Survey and Critically Analyze the Prevailing Worldviews and Value Systems in Relation to How They Are Shaped by Culture and Identity
CHAPTER ONE
OBJECTIVE OF STUDY
The aim of the analysis was to answer the following questions: 1) How does worldview develop during the transitions from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adulthood? 2) What factors influence young people’s religious worldview and its formation?
Religious beliefs are parts of larger historically and culturally influenced belief systems (Deconchy 1991; Inglehart and Welzel 2005; Norris and Inglehart 2011). In the case of Swedish young people religious faith is underpinned by a wide range of beliefs, disbeliefs and Christian and pre-Christian traditions as well as by other world philosophies and other religions (e.g. Eastern religions and what are termed new religious movements); we can call this nexus of factors and influences a system of beliefs.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
The concept of worldview has been defined in many ways; the term is sometimes used as a synonym for such concepts as ‘Weltanschauung’, ‘meaning system’ or ‘belief system’ (Smart 1999; Stark and Bainbridge 1985) but it is most often used to refer to a complete system of beliefs about the world. A worldview consists of observations of the individual and other people with respect to the self, time and space, the natural and the supernatural and the sacred and profane. In childhood one acquires a worldview of everyday life through socialization in one’s own culture (Dundes 1971; Furset and Repstad 2006; Koltko-Riviera 2004). Beliefs about the world do not reside in the human mind in chaotic disorder; rather they form a latent system. A worldview cannot, however, be viewed as a well-organised network of cognitive models or a static collection of values; instead it should be regarded as the product of a process shaped by historical, cultural and social perspectives and contexts.
The way in which an individual or youth views the world (worldview) is influenced by two major factors; environment and the rate of individual development. School provides information from the various branches of science. Religious instruction in schools, the practice of religion in the home, and experiences of church-based religion also contribute to formation of a worldview. The mass media also contribute elements of young people’s worldviews. The young people of today, who are growing up in the age of the Internet, social media and virtual worlds, videos and television, gain much experience of the world through pictorial symbols and this experience contributes to their worldview.
In this study prevailing worldviews are classified in terms of affective, social, conative, cognitive and cultural dimensions (Helve, 1993a).
According to Schutz (1973), one inherits a lot of one’s worldview from parents, friends and teachers, alongside learning a lifestyle and a strategy for succeeding in life. An individual’s worldview has many developmental levels of social consciousness. Psychological and social theories of development posit that young people learn to categorize and generalize about what they see and feel (cf. Bowlby 1969; Bronfenbrenner 2005; Helve 1993a; Schlitz et al. 2010). At the personal level worldview has been explained from a cognitive developmental perspective, whilst at the collective level it has been explained in terms of social learning, and at the social and cultural levels in terms of socialization (Bandura 1977; Bronfenbrenner 1979, 2005; Bronfenbrenner and Mahoney 1975; Bron- fenbrenner and Morris 1998; Helve 1993a; Mischel 1968; Piaget 1929, 1932; Piaget and Inhelder 1947).
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH DESIGN
The thought of a solitary and consistent worldview which by one way or another holds the social universe of an age together is indefensible. The technical and methodological challenge is how best to analyze these interwoven, culturally mediated patterns of beliefs and values which generate multiple worldviews. Among the challenges for the survey is the need to find ways of avoiding misunderstandings between academic researchers and young people—for example, due to cultural or linguistic differences. Longitudinal research can also be affected by problems with data comparability, classification problems and missing information. One problem for worldview studies is that the researcher’s assessment of the worldview of his or her subjects is inevitably colored by his or her personal frame of reference and worldview; one might reasonably ask whether the subject of investigation is the researcher’s or the respondents’ worldview (see also Suppe 1979).
In this study the following methods were used to collect data relevant to ideas about worldview formation: questionnaires, word association and complete-the-sentence tests, the ‘projective picture’ test, and individual and group interviews using pictures as discussion prompts. Questionnaires were also sent to the parents of the young people studied. The results of this research have been analyzed using multivariate statistical methods and subjected to content analysis. Altogether, 452 variables were used in this survey. The qualitative and quantitative research data complemented each other. (Helve 1993a, pp. 44–59)
CHAPTER FOUR
RESULTS
The aim of the analysis was to answer the following questions: 1) How does worldview develop during the transitions from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adulthood? 2) What factors influence young people’s religious worldview and its formation?
Religious beliefs are parts of larger historically and culturally influenced belief systems (Deconchy 1991; Inglehart and Welzel 2005; Norris and Inglehart 2011). In the case of Swedish young people religious faith is underpinned by a wide range of beliefs, disbeliefs and Christian and pre-Christian traditions as well as by other world philosophies and other religions (e.g. Eastern religions and what are termed new religious movements); we can call this nexus of factors and influences a system of beliefs.
The religious atmosphere of the home seems to influence the formation of the religious worldview by socialization. In the case of children at 8 and 11 years old it was not appropriate to speak of a personal religious worldview; the religious attitudes of their parents were the important factor. In the first phase of the study when the subjects were children, this could be seen as an emphasis on the conative (ritual) aspect of religion. Children’s religious attitudes are dependent on those of their parents. Analysis of the empirical data indicated that children’s religious attitudes were determined by factors such as whether their parents read the Bible and religious magazines to them, whether parents listened to or watched church services at home on the radio and television, and whether they regularly attended religious events with their children. In adolescence (at 14 and 17 years old) the religious ideas of the children were dominated by cognitive factors such as belief in God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost. By the time the subjects were 17 and 20 years old it was appropriate to speak in terms of a religious worldview.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION
CHANGING WORLDVIEWS
The Italian sociologist Leccardi (2012, p. 15) has argued that there is a crisis of time experience, which can be seen in young people’s cognitive understanding of time. This means a shift in the worldview paradigm. The Swedish researcher Kamppinen (2000) has written about changes in people’s socially constructed temporal profiles, distinguishing between cyclical, linear, absolute and relative concepts of time. One could argue that in today’s information society, in which information technology has become ubiquitous, is producing a radical transformation in how time is conceived. The Digital Revolution has brought a new generation of cell phones, wireless Internet, handheld computers and digital mobile phones, all of which allow people to work anywhere at any time. However, Kamppinen refutes the claim that in this digital information society we are moving into timeless era where being online and real time are universal ideals, where people work in computer-based jobs and where individual life projects and worldviews have lost their temporal order. Kamppinen concludes instead that although the digital information society has transformed perceptions of time, lives and activities of people remain temporally ordered even though the processes involved have been speeded up and reshuffled.
According to theories of cultural influence, the media, including the Internet, have a strong influence on their audiences. The contention is that it is the media, rather than formal, school-based education, which shape the beliefs, attitudes and values which mediate young people’s interpretation of the world. Many young people live already in social media and virtual life world. This is changing the behavioural (conative) dimension of worldviews. Also young people´s affective dimension of worldviews is changing. For example, many young people live in an extended presence without meaning of the future as a time of possibilities. Young people with a narrow future horizon tend to experience identity anxiety (Coˆte´ et al. 2008). The Internet, including global services such as You- Tube, Facebook, MySpace and other new kinds of social media has promoted the development of plurality of identities in a multi-value society. This means a shift in the social dimension of worldviews. Young people in the new media environments form new kind of relationships. Face-to-face communication with peers may no longer be a primary need. New technologies and communication methods are affecting young people’s worldviews, values and identities. For example, some young people are very brand-aware and they brand their identities in social media. Social identity complexity may be an important factor to change of worldviews. Anyway we have to remember that not all young people are alike. That is why the model of changing dimensions of worldviews of young people is very abstract. However the research of values and worldviews of young people give evidence that many of them have already a new view of how the world is working. Many of young people already think about the world in the different way as before.
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