Disembodiment of Internet Users as a Consequence of Modern Information Technologies and Self-Efficacy Beliefs in Students

Abstract

This article focuses on the concept of disembodied Internet personality. The Internet gives its users a special disembodied status because mental self of the Internet user has no physical manifestation. Although this concept appears in many studies, it remains practically unexplored in psychological terms. However, British existential psychologist R. Laing already described its varieties and consequences on clinical material. His The Divided Self: An Existential Study In Sanity And Madness became a theoretical foundation of virtual disembodiment and a questionnaire of the same name. In this article, R. Laing’s ideas were compared with the socio-cognitive concept of self-efficacy, which was developed by A.Bandura and then modified by R. Schwarzer and M. Jerusalem, who also designed the scale of general self-efficiency. This research used both the scale of general selfefficiency and the questionnaire of Internet disembodiment to establish the relationship between various aspects of the Self. The research featured the self-perception of technological disembodiment and the subjective sense of social vitality and capacity in university students during the development of their first integral form of identity. The artificial separation of the mental Self from the physical body in the virtual environment weakened their beliefs in personal efficacy outside the virtual space. Students with different severity of online disembodiment and general self-efficacy appeared to have different self-identification features.

Keywords

• aspects of self
• technological disembodiment
• disembodiment on the internet
• general self-efficacy