Human Capital Multidisciplinary Research Center

1.3.1 Subjective Quality of Life and Psychological Resistance to the Threats of the COVID-19 Pandemic: the Role of Personality Potential

Dmitry Leontiev
Project Leader

Project period

2020-2025

Context of Research Project within a Subject of Human Capital

Personality potential is the basis of life enhancement and self-realization, the basis of resistance and psychological immunity to stress and other challenges of the changing world, the person’s capacity to actively use one’s own resources and not only pursue goals, but also set them on the basis of self-determination and choice. It is important to consider the contribution of the individual to the human capital buildup.

The research project Subjective Quality of Life and Psychological Resistance to the Threats of the COVID-19 Pandemic: the Role of Personality Potential is aimed at combining the concepts of human potential and personality potential, developing a methodology for its measuring and conducting empirical studies of its impact on the success and subjective well-being of the individual.

Project Aim

Studying personality potential as a resource for maintaining objective and subjective quality of life against the background of uncontrolled changes and threats, including those related to the Covid-19 pandemic

Project Objectives:

  1. Implementing a three-year monitoring study of the impact of personality potential on the quality of life
  2. Developing a new multidimensional inventory for complex assessment of personality potential
  3. Studying causal mechanisms of the influence of personality potential on subjective well-being above and beyond objective factors of well-being
  4. Investigating personal goal setting and attainment, associated with personal autonomy and subjective well-being

Key Findings

2020

Data have been collected on two longitudinal empirical studies on personality predictors of attitudes to situations of uncertainty, in particular the coronavirus pandemic, and personality resources of coping with subjective uncertainty in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic

2021

The first wave of a sociological monitoring study of the relationship between personality potential and quality of life has been prepared and conducted

2022

The assumption has been verified that resilience and a sense of well-being in difficult times can be developed, including in the workplace with the help of online training. The effectiveness of SPARK Resilience (Situation, Perception, Affect, Reaction, Knowledge) has been studied in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been revealed that in order to increase psychological stability, it is important to consider the situation as a set of neutral facts, know your own peculiarities of troubles perception (for example, a tendency to catastrophize or ignore problems), notice and regulate automatic reactions resulting in destructive behavior. Usually such a conscious approach leads to a deeper understanding of the situation and your role in it and makes it possible to effectively manage what is happening.

The psychological reactions of a person to various crisis situations have been considered. It has been revealed that individual and personal characteristics, expressed in self–efficacy, tolerance to uncertainty, a sense of connectedness, subjective vitality, faith in freedom and resilience, represent positive personal resources that perform a buffer function when interacting with situations of uncertainty. Psychological resources provide a more successful adaptation to stressful factors, namely, contribute to a higher level of subjective certainty, a better orientation in a situation of unpredictability and a more positive emotional background.

                                   Model SPARK Solutions

2023

A model for the positive use of time is proposed, consisting of four components:

-consistency (congruence) daily activities,

-balance between activities,

-efficient use of time,

-a sense of ownership of one's time (mastery).

The positive use of time partially explains the relationship between a balanced time perspective and subjective well-being and fully mediates the influence of a future time perspective and time management on subjective well-being. Thus, the positive use of time can be proposed as a new model of temporal well-being, which combines the concepts of work-life balance, time efficiency and time ownership into a single comprehensive structure that helps to justify coaching interventions in time management.

A theoretical model of the prerequisites and consequences of the positive use of time

Publication

  1. Leontiev D., Mospan A., Osin E. N. (2022) Positive personality resources as buffers against psychological reactions to uncertainty //Current Psychology. – 2022. – С. 1-12. doi
  2. Boniwell I. et al. (2023) SPARK Resilience in the workplace: Effectiveness of a brief online resilience intervention during the COVID-19 lockdown //Plos one. – 2023. – Т. 18. – №. 3. – С. e0271753. doi
  3. Osin E and Boniwell I (2024) Positive time use: a missing link between time perspective, time management, and well-being. Front. Psychol. 15:1087932. doi

RIA

  1. Leontiev D., Kosheleva N., Osin E. Database "Database of the second wave of the monitoring study of the relationship between personal potential and quality of life in a representative sample of the population of the Tomsk and Kemerovo regions (2022)" (RU). Certificate of registration 2023623014, 08.31.2023
  2. Leontiev D., Kosheleva N., Osin E. Database "Database of the first wave of the monitoring study of the relationship between personal potential and quality of life in a representative sample of the population of the Tomsk and Kemerovo regions (2021)" (RU). Certificate of registration 2023623075, 11.09.2023

Conferences

Interuniversity Symposium Psychology of Pandemic Consciousness (RU) (Moscow, Russia, December 21, 2020)