Cognitive and style predictors of the students' psychological well-being

Abstract

The article analyses the psychological well-being and basic beliefs of students from the point of view of various variables, but the particular attention is payed to cognitive style, which is studied as the way of information assessment, determining person’s intellectual activity as well as own life activity in general. Theoretical and multivariate regression (stepwise method) analyses allowed us to define the models of psychological well-being and basic beliefs predictors at the significance levels from p≤0.000 to p≤0.043. The number of the students’ basic beliefs and psychological well-being style models is 17 of hypothetical 18 models; this result reflects a high (94.4 percent) study subject matter coverage. The following groups of the models were pointed out in a process of categorization: “harmonic” (these cognitive styles are highly efficient and prove that the style criteria correlate with the basic beliefs and psychological well-being ones); “tending to harmonize” (characterized by the cognitive styles inclusiveness dominating, leading to activity efficiency, but including individual style pole-correctors); “ambivalent” (cognitive style poles inclusiveness dominates, while other poles domination decreases). The following conclusions are made on the basis of statistically significant results: the level and peculiarities of the style poles and students’ psychological well-being and basic beliefs regression equations correlation is the determinant, defining the success of these poles and beliefs directly or indirectly. The results of the research enlarge scientific facts about cognitive styles being predictors of students’ psychological well-being and basic beliefs and make their metacognitive regulation and evaluation possible.