SELF-IDENTITY OF A PERSON WITH DIFFERENT LEVELS OF RELIGIOUS FANATICISM

It is impossible to solve the problem of efficient psychological prophylaxis of religious fanaticism without a comprehensive study of the psychological features of a fanatic religious person.

Today, the problem of religious fanaticism is important and significant what is proved by the numerous scientific papers and conferences on this topic. On the other hand, there are very few empirical studies aimed at the study of the personality and behavior of a religious devotee.

In our opinion, it is the description of self-identity of a fanatically-minded religious person which will help to explain the specificity of his or her cognitive and emotional sphere. And the most important is that self-identity, as the totality of all ideas of a person about itself, including the emotional self-assessment, is the main regulator of the motivational and behavioral sphere of a person.

The paper describes the empirical study of self-identity of a religious person with various levels of religious fanaticism. As a method of study of self-identity, the authors used M. Khun’s test “Who am I?” and S.R. Pantileev’s technique of study of self-attitude. The level of religious fanaticism is determined using the questionnaire of E.S. Guseva and A.Yu. Chernov. Men and women of Orthodox religion were the respondents of the study.

The results showed that with the increase of the level of religious fanaticism, the religious persons less and less identify themselves with the family and educational-professional social roles. It is more typical for men than for women. The higher the level of fanaticism is, the more rarely the religious people percept themselves in the context of any activity.

The determined features of the emotional and evaluative component of self-identity of religious people allowed describing three types of self-identity depending on the level of religious fanaticism. Self-identity of a religious person with a low level of fanaticism can be described as confident honest. Self-identity of a person with a middle level of fanaticism can be described as uncertain honest. Self-identity of a person with a high level of fanaticism can be described as confident dishonest.