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.

“COVID-19 in Trials and Tribulations” Project: A Self-Regulation-Based Support Response for Confined Families through Social Networks

“…In such a situation, being able to reorganize one's life, establish goals, make plans to attain them, and master unusual tasks relies largely on the person's capacity to self-regulate their behaviors [9]. The detrimental consequences of these unplanned changes in family structure, along with long periods of social isolation may expose strengths and frailties of individual and collective resources.…”

“…Figures 2 and 3 show two examples of publications on the Facebook ® and Instagram ® COVID-19 Trials and Tribulations pages, respectively. Acknowledging the role played by the self-regulation processes (e.g., goal planning) in helping individuals cope with novel and stressful situations (e.g., self and task management [9]) or with engaging successfully in online learning tasks [36,37], all the set activities were grounded on the social cognitive self-regulation framework [24,38].…”

Health psychology on long COVID: Strategies based on NICE and WHO guidelines recommendations

“…The rationale for goal-setting strategies lies in explicitly encouraging behavioral changes for the adoption of healthy behaviors in a concise manner and considering the appropriate context for achieving it, as well as anticipating potential distracters and adverse events that may represent an obstacle to its achievement (Mann, de Ridder, & Fujita, 2013;Wan et al, 2016). Goal setting has been observed to contibute to better personal organization and task performance by focusing efforts on particular and clear aspects during a set period of time (Colineau & Paris, 2010;Zinchenko, Morosanova, Kondratyuk, & Fomina, 2020).…”

Autorregulación y carga de trabajo en teletrabajo durante la pandemia COVID-19

“…Así, la capacidad general de autorregulación de una persona incidiría en el éxito de su comportamiento, especialmente en el caso de cambios significativos en las condiciones de vida, la emergencia de nuevas tareas, y la necesidad de dominar tipos de actividad desconocidas o inusuales. El estudio realizado por Zinchenko et al (2020) en el marco de la pandemia por COVID-19, muestra que, cuanto mayor sea el nivel de autorregulación consciente y de auto organización de su comportamiento desplegado por las personas, más productivas serían estas en situación de cuarentena. Cabe destacar que, el desarrollo de las capacidades autorregulatorias, no solo dependerían de la internalización de significados y estructuras procedurales ordenadoras del pensamiento y del comportamiento, sino que también de las estrategias de distribución y soporte de la actividad cognitiva y comportamental en medios externos (Cole & Engeström, 1993).…”