Conscious Self-Regulation and Self-organization of Life during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Background. In a pandemic situation, the search for psychological resources for successful self-organization of life under the changing conditions becomes an urgent issue. Revealing the role of a person's conscious activity to achieve such self-organization during the lockdown period is the goal of this study. Objective. Our main task was to monitor self-assessments of life self-organization in different age groups. Another was to evaluate the extent to which conscious self-regulation contributes to the success of self-organization, to overcoming its difficulties, and to accepting the uncertainty of the future. Design. The data were obtained online on the Testograf platform (www.testograf.ru), which was provided by the all-Russian research project “Exploring at home!” (www.issleduemdoma.ru), a study which ran from late April to early June 2020. The sample was comprised of 1634 people, ages 18-60, from 69 regions of Russia. The methods were “Morosanova’s Self-regulation Profile Questionnaire – SRPQM 2020” and the authors’ ad hocquestionnaire “Self-organization of life during a lockdown.” Results. The majority of respondents assessed their level of self-organization as medium (67.6%) and high (17.3%). The general level of self-regulation was associated with successful self-organization in all age groups. Regression analysis revealed that being able to cope with and accept uncertainty depended primarily on flexibility, persistence, planning goals, and modeling conditions. Overcoming the difficulties of self-organization depended on the same indicators, with additional contributions of reliability and programming of actions. Students demonstrated significantly lower levels of self-regulation than older people; as a result, young people experienced more difficulties in organizing their lives under self-isolation conditions. Conclusion. The higher the level of conscious self-regulation, the more productive a person is when self-organizing his/her behavior in case of a lockdown. The difficulties of self-organization, in turn, are associated with a low level of regulatory resources.