Interconnections Between Coping Strategies, Style of Self-Regulation and Personal Maturity in Boys and Girls of Studеnt Age

Abstract

The article contains the research of connections between measure of coping strategies use, self-regulation system components formation and personal maturity in boys and girls, students of Humanities specialties of junior courses of higher education institutions. There was revealed that the boys and girls prefer different strategies for coping with stress. Girls first of all use escape-avoidance coping, and lastly use planning a solution to the problem. Boys are most often going to use self-control and do it significantly more often than girls, boys are most rarely prone to the search for social support. In general, the use of various coping mechanisms is moderate. The process of evaluating results dominates in girls’ style of self-regulation, the processes of planning and modeling dominates among boys. These processes are developed on the border with a high level. The processes of programming, evaluating results in boys, planning and modeling in girls, and regulatory personality’s qualities are formed at the average level. Young people generally have achieved a satisfactory general level of personal maturity. Of the components of personal maturity, both girls and boys have satisfactory level of achievement motivation and unsatisfactory level of attitude to self. In girls life attitude is formed satisfactorily, in boys it is unsatisfactory. Vice versa ability to psychological closeness and sense of civic duty are developed at a satisfactory level in boys, but unsatisfactory in girls. Differences in the sense of civic duty are statistically significant. Obtained correlations between coping strategies and self-regulation system components were mostly negative: all of them in boys, and more than half of them in girls. That is, the use of certain coping mechanisms occurs without involving the system of activity self-regulation. So in boys different coping strategies are inversely connected with such components of self-regulation system as modeling, results estimation, planning and total level of self-regulation. In girls there are inverse connections between strategies of distancing and planning, programming and general level of self-regulation, between search for social support and modeling. At the same time in girls there are positive connections between planning a solution to the problem strategy and general development of self-regulation and the process of evaluating results in particular. In girls self-control coping is positively connected with the process of evaluating results, while in boys this connection is inverse, and this indicates the presence of gender-specific self-regulation style. In girls positive reappraisal strategy is positively connected with general level of personal maturity and with ability to psychological closeness, whereas escape-avoidance strategy is inversely connected with general level of personal maturity and attitude to own «I». Boys gravitate more towards to planning a solution to the problem strategy in terms of self-concept optimization.