Research focus II: Personality development today: Challenges, forms and fundamentals

The core concern of research focus II is to look into the conditions, processes and possibilities of personal development that serve to promote a society that is fair for all people, both in terms of basic theory and application. The question is how people, in all phases of their lives, can develop their personality, accept the challenges of the present and play a beneficial role in shaping the world. The members of the research focus group face the urgent task of theoretically reflecting on and empirically researching the foundations of personal educational processes against the background of emerging transformation and diversification movements using a methodology appropriate to the subject matter. A necessary background for this is the analysis and interpretation of living conditions in modern societies in order to bring them into a critical and constructive dialog with the experiences of cultural and religious traditions. Interdisciplinary questions about the semantics and systematics of central terms in the field of research, such as "education", "person", "identity" or "orientation" and the associated conceptual controversies provide initial starting points. However, personal development is also related to the ability to participate in the political community and to develop political and moral judgment and religious interpretation skills. The projects within the research focus subsequently examine theories and practices of personality development as well as their procedural and normative, social and institutional prerequisites. 

The research focus group is currently concentrating on value formation processes in the digital realm. Looking at a few powerful platforms in the social media sector or the growing gaming and entertainment industry suggests that it is not only young people who spend a significant amount of time on these platforms. People interact and consume more than ever within digital infrastructures and under the existing logics of artificial intelligence. In the lead project, we investigate precisely such communication and interaction frameworks and their effects on socializing and educational processes. In particular, we examine social media and phenomena anchored there (e.g. influencers) for discourses on values and virtues that are addressed, postulated, negotiated or implicitly conveyed here. This brings questions of recognition relationships or the establishment and development of self-respect and social appreciation in the context of personality development into a new focus. Questions of social isolation or self-contempt are also raised by the peculiar logics of the digital. The aim of project research in these areas is to contribute to successful, reflexive personality development under the conditions of a world without cultural or virtual borders. 

Go to ‘Members of the Field of Research II’