Personal choice to participate in extreme volunteering

Context and relevance. Modern challenges to society and the state have drawn attention to the problem of volunteering. The central issue is the motivation of the participating activity. While the position of the scientific community on the problems of psychological models of volunteering and the motivational characteristics of its participants is well defined, approaches to choosing extreme volunteering have hardly been studied. Objective. The purpose is to analyze foreign publications devoted to the determination of personal choice of participation in extreme volunteering. Hypothesis. Foreign approaches to the choice of volunteering are based on the autonomy and individualism of the individual. Methods and materials. The following methods are applied: the method of meta-analysis of information from the Internet publishing space based on 36 foreign sources on the problem of determining the personal choice of participation in extreme volunteering; semantic analysis and generalization. Results. It is shown that foreign approaches to the study of the phenomenon of «personal choice» differ in the absence of a single point of view. Experts have not decided on the dominant role and the ratio of internal motivating factors to choose volunteering and externally determined factors. In many cases, volunteering is explained from the standpoint of the theory of self-determination by E.L. Deci and R.M. Ryan, as well as an axiological approach. The problems of volunteering are limited in comparison with other forms of volunteer activity. The determination of personal choice, which presupposes self-realization, the need for autonomy, career aspirations, and social identity, differs significantly from the national one, which is based on ideology, civic duty, justice, and patriotism in describing personal choice. Conclusions. The material is aimed at improving psychological support for extreme volunteering, allowing to expand the information and analytical base of promising scientific research in the field of legal psychology and security psychology, extreme psychology.

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