Metacognitive strategies, beliefs and type of reflexivity in persons with different types of life orientations

Abstract

The modern world’s focus on individualisation of life activity puts great pressure on the modern person: in the search for life goals and reference points, there is a collision with high requirements for material success and general self-realisation. At the same time, there is a large number of recommendations to increase the level of activity productivity through the regulation of external factors (features of time management, reward systems, etc.), while the contribution of metacognitive processes in the regulation of mental activity is not always noted. In this connection, the purpose of this study was to identify and analyse the peculiarities of metacognitive experience in persons with different types of life orientations. 319 people in the age groups from 18–24 to 65 and older were interviewed using methods aimed at identifying the type of life orientations and a number of parameters of the metacognitive sphere: metacognitive strategies, metacognitive beliefs, and type of reflexivity. When comparing persons from groups with different life orientations, significant results are obtained that demonstrate greater metacognitive awareness in persons oriented towards the possibility of taking personal responsibility for life and aimed at active external activity. Persons oriented towards openness to experience, but with a strong externalising orientation, appear to be more susceptible to negative metacognitive beliefs about the regulation of their thinking. In the group of persons with pragmatism-oriented life orientations, negative metacognitions are lower and the range of metastrategies used is narrower, although the expression of those strategies that are actively realised is at about the same level as in the group with the most pronounced subject-oriented life orientations. In groups with unexpressed life goals or with inconsistency of goals and ways of realisation, the indicators of the frequency of use of metacognitive strategies and systematic reflexivity are lower than in the group with expressed subjective orientations.