Specificity of ideas about happiness in the structure of ordinary consciousness of people of different age groups

Donskaya O. A.

The article is devoted to the study of the specifics of ideas about happiness in the structure of ordinary consciousness of people of different age groups. The author suggests that the ideas of happiness, on the one hand, correlate with the components of the value-need sphere of a person, acting in a specific case in the form of a specific hierarchy of individual needs formed through the prism of social processes, on the other hand, with a consciously accepted (recognized) person in a specific way of a happy person as a standard from the position of [ordinary] micro- and macrosocial experience. For the purposes of arguing this thought, the author presents the results of a study of the specifics of the idea of happiness in the structure of ordinary consciousness of representatives of three generations – Z, Y and X (n = 1186). As a result of the study, the range of values corresponding to the ideas about happiness of people of different ages was clarified, priority needs were identified, the implementation of which will allow them to feel happy, differences in the semantic meaning of the phenomenon of happiness were identified, the degree and criteria for changing the ideas about happiness in three age groups were determined.

Keywords:everyday consciousness, happiness, hedonism, eudemonism, the semantic meaning of happiness, stereotypes, generations, age groups.