SELF-CONCEPT, PERSONALITY AND PERCEPTION OF VIOLENCE SCENES (BASED ON FEATURE FILMS MATERIALS). PART 1

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to identify the role of personal characteristics as mediating elements between one’s self-concept and psychosemantical assessment of feature movies containing violence scenes. Main focus is made on discussing theoretical and empirical background of studying perception of violence in the media. The article contains the results of both the review and the analysis of classic and contemporary ways of research on the impact of violence on the individual and his self-concept, indicating the existence of two directions of such research. The first one is concentrated on studying the direct impact of violence scenes on cognitive and emotional processes, as well as the spectator’s behavior. The second way is concentrated on studying the influence of viewer’s internal dispositions (psychological traits, attitudes, beliefs, etc.) on peculiarities of perception of violence and estimated attractiveness of these scenes. Proceeding from the research materials, there is a definite shortage of studies on the role of selfconcept in the perception of violence. Lack of information about the relationship between selfconcept and the character of psychosemantical assessment of such media, in addition to having a relation with personality traits that define the nature of this assesment study allowed to identify the problem of the research which is the need to study the role of personality traits as mediators between self-concept and estimation of violence.