INTELLECTUAL RESOURCE AS A BASIS OF RESCUE WORKERS’ COPING-BEHAVIOR

Abstract

The article deals with the positions of psychologists regarding the role of psychometric intelligence in the for-mation of behavior in stressful conditions. Human intelligence manifests itself not only in the results of psychometric tests, but also in conditions of real interaction with the environment, assuming that the productive properties that are measured in IQ units are mental mechanisms responsible for correctness (accuracy) and the speed of information pro-cessing, and cognitive styles are mental mechanisms responsible for managing the information processing. It has been empirically proved that, in the context of professional activity and taking into account its specific character, intellectual abilities and cognitive styles are in some way interconnected, forming the “intellectual resource” of the individual. The results of the empirical research involving 168 rescuers have shown that the intellectual resource is the basis of their coping behavior. Three groups of rescuers with different levels of intellectual resource have been distinguished. The obtained results show that the subjects with higher indicators of the intellectual resource in stressful situations do not use problem-focused coping mechanisms, they apply emotion-focused and social coping mechanisms. These results are interpreted as follows: the higher the intellectual maturity of a person is, manifested in the indicators of cognitive, met-acognitive, academic and conceptual abilities, the wider range of strategies he/she uses. Intelligence thus is interpreted as a mental resource, which provides mobility and variation of coping behavior.