Paulina Michalska, Anna Szymanik-Kostrzewska Thinking surprisingly maturely, but not always… The ways to solve life problems depends on its content

Abstrakt

Life problems faced by adults force the use of a way of thinking that goes beyond formal logic – postformal, which considers different points of view and the situational context of the problem. The current research aimed to determine the degree of agreement of adults of different ages with different (in content) solutions to life dilemmas, formulated on the basis of the intersystemic and metasystemic level of thinking (G. Labouvie-Vief). 607 adults aged 18 to 82 years participated in voluntary, anonymous studies, for which the proprietary Questionnaire of Ways of Solving Life Problems was used (M = 41; SD = 17). The respondents, regardless of their age, preferred metasystemic solutions from intersystemic ones, with people in middle adulthood as well as women agreeing with these solutions to a greater extent than those in early adulthood and men. Sociodemographic variables were of marginal importance for postformal thinking, as was the contact with similar problems in one's life. For the preference of a given way of thinking, the content of specific solutions turned out to be particularly important.