Resumen de Proactive coping in youth and old age as an indicator of identity formation in an anormative context

Ryszarda Cierzniewska, Aleksandra Błachnio

• Objective:This paper provides a comprehensive investigation of coping with distress, with a focus on the proactive approach, which is of particular significance for individuals who manage identity transition periods. The researchers discuss the findings from two independent projects which analyzed individual variation in strategies for coping with difficult situations at two sensitive periods for identity development: adolescence and old age. Both studies were conducted between 2014 and 2016. In the first project, proactivity preferences were analyzed in a sample of 332 adolescents. The second project on proactive strategy was larger, involving a sample of 1,552 seniors.The Proactive Coping Inventory for Adolescents (PCI-A) and the Proactive Coping Inventory for Adults (PCI) were used in the respective studies.

  Results:Our findings show that the strategies preferred by the adolescent group included proactive coping, looking for emotional support, and preventive coping, whereas the results for the elderly group revealed a preference for looking for emotional support and reflective and preventive coping. Nevertheless, the proactive coping strategy was chosen by both adolescents and the elderly. The analysis demonstrated no statistically significant difference in the reflective coping strategy for the two age groups.

  Conclusions: These findings show that the assumptions of normative theories of human development are losing descriptive and explanatory functions in many contexts. Moreover, they argue for a more person-centered idiographic approach to studying the process of person development. This is how a growing body of decollective biographical pathways is being created (Loos, 2012).