Дворянчиков, Бовина и др. [Самоубийство и самоубийцы в социальных представлениях молодых россиян: исследование]

SELF-MURDER AND SELF-MURDERERS IN SOCIAL
REPRESENTATIONS OF YOUNG RUSSIANS:
AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

Premature death caused by self-murder is one of the most serious problems of public health in the world. About one million people disappear for this reason each year, and the further estimations are quite pessimistic.

There are no doubts that the current situation is extremely serious and complex; as a result, the importance of the further development and realization of the preventive measures is obvious. Each preventive program in the field of public health should be based on the results of social psychological studies concerning the problem. In the presented paper, we discuss the results of the exploratory study based on the ideas of the social representations theory. The objective of the exploratory study was to analyze the specificity

of the social representations of self-murder and self-murderers in two groups of young Russians. A total of 106 subjects (67 females and 39 males) aged 18 to 35 participated in the study. It was supposed that the social representation of self-murder and of self-murderers would be less shared in the group of subjects who have friends or acquaintances among people with self-murder experience (committed self-murder or attempted it); it means that the structure of the social representations would be more complex (the central system would be composed of more elements that correspond to different themes on self-murder), whereas, the social representation of self-murder and of self-murderers in the group of subjects who have no friends or acquaintances with self-murder experience (committed self-murder or attempted it) would be more shared (the central system would consist of less themes) and less complex.

The different themes that form the social representations of self-murder and of self-murderers in two groups were revealed. The suppositions got empirical support.

Key words: self-murder, self-murderers, social representations theory, social representation structure, young Russians

Introduction

Self-murder is not a new phenomenon. People took their own lives in different societies and at different times (Zdanow & Wright, 2012). However, the important point is that this cause of mortality becomes one of the leading causes. The premature death caused by self-murder1 is one of the most serious problems of public health in the whole world. About one million people die for this reason each year. The further predictions are rather pessimistic, because this number can reach one and a half million of people by the year 2020 (Westerlund, Hadlaczky, & Wasserman, 2012). These predictions could be based on the fact that the World Health Organization recorded the growth in the number of self-murders in the last four decades regardless of age group (in fact, the age is an important “marker” of self-murder’s risk) (Kholmogorova & Volikova, 2012).

The current situation concerning research on self-murder is characterized by a certain paradox. On the one hand, there are many publications concerned with different aspects of self-murder. For example, analysis of the publications in the database PsycARTICLES by using the key word “suicide” reveals an increase of publications during the last 30 years: 127 publications from 1981 till 1991; 596 publications from 1992 till 2002; finally, 830 articles were published between 2003 and 2013. The growth of the scientific interest is obvious. On the other hand, the growth of self-murder during the last 45 years was also observed in people, aged 15—14 years (WHO, 2012).

If one takes a closer look at the situation in Russia, the growth of the self-murder rate would be also obvious. The statistics (Valiakhmetov, Mukhamadieva, & Khilazheva, 2012) say that in Russia in 1876 the death rate from self-murder was one on the least among European countries. Indicators calculated for 100,000 people say that the highest rate was in Saxony — 31, followed by France — 15, Prussia — 13, Austria — 13, Bavaria — 9, England — 7. The indicator for Russia was 3. Fifty years later (in 1926), the same indicator in Russia was 7.8; for comparison, it was 26.2 in Germany. In 1994—1995, the highest rate was recorded in Russia — 42.1. Although since when this indicator decreased (21.4 in

2011), Russia is still one of the leading countries in terms of mortality from self-murder (Valiakhmetov et al., 2012).

Despite the numerous works on self-murder in general and on self-murder prevention in particular, the number of self-murders is still growing. Therefore, this problem needs more researchers’ interest and innovative preventive measures. The actual preventive programs are based on a variety of different theoretical models that appeal to a wide range of interacting factors (from biological to psychosocial and sociocultural ones) (Conner, Duberstein, & Eric, 2003; Henden, 2008; Westerlund et al., 2012).

Leaving aside the discussion on the polyphony of the scientific explanations that can be found in the literature on self-murder itself and the personality and mental health of a self-murderer (Bae, Ye, Chen, Rivers, & Singh, 2003; Conner et al., 2003; Henden, 2008; McAuliffe, 2002), we would like to highlight one important conclusion from it: self-murder is a polymorphous phenomenon that provokes numerous scientific discussions concerning the reasons of self-murder (for example, psychological, social, cultural, genetic, biological) and concerning the personality of a self-murderer. Similarly to scientists, ordinary people in their everyday life try to answer the same questions about self-murder and self-murderers. Contrary to scientists, ordinary people work out their own theories without any test of theirs hypotheses; they use these theories in everyday life.

Therefore, the objective of the reported study was to reveal the lay explanations of self-murder and self-murderers among young Russians.

The importance of this perspective of analysis is explained by the fact that in everyday life people use these lay explanations facing the danger (self-murder and self-murderers — in case of our study) in order to understand the phenomenon, to protect themselves, and to regulate their social behavior towards people from the so-called “risk groups". The preventive programs need to take into consideration these lay explanations of people in order to be effective.

Among the possible theoretical frames that could be productive in achieving our objective, there are at least two: 1) attribution theories proposed and developed by Heiden, Kelley and others (Kelley & Michela, 1980), 2) social representations theory proposed and developed by Mosco-vici, Abric, Doise and others (Abric, 2001; Doise, 2001; Moscovici, 1961). In our study, we preferred to follow the ideas of the social representations theory as the most appropriate framework for our objective.

According to one of the many definitions of this concept worked out in the theory of “social representations could be defined as commonsense knowledge about general topics (e.g., AIDS, computers, gender, health, intelligence, psychoanalysis, work) that are the focus of everyday conversation” (Lorenzi-Cioldi & Clemence, 2003, p. 311). Self-murder, definitely, belongs to this list of everyday conversation topics in different social groups; it is an extremely important question of life and death. For example, only one Search Engine “Yandex.ru” reveals 3 millions answers to the term self-murder. In 2012, the law concerning the security of information targeted upon under-age persons was adopted in

Russia2. This fact, on the one hand, refers to the importance of the problem in Russia; on the other hand, it reflects the presence of this problem in the communications on different levels.

The social representations are the form of commonsense knowledge worked out by people in everyday communications in order to give meaning to different objects, phenomena, events, etc. that are new, strange, unknown, threatening. As Moscovici underlines it, “...the purpose of all representations is to make something unfamiliar, or unfamiliarity itself, familiar. What I mean is that consensual universes are places where everybody wants to feel at home, secure from any risk...” (Moscovici, 2001, p. 37). The social representations transform the strangeness of such objects, phenomena, etc., by putting them into the existing frame. It is obvious that this transformation is defensive. Other functions of social representations are: the function of communication facilitation, the function of regulation of social behavior and practice, the function of social identity construction and support, and the function of justification of social relations (Abric, 1994; Breakwell, 2001; Doise, 1986; Moscovici, 1973). As Moscovici says, the social representations realize different types of functions: some of them realize cognitive ones, others — social in order to maintain the identity (Bonnec, 2002).

Thus, facing such a phenomenon as self-murder in everyday life, people try to explain its danger, to understand the reasons for committing it, and try to reveal the specificity of a self-murderer personality.

In the reported study, we followed the ideas of the structural approach developed by Abric (Abric, 2001). According to this approach, “the social representation consists of a body of information, beliefs, opinions, and attitudes about the given object. These elements are organized and structured so as to constitute a particular type of the social cognitive system” (Abric, 2001, p. 43).

The social representation has a particular structure; it consists of central and peripheral systems. The central system gives meaning to the whole representation, it maintains the stability of the representation, and it plays the main role in the organization of the representation; the peripheral system plays a crucial role in the protection of the central system stability (and, therefore, in the protection of the representation itself against any transformations); also, it plays an important role in the concretization and adaptation of the central system elements (Abric, 2001). The central system is “linked to collective memory and to the history of the group” (Abric, 1993, p. 76) that shares the representations, whereas, the peripheral system is linked to individual memory and experience. The central system is consensual and provides for the homogeneity of the group, whereas the peripheral system is not consensual, it provides for the heterogeneity of the group (Abric, 1993). As one can see, there is a hierarchy in the structure of the social representation: the central system is formed by the main elements and the peripheral systems are organized around the less important elements.

There are two main factors that influence the central system: social practice and social influence (Abric, 1994; Galand & Sales-Wuillemin, 2009; Moliner, 2001). The social practice determines the relation

between persons and the object of the representations (Abric, 2001; Moliner, 2001). The social influence refers to the fact that social representations are constructed in the social interaction; the social influence functions through the communications concerning the object of social representation (Galand & Salès-Wuillemin, 2009).

There are several studies concerning the social representations of self-murder (self-murderer has not yet become an object of studies in the social representations theory). Among the studied questions are the following3: how do adolescents understand self-murder (Cristea, Cicioc, & Alexoaie, 2008), how self-murder is represented by health workers (da Costa Araujo, Leal Vieira, & da Penha de Lima Coutinho, 2010; Matao, Miranda, Campo, de Sousa Borges, & Pereira, 2012), how does the cultural context affect the content of the social representations of self-murder (Arthi, 2008) etc.

Our objective in the present study was to analyze the specificity of social representations of self-murder and self-murderers in two groups of young people. The factor of social influence was implemented by the fact that one group of subjects was composed of friends and acquaintances of people with self-murder experience (committed self-murder or attempted it). Another group was composed of people who had no friends or acquaintances with self-murder experience.

Applying the ideas of the social representations theory (Moscovici, 1961, 2001) and taking into consideration the results obtained in a study on social representations of AIDS and of People living with HIV/ AIDS (PWA) where it was shown that the social representations of PWA were more simple in case of students (the biggest distance from the AIDS problems) and more complex in groups of homosexuals and drug addicts (the least distance towards the AIDS problems), on the one hand (Bovina, 2007), and following the methodology of the structural approach (Abric, 2001), on the other hand, it was supposed that the social representation of self-murder and of self-murderers would be less shared in the group of subjects who had friends or acquaintances among people with self-murder experience (committed self-murder or attempted it); it means that the structure of social representations would be more complex (the central system would be composed of more elements that correspond to different themes of self-murder), whereas, the social representation of self-murder and of self-murderers in the group of subjects who had no friends or acquaintances with self-murder experience (committed self-murder or attempted it) would be more shared (the central system would consist of less themes) and less complex. Our study was descriptive and exploratory in its nature, that’s why the only general supposition was formulated.

Sample

A total of 1064 young Russians aged 18-35 years (M=23.48, SD=4.36) participated in

the current study (67 females and 39 males). Group 1 comprised friends and acquaintances of people who committed or attempted to commit self-murder (44 subjects); group 2 was a control group without friends and acquaintances of persons who committed or attempted to commit self-murder (62 subjects). The study was totally anonymous, subjects participated voluntarily, they were recruited at several universities of Moscow. The sample was composed of students from the second to fifth years of studies in social sciences.

Method

Following the ideas of the structural approach of social representations theory (Abric, 2001), we used the free association technique. The free association technique is usually used in the analysis of social representations, because it reveals the latent dimensions of the semantic universe of the studied object (Abric, 2003). In the numerous studies where the free association technique is employed, the subjects are presented with a key word (or key words) and are asked to give three to five words that come to their mind immediately (for example, Bonnec, 2002; Dany, Urdapilleta, & Lo Monaco, 2014; Flament & Rouquette, 2003). From these data, the structure of social representations was revealed.

Procedure

The paper-and-pencil questionnaire was administered in the study. The study was presented as a survey on youth health problems. The questionnaire consisted of three parts: in the first part, the free association technique was used with two key words — “self-murder” and “self-murderers”, and some open-ended questions about self-murder and self-murderers were asked; in the second part, the free association technique was also used with two key words “drag addiction” and “drug addicts”, and some open-ended questions about drug addiction and drag addicts were asked; finally, in the third part, there were some open-ended questions about health and health promotion.

In this paper, we present the results obtained only in the first part.

The questionnaire was administered to small groups from 2 to 16 persons; each person completed an individual copy of the questionnaire. In accordance with the free association technique, the subjects were asked to write down no less than five words that first came to their mind when the key word self-murder was presented to them. The same technique was used for the second object of social representations — self-murderers. The participants were asked about their knowledge of persons who committed or attempted to commit self-murder. Some socio-demographic questions were also asked. The participation in the study took from 15 to 20 minutes in general.

The key word “self-murder” was used because of the frequency of its usage (two times more frequent than the word “suicide”) in public discourse, according to the Engine systems Yandex.ru, Mail.ru, Rambler.ru, Google.ru.

The prototypical analysis proposed by Vergès (Vergès, 1992) was applied to the collected data. The so-called rank-frequency method (Dany et al., 2014) was used to reveal the structure of the social representation of self-murder and the structure of the social representation of self-murderers. The rank-frequency method takes into account

Table 1. Structure of social representation

two parameters: 1) associations’ frequencies (quantitative parameter5); 2) rank of their appearance (qualitative parameter6). The usage of these criteria allows us to reveal the most salient words.

The combination of these criteria gives us a four-cell table that corresponds to different zones of social representation. As it was said before, the structure of the representation included the central and the peripheral systems. In the peripheral system, two parts could be distinguished: the potential change zone and the peripheral system. The potential change zone is part of the peripheral system that could bring changes to the central system and change the representation as a result of it. The further theoretical analysis is needed in order to understand the inner structure of the peripheral system (Sa & Oliveira, 2002).

1) the central system zone (the cell contains associations with the high frequency and low rank of appearance; in other words, these associations come to mind of many people immediately when they think about the object of the representation, the consensual elements are situated in this cell) (Table 1); 2) the potential change zone (this zone unites two cells; the first cell contains associations with the low frequency and low rank of appearance; it means that these words are shared by the minority of people, these associations come to subjects’ mind immediately when they think about the object of the representation; the second cell contains associations with the high frequency and high rank of appearance; in other words, these associations are shared by many people but do not come to the subjects’ mind immediately when they think about the object of the representation) (Table 1); 3) the peripheral system (the cell contains associations with the low frequency and high rank of appearance (Table 1); in other words, these associations are shared by few people and these words do not come to the subjects’ mind immediately when they think about the object of the representation.

Once again we will remind here that the central system of representation contains the elements that give the meaning to the whole

representation and organize it; also, they determine the stability of the representation (Abric, 1993; Flament & Rouquette, 2003). While the peripheral system unites elements that function as an interface between the central system and the reality, the peripheral system unites the elements that are linked to the subjects’ individual experience and individual memory.

Table 2. Structure of social representation of self-murder in group 1

Results

Social representations of self-murder in two groups. A total of 213 associations were revealed using the free associations technique with the object “self-murder” in group 1, and 294 associations in group 2. The prototypical analysis revealed the structure of the representations, the answers that were done by at least 5% of subjects were analyzed here7; the volumes of the central and the peripheral systems are 51.64% and 47.96% correspondingly in group 1 and group 2.

The central system zone of the social representation of self-murder in group 1 was composed of six elements (Table 2): “desperation”, “jump from a height”, “death”, “grief”, “murder”, “foolishness”.

The potential change zone included the following elements: on the one hand “adolescent”, on the other hand8 “hopelessness”, “fear”, “problems”, “morally weak person”, “escape from the problems”, “pain”, “loneliness”, “mental disorder”, “thoughtless action”.

The peripheral system was not revealed.

In group 2, the central system of the social representation of self-murder consisted of four elements (see Table 3): “death”, “hopelessness”, “desperation”, and “morally weak person”. The potential change zone united the following elements: on

Table 3. Structure of social representation of self-murders in group 2

Table 4. Structure of social representation of self-murderers in group 1

Table 5. Structure of social representation of self-murderers in group 2