Hardiness of Different Generations of Russian People

Abstract

For a person, belonging to a certain generation has now become an indication of having witnessed certain historic events and possessing certain social and psychological qualities. This is a marker that most company executives, advertisers, managers, marketing specialists, and teachers take in consideration. Why is investigating differences between generations relevant? On one hand, both general public and the scientific community have demonstrated a growing interest in social psychology. On the other hand, this problem has not yet been sufficiently studied. In spite of large amounts of empirical data on the psychological differences in multi-age groups, there seem to be little to no research works focused on basic social and psychological characteristics of the generations. The society today, with its swift socio-economical changes, instability, and loss of values, is becoming more and more stressogenic. Events of the recent years (economic crisis, terrorist threats, technogenic disasters, unstable political relations etc.) constitute a major factor that exerts its influence on a personality. It has been noted that people generally feel less secure and protected after experiencing those events. The science is now facing the task of revealing and processing the psychological characteristics and predispositions that ensure a person’s ability to successfully adapt to the world that is constantly changing. The capacity of dealing with life troubles depends on the personality potential of an individual, on how psychologically mature an individual is, and on their value and purpose-in-life orientations. In foreign psychology, the notion of “hardiness” is used as a synonym to the idea of the personality potential. The present research is based on the results of a diagnostic survey that was addressed to Russian citizens from different regions of the Russian Federation, aged from 18 to 75. The diagnostic survey used the following methods: the “Hardiness Test” by D. Leontyev, the “Purpose in Life Orientation Test” by D. Leontyev, and the method of “Subjective Economic Well-Being” by V. Khashchenko. Therefore, the purpose in life and the economic mindset were used as determinants of hardiness. With age, the number of factors influencing the development of hardiness becomes larger; however, age does not determine the development of hardiness as a specific personality trait. Representatives of Generation Y (young Russian people aged 18 to 34) currently show the highest level of hardiness because their personalities are dominated by the “commitment” and “control” factors. In general, the presence of components of hardiness prevents the increase of psychological tension in stress situations because such individuals are highly resilient and give less importance to stress situations, doing a better job coping with these.