Psychological Resources of the Individual when Living Life Situations of Varying Degrees of Uncertainty

Objective. The study of the psychological resources’ specifics of persons experiencing life challenges with varying degrees of uncertainty.
Context and relevance. Uncertainty is a fundamental characteristic of the modern world. Any life situation has a certain degree of uncertainty and contributes to the activation of psychological resources of the individual, on which the success of coping depends.
Research Design. The paper analyzes the types of life challenges, identifies groups of people who differently assess the degree of life challenges’ uncertainty and studies the specifics of the severity of psychological resources (emotional, motivational, instrumental, sustainability resources) depending on the degree of life challenges’ uncertainty.
Participants. The study involved 1248 people aged 18 to 76 years (31,09 ± 12,59), including 297 (23,8%) men, 175 (14,0%) persons with disabilities.
Methods. A socio-biographic questionnaire with an open question about an actual difficult life situation (TS), which needed to be evaluated on a 10-point Likert scale: 1) the level of its complexity; 2) the intensity of the emotions accompanying it. "Subjective assessment of a difficult life situation" (E.V. Bityutskaya, A.A. Korneev); Resilience test (E.N. Osin, E.I. Rasskazova); Self-activation technique (M.A. Odintsova, N.P. Radchikova); COPE technique (E.I. Rasskazova, T.O. Gordeeva, E.N. Osin).
Results. Seven types of challenges are experienced as life situations with varying degrees of uncertainty. Respondents more often attribute the global challenge as a very complex and complex situations of uncertainty; the challenge of loss – as a complex situations. The challenge of illness, the challenge of relationships, the challenge of material difficulties in about forty percent of cases are assessed as very difficult situations of uncertainty and about a third – as complex or simple. The challenge to self-design and the challenge of professional activity are more often assessed either as very complex situations of uncertainty, or as simple. Very complex and complex situations of uncertainty are assessed as less controllable, complex ones as the most intractable.
Conclusions. Psychological resources in situations of varying degrees of uncertainty are emotional experiences, resilience, self-activation and various coping styles. The lower the degree of uncertainty of the life situation, the more pronounced are the resources of resilience and self-activation.

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