The impact of personality traits of Chelyabinsk residents upon the perception of information on environmental situation

Introduction. The problems of ecology over the past few decades have become especially discussed in the media, in connection with which people have different reactions to its perception depending on their ecological culture. Most of all, ecological consciousness refers to the forms of manifestation of ecological culture. It should be noted that the problem of ecological consciousness is studied for a very short time by such sciences as social ecology ^[8], environmental psychology, environmental psychology (environmental psychology) ^[2] and, according to experts, Russians have not formed it ^[3].

In this paper, we will consider ecological consciousness as the ability to understand the existing inextricable connection between the human community and nature, which is expressed depending on the level of well-being of people, on the integrity and immutability of their natural environment ^[3]. There are two levels of concepts and relations in ecological consciousness:

? global environmental awareness,

? regional (local) ecological consciousness.

Global ecological consciousness reflects the most general laws of interaction between man and inanimate nature. Local ecological consciousness, in turn, is formed in the process of contacts with the real environment, the impact of the local environmental situation on a person. This level directly reflects the well-being or discomfort of a person's living conditions in a particular place ^[2].

As part of this project, we investigated the local level. Chelyabinsk, an industrial metropolis of Russia, whose entire history is connected with the development of industry in the Urals, was chosen as the object of research. Even at the beginning of the 21st century, he began to experience image problems, at the same time the public began to form a request for environmental improvement in the city and the region as a whole.

On the one hand, we can assume that the ecological consciousness of the residents of Chelyabinsk has been formed. In previous articles (within the framework of this study), we have already considered the huge attention of residents to the environmental problems of the city and their involvement in the discussion of this problem in the information space. However, we drew attention to the form of ecological consciousness among the population of Chelyabinsk, in this case we observe the so-called consciousness of hyperbolization. The main sign of hyperbolization consciousness is an exaggerated assessment of environmental problems that does not correspond to the real situation. The most characteristic for this type of consciousness is an exaggerated assessment of environmental situations threatening a person, while the assessment of favorable changes is somewhat underestimated ^[2].

A combination of high anxiety, a high level of suggestibility and emotional instability is very characteristic of hyperbolization consciousness. The hyperbolization of the environmental threat can be explained by the fact that the carriers of such consciousness cannot adequately assess and critically comprehend the incoming information about the characteristics of the environmental situation, and the image of the threat is formed on the information received through the media, as well as on rumors and opinions. At the same time, only the information that indicates the negative aspects of the ecological process for humans is taken into account ^[6].

A significant place in the hyperbolized ecological consciousness is occupied by anxiety - a property of the psyche, which in itself distorts the perception and assessment of the real connections of the individual and the environment, hyperbolizes the image of a threat in these connections. In addition, a high level of anxiety forms a negative attitude to any changes in the environment, including objectively favorable for a person ^[6].

Within the framework of this study, we studied the features of the collective perception of information about environmental problems by urban residents on the example of Chelyabinsk. Special attention was paid to the study of anxiety arising from the perception of information about the urban environment, which has historically been unfavorable. The novelty of the conducted research is the identification of personal characteristics that contribute to or hinder the formation of anxiety in the perception of information by residents of the city of Chelyabinsk about the environmental situation.

Research methods. Within the framework of this project, we used such research methods as a sociological survey, a projective methodology, psychological testing using the Leonhard-Shmishek questionnaire ^{[4, 7]}, as well as testing using the SAT method ^[5].

The collection of primary information was carried out using a sociological survey. The population of Chelyabinsk (residents of the territory) was considered as a general population in the survey. The general population was 910,000 people (the adult population of the city), the sample was 950 people with a confidence probability of 99.7% and a confidence interval of ± 4.5%. The survey consisted of several parts: the study of the state of the urban environment, the impact of the environmental component on the lives of citizens, the influence of online media on the perception of information about the state of the environment.

To study the actual reaction of residents to the prevailing environmental situation in the city, as well as to study the perception of environmental information, a projective methodology was developed. The subjects were asked to interpret a series of pictures, which included photographs with images of Chelyabinsk in a favorable and unfavorable environmental situation, as well as pictures with and without titles, traditionally used by local and federal Internet publications in publications on environmental topics. The study involved residents of the city of Chelyabinsk, living in various districts of the city, with a total of 186 people of both sexes, of various ages from 18 to 65 years. Participants for the projective test were selected from 950 people during the previous sociological survey.

To diagnose the character accentuations of the subjects (186 people) who participated in the projective test, the Leonhard-Schmishek test questionnaire consisting of 10 scales and 88 points was used. To assess the personal potential of the same subjects, a "Self-Actualization Test" (CAT) consisting of 14 scales and 126 points was used.

Hypothesis and research objectives. We assumed that people with high personal anxiety would experience situational (reactive) anxiety from the perception of information about the environmental situation seen in the media, much stronger than those with a level of personal anxiety has a normative indicator.

We also assumed that if a person does not have anxiety as a character trait in the personality structure, then he may still feel anxiety about the unfavorable environmental situation in his hometown, but not at the level of emotional origin, but at the cognitive level. Such people, as a rule, are more susceptible to third-party suggestion and, under the influence of the flow of new information, their awareness and judgments change, but this does not cause emotional reactions and behavioral consequences. The novelty of the conducted research is to identify the features of character traits and self-actualization of personality that contribute to or hinder the formation of anxiety in the perception of information by residents of the city of Chelyabinsk about the environmental situation.

The objectives of our research can be formulated as follows:

?to identify among the residents of Chelyabinsk people who are worried about the ecological state of the urban environment;

? to test the residents of the city experiencing an anxious state to determine the accentuations of personality (using the questionnaire of Leonhard-Shmishek);

? to identify among the respondents those who are characterized by anxiety as an accentuation of character;

? conduct testing to determine the personal characteristics of both groups of subjects (with personal and reactive anxiety) using the SAT methodology.

The results of the study. As the conducted sociological survey showed, the current environmental situation in Chelyabinsk worries 94% of respondents. At the same time, 25% experience constant fear (the maximum value on the Likert scale), another 34.4% and 28.4% experience severe anxiety (4, 3 on the Likert scale). In addition, 52.9% of respondents believe that environmental problems in Chelyabinsk have worsened over the past 5 years, and 33% of respondents believe that the environmental situation has not changed.

Next, we invited respondents who demonstrated high values of anxiety during a sociological survey to take part in a projective test, as well as in psychological testing.

First of all, it was necessary to identify people with the presence of personal anxiety and emotional reactions to various stimuli. As mentioned above, for this we used the Leonhard-Schmishek questionnaire, a standardized version (2). The values of all 10 accentuation scales have the following ranges: 0-6 low; 7-17 medium (norm); 18-24 high values (accentuation) (Table 1).

Table 1. Indicators of the Leonhard-Shmishek test

Analysis of the results of the Leonhard-Shmishek questionnaire showed that 28 people out of the respondents (15% of the total sample) have high indicators of personal anxiety (Table 1), and they also belong to dysthymic (6 people), emotive (11 people), cyclothymic (16 people) and affective-exalted (15 people) character accentuations that cause emotional sensitivity, mood swings and fluctuations. Also, people with a high accentuation of anxiety are characterized by increased suggestibility and perception of the surrounding world as dangerous. It was these subjects who gave the most emotional answers in the projective test (for example, "Horror!", "Tin!", "It's scary to live", "It's hard to breathe", etc.), describing images of Chelyabinsk taken from Internet sources. It is this combination of high anxiety, emotional instability and a high level of suggestibility that Medvedev V.I. and calls hyperbolization consciousness.

In addition, it was interesting to consider the accentuations indicating a high emotional mobility of the individual. 25 subjects have high values on the "dysthymicity" scale, 86 people on the "exaltation" scale, 62 people on the "emotivity" scale, 47 people on the "cyclothymicity" scale, which generally explains the high emotional response to questions about the state of the urban environment, as well as emotional involvement in the description images of the city taken from typical environmental publications.

The rest of the sample (85%) has no accentuation on anxiety, which means that these people experience situational anxiety due to the state of the urban environment. Situational anxiety of Chelyabinsk residents will be discussed in more detail in the following articles.

Separately, it is worth paying attention to the respondents with hyperthymic (86 people) and demonstrative (38 people) accentuations, who by their nature do not have personal anxiety (3). Such personalities, as a rule, differ in a stable mood, make decisions themselves and do not depend on external manipulation. However, the grouping of personality traits revealed by the SAT test shows that among hyperthymes – 34 subjects have a low level of cognitive needs, 34 ? average and only 18 – high. Low and average levels of cognitive needs show a weak desire to acquire knowledge about the surrounding world and, as a result, the use of existing stereotypes and patterns on this issue.

As mentioned above, to identify the level of self-actualization of personality in the same sample of subjects, we used the SAT test. According to Abraham Maslow's interpretation of the concept, "self?actualization" is a comprehensive and continuous development of a person's creative and spiritual potential (5). In our work, we set the task of identifying the degree of personality development in all respondents in order to draw conclusions about how personal anxiety is related to the richness of the emotional sphere and spiritual life of a person, as well as perception information. The values of 14 scales of personality traits have the following ranges: 0-44 ? low values, 45-55 ? psychological norm, 56-70 ? self?actualization, 80-100 - pseudo-self-actualization (Table 2).

Table 2. Indicators of the SAT test

Within the framework of this project, it was interesting for us to study those personality traits that affect the perception of environmental information more than others. In this case, the perception will be influenced by cognitive needs. As the analysis of the results of the SAT test shows, 26 people have high values on the scale of "cognitive needs" (55-70 T-points), which indicates self-actualization of personality; 66 people have values within the psychological norm (45-55 T-points), 94 people have low values (0-44 T-points), which says about low self-actualization on this scale.

The subjects in the number of 26 people (14% of the sample) with high self-actualization have internal support, are guided mainly by internal principles and motivation, are practically not influenced from the outside, are free to choose. When perceiving information, they proceed from their own beliefs and values, as well as cognitive activity that contributes to a deeper analysis of the acquired knowledge about the surrounding reality.

In a projective study, subjects with high self-actualization, when describing images of Chelyabinsk taken from environmental publications, describe the images neutrally without emotion as follows: "Bad ecology", "Environmental problems", "Industrial areas", "Ecologically dirty city"; at the same time, they do not mention Chelyabinsk itself. There are also such interesting answers as "It is difficult to find objective information in the media", "There are articles about dirty Chelyabinsk in all the media", "The way people who do not live in it see the city. This is how Chelyabinsk is shown to the whole world." This allows us to conclude that this group of subjects does not exaggerate the danger associated with the environment, is critical of information from Internet sources and does not follow the lead of public opinion. The anxiety that they indicated in the sociological survey is not related to the emotional beginning of their personality, but is due to the social responsibility of the citizen.

The subjects in the number of 94 people (50.5% of the total sample) with low cognitive need, mostly have low self-actualization scores on other scales. In addition, grouping the indicators of the two tests of Leonhard-Shmishek and SAT gives the following combinations:

- low level of cognitive needs – high level of dysthymia – 17 people;

- low level of cognitive needs – high level of emotivity – 21 people;

- low level of cognitive needs – high level of cyclothymicity – 29 people;

- low level of cognitive needs – high level of exaltation ? 35 people.

This means that they are highly inclined to perceive information not consciously, but under the influence of emotions and external factors. The opinion of these people is the easiest to manipulate, because they do not critically analyze the information received, interpret it one-sidedly, and also react emotionally to the headlines and images of publications from the media, often without even reading the content.

A large proportion of the subjects from these groups (89%) in the sociological survey notes that they experience anxiety when viewing articles / messages / posts / photos / videos on the Internet about the ecological state of the urban environment of Chelyabinsk. The analysis of the responses in the projective test of these subjects also demonstrates an emotional reaction to the state of the city's environment, as well as to the images of Chelyabinsk itself taken from daily publications on the environmental topic. A typical reaction to images of Chelyabinsk is "Horror!", "Catastrophe!", "The dirtiest city on earth!", "You can't live here!", "Frightening, unpleasant, unbearable!", "I want to escape!", etc.

These groups of people make up the core of panicked Chelyabinsk residents who leave emotional comments on articles and posts on environmental topics. According to V.I.Medvedev, people with this type of personality traits make up a noisy extremist part of many environmental movements ^[6].

Subjects with an average of 66 people (35.5%) on the scales of self-actualization and average values of emotional reaction (dysthymicity, emotivity, cyclothymicity and exasperation) they also tend to experience anxiety when perceiving negative information and fall under the influence of media attitudes, and they have a conviction in the correctness of the perceived information and, thereby, they practically cannot retreat from the formed opinion, but such subjects do not have hyperbolized consciousness and are not inclined to overly aggravate problems.

In our sample, the smallest part of the subjects, 13 people (7%), have a high level of self-actualization in general and low values for emotional characteristics in the Leonhard-Shmishek test, it is these people who perceive information about the environmental situation of the city really, and not as it is presented in the media. These people tend not only to process information independently and not fall under the influence of someone else's opinion, but also to have an ecological culture that forms their holistic adaptive attitude to the environment and environmental problems. In addition, self-actualized individuals can be good teachers in the field of environmental awareness and educate the population of Chelyabinsk.

Conclusions. As we expected, the main concern of the citizens is the current environmental situation (against the background of all other urban problems). Residents unequivocally associate the environmental problems of the city with the production and technological activities of industrial enterprises, while air pollution is considered paramount. In the collective consciousness of residents, Chelyabinsk looks like the most environmentally unfavorable city in the country.

The analysis of the data of the projective technique shows that subjects with personal anxiety and a low level of self-actualization when perceiving information about an environmentally unfavorable environment proceed from a sense of "chronic" fear that they experience for their own health, the health of loved ones and their well-being, fearing to lose it all. Such people are prone to stress, panic "attacks" at those moments when they are faced with an excessive amount of information about the environment. These people need the help of specialists who will help to cope with "chronic" anxiety and help to form positive thinking that will break the negative cycles of thinking associated with anxiety.

High levels of emotional accentuation and low cognitive activity also lead to inability to manage their reactions to environmental problems. People with such personality traits are more motivated from the outside, fall under the influence of stereotypes, tend to perceive information under the influence of emotions, without understanding the essence of the issue. These people, as a rule, react more emotionally than others to frightening headlines and images of environmental publications, become members of thematic groups on social networks, where they leave emotional comments. Both the first and second groups described above have an ecological consciousness of hyperbolization.

Subjects with a high and normative level of self-actualization, as well as subjects who have demonstrativeness and hyperthymia as an accentuation of character, have a positive attitude to their ability to overcome stress, can cope with anxiety, and receiving information about the environment is not considered an unsolvable problem.

As for the problem of anxiety about the environmental situation among residents of Chelyabinsk as a whole, we have shown that only 15% of respondents have anxiety as a personality trait, the remaining 85% have situational anxiety caused by external stimuli, including the escalation of the situation in the media. That is, our study confirms the hypothesis about the influence of personal characteristics on the perception of environmental information. However, the perception of the environmental problems of the city that has developed among Chelyabinsk residents does not lie only in the plane of personality psychology, but affects the problem of educating citizens and forming an adequate ecological consciousness, as well as the problem of constructing a modern image of the city that would create new advantages for city residents.