Relations between constructive fear and actual self-perception of higher education students during self-isolation

Introduction. The article discusses individual results (constructive fear and indicators of actual self-perception) of an empirical study of 127 students who are in the conditions of self-isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Materials and methods. To study statistical ties, the work used the author’s method that allows you to study the simplest non-linear addictions along with linear ties: with a maximum and a minimum, distant in form from linear monotonous and almost monotonous. All this expanding the range of dependencies, makes it possible to better understand the complex subject of psychological research, including anxiety that clearly does not fit into linear models.

Results. The article analyzes in detail, both from a psychological and methodological standpoint (nonlinearity of the nature of psychological data), the results devoted to the phenomenon of constructive fear among students and its dependence on the components of actual self-determination. All linear correlations between indicators of constructive fear and components of actual self-perception do not exceed 0.21, i.e. they are extremely weak and it is unacceptable to speak about the problem posed from the standpoint of linear models. For two indicators of constructive fear and 26 indicators of actual self-perception within the framework of the dependences model for quarts of independent variable, three strong simplest non-linear dependencies were identified, demonstrating a type 1 error, when the correlation is extremely small, less than even the "significant" value (0.17), and therefore there is no connection within the framework of the linear model of correlation analysis. At the same time, a traditional researcher between the indicators of constructive fear and actual self-perception has 6 “significant” dependencies, which, despite on the fact that they are weak and very weak, not exceeding 0.21 (0.17<|r|<0.21), he can consider as worthy for interpretation of the result, which is unacceptable from the standpoint of an objective study of the phenomenon of constructive fear.

Discussion and conclusions. The results considered in the article show that when studying anxiety, only the transition to the simplest nonlinear models allows you to find new strong ties between the studied indicators and build substantial interpretations on their basis, avoiding traditional errors, when oriented to linear models.

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