Conscious Self-Regulation as a Metaresource for Achieving Goals and Solving the Problems of Human Activity

Background. In political, economic, social and environmental crisis conditions, a great importance is given to the investigation and search for the human psychological resources, which make it possible to successfully cope with usual and challenging life tasks in the conditions when the world order and the life styles drastically change. Objective of this article is to summarize the results of theoretical and empirical research for developing the resource approach to the study of the conscious self-regulation of human activity considered as a system of psychological means of consciously setting the goals and managing their achievement. Design. The resource approach provisions were substantiated theoretically and verified empirically in the laboratory of the self-regulation psychology of the Federal State Budgetary Scientific Institution “Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education.” The studies were carried out on the large samples of schoolchildren, students, and professionals. Cognitive, personality and regulatory techniques included questionnaires and experimental tasks. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal design were applied. Results. The generalization of the empirical results made it possible to verify the developed scientific ideas of the conscious self-regulation of achieving goals as a system of the human universal and special regulatory resources, depending on the “globality” of the tasks they are intended for. The person’s regulatory competences implementing this system contribute to the productive aspects of achieving educational and professional goals. They also serve as a mechanism for mobilizing, coordinating, mediating and accumulating the entire palette of other individual resources and human reserves for solving various problems in human activity. Among these tasks are the personality self-development and self-education, professional self-determination, maintaining and increasing psychological well-being. The development of the conscious self-regulation resources contributes to successful learning and work in the context of rapid digitalization, serves as the basis for adaptation and formation of new self-organization of life, and also prevents acute stress reactions and negative emotional states under conditions of the coronavirus pandemic. Conclusions. Conscious self-regulation is a human meta-resource, since it not only makes a significant contribution to achieving the goals of practical activity, but also contributes to solution of the broader life tasks.