Moskvicheva N.L., Zinovyeva E.V., Filatova A.F., Odintsova M.M., Kostromina S.N. The phenomenon of self-determination: towards to creating a complementary model. Part 2

The modern scientific literature presents a wide variety of psychological theories and concepts describing the self-determined behavior of a personality, its ability to make a free and conscious choice, to act independently of environmental influences or heredity. However, most of the authors who study motivational, cognitive and reflexive characteristics of personality paid primary attention to individual manifestations of self-determination, not taking into account the complex hierarchical structure of the phenomenon, the multiplicity of indeterministic centers in human behavior and the complex mechanisms of interaction of various levels in the personality system. The relevance of this study is due to the need to generalize the accumulated theoretical material and develop a complementary approach in describing the phenomenon of self-determination. The purpose of the article is a substantial description of the system of concepts, processes and mechanisms related to different levels of manifestation of self-determined behavior and mutually interacting. According to the author's definition, self-determination of personality is a multilevel dynamic system that provides energy, purposeful and semantic activity of personality and determines relative freedom in the realization of human life tendencies. The analysis made it possible to describe three main levels of self-determination processes, each of which includes a specific motivational basis and driving forces of development, characteristic ways of behavior and achieving goals, experiences and coping with emerging difficulties. They correspond to: 1) the basic level of functional (spontaneous) self-determination, including self-movement and free human intentions; 2) the level of purposeful (activity-based) self-determination, which corresponds to free initiations of conscious activity by a personality, as well as 3) the highest level of semantic self-determination, describing the processes of value regulation and meaning generation. According to the proposed description, not all personality characteristics fit into the proposed level of self-determination quite definitely, and therefore the content structure of the complementary model was supplemented with transitional levels. The interaction of multi-level self-determination processes and the possibility of transition from one level of self-determination to another are conditioned by the processual nature of the personality and reflect its constant growth, development and changing.

Key words: self-determination, determination of behavior, dynamic personality system, subjectivity, autonomy, freedom, intentionality, semantic choice

Acknowledgment 

The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project 22-28-00460 «Complementary model of personality self-determination: theoretical foundations, diagnostic tools, implementation practice».

For citation: Moskvicheva, N.L., Zinovyeva, E.V., Filatova, A.F., Odintsova, M.M., Kostromina, S.N. (2023). The phenomenon of self-determination: towards to creating a complementary model.Part 2. New Psychological Research, No. 1, 46–74. DOI: 10.51217/npsyresearch_2023_03_01_03