Difficult life situations and personal authenticity: a case of the Russian students

Context and relevance. Personal authenticity is the ability of a person to be true to oneself - individual nature (gender, age, temperament), spatial and temporal circumstances of life and calling. The theoretical basis is provided by the existential, person-oriented, and agent paradigms of dispositional authenticity and the concept of difficult life situations (DLS). Objective. To investigate if there is a relationship between the authenticity parameters, the level and the patterns of the DLS. Research question: How does personal authenticity relate to DLS? Methods and materials. The study involved 316 undergraduate students of different specialties (Mage = 19,4, SDage = 0,9, 251 females, 65 males). The severity and patterns of DLS were measured using a checklist of Difficult life situations of learning youth; dispositional authenticity was measured using the Authenticity Inventory, the Authenticity Scale, and the Moscow Authenticity Scale. Results. Authenticity is negatively associated with almost all DLS; however, in regression models, authenticity indicators act both as protectors against DLS and as vulnerability to them. By means of LTA, based on a combination of authenticity and dominant DLS, five personality types have been identified. Conclusions. It is shown that personal authenticity is non-linearly related to susceptibility to DLS, making the subject resistant to some difficulties and sensitive to others. Thus, authenticity acts not only as a resource for adaptation, but also as a factor of vulnerability to difficulties.