a cognitive style (r = 0.108; p = .031) and power orientation (r = 0.106; p = .033), as well as altruism (we consider it to be considered because the value is p = 0.051). A higher estimate of the mother's emotional dimension correlates to P <0.05 with family-sentimental (r = 0.108; p = .024), religious-traditional style (r = 0.103; p = .031) 05 with altruistic orientation (r = 0.093; p = .051) and cognitive style (r = 0.112; p = .019).

Interestingly, a higher assessment of father control significantly correlates to P <0.01 with altruistic orientation (r = 0.129; p = .010), while maternal control correlates to P <0.05 with popularity orientation (r = 0.110; p = .021).

Table 3. Abstract from correlation matrix for life styles and dimensions of parent’s behaviour

Differences in terms of scores achieved on the empathy scale were interesting to analyse in terms of preferred lifestyles and benchmarks. As expected, the highest percentage of above-average empathic fellows among students who declare that they prefer the currently living family-sentimental (28.2%) and religious-traditional (29.5%). The smallest percentage of highly empathic among students who prefer orientation to popularity (15.7%), utilitarian style (14.2%) and, surprisingly, cognitive orientation (14.8%)⁴.

Analysis of Results Obtained in Terms of Researching the Role Model

As part of the research, the participants were given the opportunity to indicate what their first and second role models are. We assumed that this data would complete the image of the agents and sources of socialization and culture, and enabled a more detailed insight into the trends among the student population related to learning by model, explained in the theoretical framework. Due to the large number of different people from the intimate sphere, politics, science, religion, sports and Estrada’s, we have opted for grouping models into the following categories: parents (mentioned jointly as parents, but also separately and jointly listed father and mother), athletes⁵, politicians⁶, scientists⁷, religious / religious models⁸, celebrities⁹ (celebrity stars, singers, actors ...), other close people (from the family: grandfather, grandmother, granddaughter / uncle, aunt, sister, brother ...) , there will be a large sample of samples that did not identify anyone as a model. At the level of descriptive analysis, but also t-test, we analysed the representation of certain role models within several sampling lines, and the comparison of two large groups within the sample, possible differences between examinees who have someone for the model and those who did not specify anyone as a model.

Table 4. Descriptive presentation of the role model among students and students in terms of first and second choices

The examinees had the opportunity to choose the first and then the second model. In the first election, the majority of students who do not have a model are 39.6%¹⁰, followed by mother with 17.1%, parents with 10.3% and father with 8.5%. If we gather these percentages, we will notice that 35.9% of students choose their parents as their first choice. It is also a high percentage of the choice of religious personality, 8.1%, and celebrities with 7.4%.

In the second election, the number of students without role model is increasing, i.e. 73.1%. As a second choice, the father has 6.3% of the choices, followed by a mother with 5.9% (Table 4. and Figure 2.).

Figure 2. Percentage display of sample choices among students

In relation to gender, we have the following structure of answers:

In the sample of students, the highest percentage is without answers i.e. without a model (39.9%), followed by mother (21.6%), parents (11.9%), and father (7.9%), then religious figures (7, 6%), celebrities with 4.9%, other family members, and scientists with 2.4%. Politicians and athletes are rarely taken as role models (a total of 3 in a sample). When the sum of both parents is added then the percentage of parents as a model for students is 41.4%.

The students have the following structure of answers: without a role model, 38.3%, celebrity 14.1%, father 10.2%, religious personality 9.4%, athletes 7.8%, parents 6.3%, mother 5.5 %, scientists 5.5%, and politicians, as well as other family members of 1.6%, and when both parents sum up, then the percentage of parents as a model for students is 22%.

In order to analyse the results of the sample choices, it was particularly interesting to note that the fullness / incompleteness of the family from which students come from is interesting (Table 5).

Table 5. Descriptive representation of role models among students and students in terms of variable completeness / incomplete family

Students who come from a complete family as their first choice choose their mother, then parents, dads, religious figures, celebrities.

Students who come from families of divorced parents did not choose either their parents or father as a model, but only in their mother's case, in 21.7% of cases, which is also the largest group of students without a model - 47.8% of them. Students of divorced parents do not even choose politicians, but other members of the family as role models. They choose athletes in 8.7%, and in the same percentage and celebrities. Students who come from a family with one parent first elect their mother, and then their father and their parents.

With rural students, the selection order is as follows: mother, father, parents, religious figures, and equally celebrities and scientists.

The order of students from the city is: mother, parents, father, celebrities, and then religious figures.

The order is almost identical in relation to the place where they currently live.

During the analysis of the results, we noticed that two large groups of examinees were identified: one group of examinees with a model, and more than a third with no model. We were interested in whether there are visible differences between these two groups. We examined t-test whether there are differences between students who have a choice and those who have no choice of role model (Table 6).

Table 6. Comparison of groups of students with and without a role model in view of the considered variables

The scores of the altruistic orientation are statistically significantly higher for students with a role model at p <0.05 (r = .0.045; df = 446). And with the cognitive style, we also find statistical significance for the benefit of students who have a role model, and at p <0.05 (r = .0.011; df = 446). It is identical with activism, and here we find a difference in favour of students who have a role model, and the difference is present at the level of p <0.01 (r = .0.010; df = 446). We also find the difference in the religious-traditional style in favour of students who have the model, as well as in interactional competence and inclusiveness. It is very important to emphasise that students with a role model also statistically significantly estimate higher the father's emotionality at p <0.05 (r = .0.024; df = 453).

Conclusions

Within the observed sample of 457 students from 9 faculties and 10 study departments of the University of Zenica and Sarajevo, a number of variables related to empathy, intercultural sensitivity, degree of resistance to stress, anxiety and depression, the choice of role models and lifestyles, and the assessment of parental behaviour. All variables are within the role model of the sample examined with each other, but also in relation to gender, demographic characteristics, study orientations, everyday habits of students and variables related to family circumstances.

When it comes to the relation between the level of empathy and the selected role models, a high percentage above the average of empathetic is among the students who choose parents as role model (21.7%), religious figures (22.2%), but also among those who do not have models (20.7 %). The most low-empathy among the students are the politicians as role model (33.3%), other members of the family (27.3%), athletes (25%), celebrities (23.5%), but interestingly father, too,23.7%). At the same time, the lowest percentage of above-average empathy is the students who choose the politicians (0%), celebrities (8,8%) and athletes (8,3%).

The preference and current living of one of the offered lifestyles was a separate part of the research. On the whole sample, hedonism is most preferred (26.6%), and this lifestyle is equally highest in male (23.7%) and female examinees (27.6%). It is interesting to note that hedonism currently lives more than a quarter of students, indicating the dominant concept of youth, the desirable state of things, as well as the value orientations of young people that dominate in our society and in an individual, but also in collective sphere within the subculture of youth. The second style that is mostly presented is religiously traditional, on the whole sample it appears within 13% of the observed population, 15.3% in men and 12% in female examinees. It is interesting that in the students covered by this research, the cognitive style appears in only 12.7% of the examinees in the overall sample (12.7% in both men and women), which indicates a complete lack of readiness for learning, acquiring knowledge and research work.

The examinees had the opportunity to choose the first and then the second model. In the first election, the majority of students who do not have a model are 39.6%, followed by a mother with 17.1%, parents with 10.3% and a father with 8.5%. If we gather these percentages, we will notice that 35.9% of students choose their parents as their first choice. It is also a high percentage of the choice of religious personality, 8.1%, and celebrities with 7.4%. In the second election, the number of students without role model is increasing, i.e. 73.1%. As a second choice, the father has 6.3% of the vote, followed by a mother with 5.9%. The T-test has identified possible differences between these two largest groups of students: with a choice of model and without model. A statistically significant difference in the benefit of students who have a role model is determined by altruistic orientation and cognitive style. It is identical with activism, and here we find a difference in favour of students who have a role model, as well as with the religious-traditional style, interactional powers and interactional involvement. Students with a higher education also assess the father's emotionality.

The results obtained in this research are not just a useful and interesting source of information about the characteristics of young people's culture in terms of preferred role models, life orientations, values, sensitivity to others, all in view of family circumstances, but also an important set of data based on which could develop work programs with students. Young people, at least according to the results presented in this research, are increasingly turned to entertainment and immediate pleasure, are sceptical and quite pessimistic, and among adults outside the family, there are no examples, and more and more people who declare themselves to have no role, even within intimate circles. The results also partly explain some of the very current trends in our society, such as: emigration, outpouring of youth and professional staff, growing feeling of helplessness, pessimism and apathy among young people, as well as shifting the age limit in which young people take over social functions and get married.

References