THE MAIN STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT OF THE SECURITY SECTOR SPECIALISTS’ PSYCHOLOGICAL READINESS FOR PRECISION SHOOTING

Abstract

The article examines the main developmental stages of psychological readiness for precision shooting with specially designed author's program that improves personal characteristics of professionals in the security sector necessary for their accurate shot. The determination and justification of the developmental stages of psychological readiness for precision shooting was carried out from the standpoint of the activity and systematic approaches, which contributed to a comprehensive study of the features of psychological readiness development and helped characterize the content, objectives, success criteria and the specifics of each stage implementation. The psychological readiness for precision shooting is understood as an integrative psychological characteristic, combining a set of necessary knowledge, skills, professionally important qualities and motives for successful actions, as well as a set of personal characteristics that make up the content of this phenomenon. The article describes the structure of psychological readiness for accurate shooting, represented by the unity of intellectually-operational, motivational, emotional-volitional and psychophysiological components. It substantiates the necessity of the development of security sector specialists’ personal characteristics, important for successful shooting skills formation, and presents the author's program developing psychological readiness for precision shooting, which has three stages, namely: motivational-orientation, operational-reflective and developmental-regulatory. The tasks and the content of each stage are described in detail; the criteria for their successful implementation are presented. The implementation of each program stage includes: the motivational-orientation stage – forming a positive attitude and motivation to develop psychological readiness to precision shooting, awareness of its importance during shooting and knowledge on basic developmental methods, mastering the theoretical aspects of firearm usage; the operational-reflective stage – working out the techniques and rules for pistol firing and bringing them to automatism, development of corresponding cognitive processes, the ability to reflect and differentiate one’s own feelings; the developmental-regulatory stage – improvement of volitional qualities, skills of emotional and volitional self-regulation, ability to control one’s own actions and adjust them according to shooting conditions. Security sector specialists’ psychological readiness for precision shooting is justified as a key to their effective use of firearms at professional task solving. Thus, the main formulated conclusion is that the effectiveness of firearm usage by security sector specialists in stressful situations is determined by developed psychological readiness for precision shooting. The development of the latter takes place at firearms training and involves the implementation of the stages described above, which can improve security sector professionals’ personal characteristics required for precision shooting. Developed psychological readiness will help them to overcome negative mental states, reduce anxiety, increase adaptive capacity and confidently at situations involving the firearm usage.