PhD, Associate Professor R.V. Kozjakov¹
Dr.Sc.Psych., Professor E.A. Orlova²
Dr.Sc.Psych., Professor E.A. Petrova¹
PhD, Associate Professor M.V. Eremin^1
1Russian State Social University, Moscow
²Moscow State University of Psychology and Education, Moscow

Keywords: extreme sports, coping strategies, emotional intelligence, adolescents.

Background. Modern social environments give certain freedom to adolescents who develop their own subculture with preferred/ discretional physical activities and their formats being driven by their group/ individual interests and needs. Particularly fashionable today in the adolescent population are extreme lifestyles including certain life codes, and these codes largely determine the physical fitness ideals, values and relevant motivations. Social values of the relevant physical culture methods and objectives may determine their priorities within the relevant adolescents’ motivational structure [3, 4, 7].

Drug addiction still common in some segments of the modern adolescent population may be explained by the following: poor if any attention to the adolescents’ interests and personal needs within the frame of the axiological life concept specific for this age group; and underestimation of the physical culture and sport system resource for and potential role in the extreme lifestyle driven subculture of the adolescent population [2, 5]. Generally, a growing variety of extreme physical activities is getting more and more popular among adolescents the world over, and individual progress in these physical practices help the adolescents win recognition in their subculture, step up their self-esteem, fulfil their self-assertion agenda and establish good interpersonal relationships with their peers [1, 6, 8]. Many good personality qualities including decisiveness, courage, persistence, purposefulness and endurance that are built up via extreme physical practices normally develop immunity to bad habits including drug addiction.

The above and other issues of the adolescent culture are subject to many studies including the coping behaviours related ones. High interest of the research community in these topics may be explained by the negative social effects of the modern natural, socio economical and other factors further aggravated by a variety of stressors. This is the reason why the psychological studies designed to develop efficient coping strategies applicable in challenging life situations and thereby improve the individual adaptive capability are considered so important today. Well-developed emotional intelligence is viewed as one more adaptive capability improvement factor in addition to the coping strategies. Modern adolescents often face difficulties in the efforts to understand, perceive, express and control their own and other people’s emotions, whereas modern sports in general and extreme sports in particular require and develop emotional self-control abilities that may, on the other hand, facilitate the emotional intelligence development initiatives.

Objective of the study was to find correlations of emotional intelligence with coping strategies of the adolescents going in for extreme sports.

Methods and structure of the study. The study of deviant behaviours of the students going in for extreme sports included an analysis of the personality deviating factors in a variety of fields including behavioural, motivational, emotional and specific cognitional fields and the relevant personality disharmonising effects. Sampled for the study was a number of vocational, secondary professional and higher educational establishments in Moscow city and some other regions of the Russian Federation including: Moscow Arts and Theatre Technical College; Secondary Schools #32, #49 and #4; Saint Petersburg State Agrarian University; Minsk State Vocational Technical College of Erection, Lift and Carry operations; Nizhny Novgorod State University of Architecture and Construction; and Novopolye State College of Land Economy. Subject to the study were 63 adolescent students aged 15-18 years including 30 females and 33 males. Sport preferences of the subjects were found to include parkour (n=27); workout (n=9); skateboarding (n=11); diving (n=3); mountaineering (n=7); snowboarding (n=6); and martial arts (n=7); with 6% of the sample reporting their track records in the sports under 1 year; 81% from 1 to 3 years; and 13% from 3 to 5 years.

The emotional intelligence and communicative competencye testing methods were selected as dictated by the study subject and included the following: Lyusin Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (EmIn); Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20); Life Situation Coping Questionnaire (adapted version of the WCQ [Work Climate Questionnaire]) by T.L. Kryukova, E.V. Kufyak and M.S. Zamyshlyayeva; and COPE Inventory by Carver C.S., Scheier M.F. and Weintraub J.K. adapted by T.O. Gordeeva, E.N. Osin, E.A. Rasskazova, O.A. Sychev and V.Y. Shevyakhova. The EmIn Questionnaire offers sets of optional statements categorised by the types of emotional intelligence into five subscales that, in their turn, are grouped into three higher-level scales.

For the purposes of the study, we applied data generated and grouped by ESA, MOE, CEE, ROE and MOE scales as follows:

1. ESA Scale for Emotion Self-Awareness measures the ability to understand own emotions and their effects plus the ability to realise the reasons for the emotions and verbalise them.

2. MOE scale for Management of One's Own Emotions is designed to rate own emotional status control skills i.e. the abilities to generate necessary emotions and maintain them plus the ability to prevent undesirable emotions.

3. CEE scale for Control of Emotional Expression measures the ability to control expression of own emotions.

4. ROE scale for Recognition of Others' Emotions provides the individual ability to trace other people’s emotions by the relevant verbalised and non-verbalised indicators including body language (facial expressions, paralinguistics, extra linguistics etc.) plus the overall sensitivity to other people’s internal condition i.e. empathy.

5. MOE subscale for Management of Others' Emotions measures the individual ability to generate and control emotions of other people including control of their intensity and manifestations. It should be noted that D.V. Lyusin tends to rate the individual proneness to manipulations with the same category [7].

Study results and discussion. The respondents were mostly tested with very low and low intra- and inter-personal emotional intelligence development rates. Based on the test data, the respondents were ranked by the CEE and ROE subscales of the Emotional Intelligence (EmIn) Questionnaire, with the intergroup differences of the rates found meaningful only on the ROE scale (for the other people’s emotions perception intelligence). The test data and analyses are given in Table 1 hereunder.

Table 1. Mann-Whitney U-test values on the Emotional Intelligence (EmIn) Questionnaire scales

The qualitative test data analysis showed that the adolescents tested with high and average interpersonal emotional intelligence on the ROE scale (for Recognition of Others' Emotions) are less prone to cope with the challenging life situation by avoidance versus their peers tested with low and very low interpersonal emotional intelligences on the same scale. The subject twelve coping strategies applicable in challenging life situations were provisionally classified into productive, partially productive and counterproductive ones. Having analysed the test data on the above scales, we found the following significant differences in the data arrays: see Table 2.

Table 2. Mann-Whitney U-test values of the subject coping strategies

Conclusion. The test rates on the Alexithymia (TAS-20) Scale indicative of the problems in identifying emotions were found to negatively correlate with the adolescents’ intrapersonal emotional intelligence development rates on the ESA (Emotion Self-Awareness) scale. It was also found that the higher is the alexithymia rate the lower is the emotion self-awareness ability that falls within the intrapersonal emotional intelligence. Extreme sports were found to be beneficial as verified by the improved health rates, plus they are known to increase the adolescents’ immunity to drugs, tobacco and alcohol.

References

1. Eremin M.V. Fizicheskaya kultura i sport kak sredstvo sokhraneniya i ukrepleniya zdorovya shkolnikov [Physical culture and sport to protect and strengthen children's health]. Sovremennoe professionalnoe obrazovanie v sfere fizicheskoy kultury i sporta: aktualnye problemy i puti sovershenstvovaniya [Modern professional education in the field of physical culture and sports: actual problems and solutions], 2006, pp. 302-306.
2. Eremin M.V., Karpov V.Y., Makhov A.S. Sredstva fizicheskoy kultury i sporta v profilaktike narkomanii detey i podrostkov [Physical culture and sports tools to prevent child and adolescent drug abuse]. Fizicheskaya kultura: vospitanie, obrazovanie, trenirovka, 2015, no. 2, pp. 60-63.
3. Karpov V.Y., Eremin M.V., Abramishvili G.A. Sredstva fizicheskoy kultury i sporta kak osnova profilaktiki narkomanii i vrednykh privychek v podrostkovoy srede [Physical culture and sports tools as a basis for prevention of drug abuse and addictions among adolescents]. Sochi Journal of Economy. 2013. # 1-1, pp. 102-109.
4. Kudinova V.A., Karpov V.Y., Kudinov A.A., Kozyakov R.V. Effektivnost deyatelnosti fizkulturnykh kadrov v sub'ektakh rossiyskoy federatsii [Physical education personnel's performance in entities of the Russian Federation]. Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury, 2016, no. 11, pp. 14-16.
5. Аbramishvili G.A., Karpov V.Y., Eremin M.V. The Technology of Differentiated Physical Education of Primary-Age Pupils. Asian Social Science.  2015, vol. 11, no 19, pp. 329-334.
6. Kozjakov R.V., S.N. Fomina, A.I. Rybakova, V.V. Sizikova, E.A. Petrova  Educating Social-Profile Specialists For Working With A Family Of A Child With Health Limitations: Competence Approach. Research Journal of Pharmaceutical, Biological and Chemical Sciences. 2015, vol. 6. № 1, pp. 1852-1861.
7. Petrova H.A., Zavarzina O.O., Kytianova I.P., Kozyakov R.V. [Social And Personal Factors Of Stable Remission For People With Drug Addictions]. Psychology in Russia: State of the Art, 2015, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 126-138.

Corresponding author: petrova-sorina@yandex.ru           

Abstract

The study was designed to profile correlations of emotional intelligence with coping strategies in the adolescents engaged in extreme sports, the study being the first of this kind and giving the means to expand the knowledge base of these phenomena to outline new ways for further studies of the subject. Modern psychology ranks the adolescents’ social adaptability problems among the top priority subjects, with many researchers focusing their efforts on these problems including the coping behaviours related studies. High interest of the research community in these topics may be explained by the negative social effects of the modern natural, socio economical and other factors further aggravated by a variety of stressors. This is the reason why the psychological studies designed to develop efficient coping strategies applicable in challenging life situations and thereby improve the individual adaptability are considered so important today. Well-developed emotional intelligence is viewed as one more adaptability improvement factor in addition to the coping strategies. Modern adolescents often face difficulties in the efforts to understand, perceive, express and control own and other people’s emotions, whereas modern sports in general and extreme sports in particular require and develop emotional self-control abilities that may, on the other hand, facilitate the emotional intelligence development initiatives.