The social and the personal in the identity of a football fan

State University "Dubna", Dubna, Moscow region, Russia The subculture of football fans was studied to discover the structure of identity in the period of entering adulthood. The subjects were 86 football fans and 95 non-fans (181 in all) aged 18-25. A modified technique of the personal differential was used to study self-characteristics of the respondents and their notions of personal and behavioral characteristics of their friends, fathers, mentors, a typical football fan, an ideal person. Indices of sense self-regulation and personal autonomy were measured with the help of the Questionnaire of subjective alienation, the Scale of self-determination and the Scale of general tolerance of vagueness. Self-characteristics of fans and non-fans revealed meaningful differences on the personal differential scales "strong-weak", "decisive-indecisive", etc. Not one of questionnaire scales revealed any meaningful differences. Correlation analysis showed differences between fans and non-fans in the structure of self-characteristics on the scales of personal differential, autonomy, general alienation, etc.