Essential Self-Regulation as a Predictor of Personality Self-Actualization

Abstract

The article presents the results of an empirical study of essential self-regulation as a predictor of personality self-actualization. The relevance of the study is determined by the need to clarify the psychological mechanisms that ensure the realization of personal potential, internal consistency of personality and the ability for self-realization. Within the framework of the study, self-actualization is considered as an integral characteristic of personality development, whereas essential self-regulation is defined as a system of emotional, communicative and behavioral mechanisms that facilitate or hinder the realization of the self-actualizing tendency of personality. The aim of the study was to identify the relationships between indicators of essential self-regulation and characteristics of personality self-actualization, as well as to determine self-regulatory predictors of the integral indicator of self-actualization. The theoretical basis of the study included humanistic approaches to personality development, self-determination theory and the author’s concept of essential self-regulation. The study employed the Questionnaire for Diagnosing Essential Self-Regulation, the Questionnaire for Diagnosing the Emotional Component of Essential Self-Regulation and Shostrom’s Self-Actualization Test. Statistical data processing included Kendall’s τ-b correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis. The results demonstrated that optimal modes of essential self-regulation were positively associated with indicators of self-actualization, including time orientation, value orientation, behavioral flexibility, self-esteem, self-acceptance, contact and creativity. At the same time, affective, ambivalent, apathetic and disintegrated modes of self-regulation were predominantly associated with lower levels of self-actualization. Regression analysis revealed that the modes of essential self-regulation explained a statistically significant proportion of the variance in the integral indicator of self-actualization. Positive predictors of self-actualization included internal consistency of experience, constructive communicative patterns and adaptive behavioral ways of activity realization, whereas internal contradictions, emotional overstrain, apathy and disorganization of self-regulation were associated with lower levels of self-actualization. The obtained results make it possible to consider self-actualization not only as a consequence of motivational orientation, but also as a process associated with the quality of emotional, communicative and behavioral self-regulation. The practical significance of the study lies in the possibility of applying the obtained results in psychodiagnostics, psychological counseling, psychotherapy and personality development programs.