Emotional and Personal Determinants of the Subjective Well-being of Military Personnel who Participated in Hostilities

Abstract

Studying the dynamics of subjective well-being in extreme conditions associated with combat operations and the role of intrapersonal factors in its achievement is an urgent task of modern psychology. Presented are the results of an empirical study, the purpose of which is to study the peculiarities of the relationship between emotional and personal formations and the subjective well-being of military personnel who participated in combat operations. The study involved 477 male respondents aged from 20 to 53 years: military personnel with combat experience and those who did not take part in military operations. Questionnaire methods were used for diagnosing personal characteristics, subjective well-being, difficulties in personal reflection of emotions, identifying and assessing neurotic states, emotional intelligence, and conscious self-regulation. The design of the empirical study included assessing differences in the studied indicators between those who took part in combat and those who did not take part in combat operations, as well as analyzing the relationship between these indicators using structural modeling. It was confirmed that being in a combat zone influenced the level of subjective well-being and the studied emotional and personal characteristics. Military personnel consider themselves less prosperous; they have more pronounced difficulties in personal reflection of emotions associated with the tolerance and expression of emotions, a tendency to use physiologically oriented defenses, as well as neurotic depression and obsessive-phobic disorders. They have lower values for extraversion, emotional stability, conscientiousness, and such regulatory processes and properties as modeling and flexibility. Revealed is the structure of relationships between emotional and personal predictors of the subjective well- being of combatants, presented in the form of a model. The central place in the model belongs to the processes and properties of conscious self-regulation, which directly and indirectly influence subjective well-being due to the mediating role of indicators of emotional intelligence and conscious suppression of emotions. Basic personality traits have only an indirect effect on subjective well-being through the ability to manage one's own and others' emotions and understand one's emotions, neuroticism and conscious suppression of emotions. The leading role here belongs to emotional stability.