Gender Features of Ressentiment among University Students

Abstract

Introduction. The relevance of the topic relies on the fact that until now, within the Russian psychological discourse, the problem of gender characteristics of university students’ resentment did not have an autonomous status. The problem of ressentiment in the student environment is poorly developed both at the theoretical and empirical levels. The researchers usually confine themselves to analyzing its individual components (aggression, revenge, resentment, jealousy and envy) and without précising the gender specification of their severity. The purpose of the article is a theoretical and empirical study of the ressentiment constructs characteristic for university students: resentment, revenge, envy, jealousy and aggression, as well as fixing the degree of their manifestation and relationship in the gender projection. Materials and Methods. The empirical part of the article demonstrates the results of a study on measuring the declared constructs of ressentiment among university students (aggression, revenge, resentment, jealousy and envy) using the following standardized methods: “Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory (BDHI)” (A. Bass, A. Durkee), “Scales of resentment and vindictiveness” (E. P. Ilyin, P. A. Kovalev), “Multidimensional scale of jealousy” (S. Pfeiffer, P. Wong) and “Methodology for the study of personality envy” (T. V. Beskova). Diagnostic procedures covered 93 people. The questionnaire “Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory (BDHI)” involves the definition of aggression through the following scales: physical aggression, indirect aggression, irritation and verbal aggression. Results. Based on the results of an empirical study, the presence of gender characteristics of ressentiment in university students was revealed by fixing differences in the manifestation of the declared constructs: aggression, revenge, resentment, jealousy and envy. It has been established that the dominant constructs of ressentiment among male students are revenge and aggression; while for female students are resentment, jealousy and envy. Ressentiment among students is ambiguous. On the one hand, it has a detrimental effect on the spiritual dimension of the personality and its creative development; on the other hand, it plays the role of a psychological defense mechanism for the individual. Discussion and Conclusion. The data obtained contribute to the development of scientific ideas about the ressentiment determination in the student environment and the gender characteristics of its manifestation, enrich the psychological and pedagogical knowledge with the methodology for identifying the functional constructs of ressentiment as a destructive form of protecting an individual in an alienated reality. The materials of the article can be useful to specialists in the field of social psychology, preventive pedagogy, deviantology, genderology, enriching them with an understanding of the mechanisms of formation of resentment and gender specificity of its manifestation in the student environment.