Abstract
Introduction. The relevance of life-related issues, including the concept of life experience, stems from the interest of contemporary personality psychology in changing individuals in a changing world. This study aims to present a new perspective on the relationship between the concepts of “situation” and “event” in human lived experience. We propose the concept of a dynamic “situation–event” system developing in life experience, transforming it as a result of the transition from the situation-related level to the event-related one. Experience is considered the primary mechanism for this transition.
Methods. To empirically verify the proposed two-level “situation–event” model, a qualitative study using a “self-disclosure” situation was conducted. Fifty participants (M = 21.6 ± 7 years) from various Russian cities participated in the study. They were asked to write about their experiences in which they confessed something intimate and important about themselves to others, and how this situation influenced them and their lives. Content analysis, frequency analysis, descriptive statistics, testing the differences between two independent samples (the Mann-Whitney U-test), and cluster analysis were used to process the results.
Results. The results showed the differences between experiences of self-disclosure as a “situation” and as an “event”. The experience of self-disclosure at the event-related level is associated with a sphere of individual meanings and values and is characterized by the emotional richness of experiences and the creation of new meanings that lead to changes in life experience.
Discussion. The study enabled us to propose a dynamic “situation–event” system based on human lived experience. Within this model, an event is a kind of “pivotal moment” in the individual’s life, enabling the transformation of lived experience by generating new meanings through the mechanism of experience. The proposed model expands existing understanding of situations and events in the context of the individual’s life experience and considers them to be interrelated concepts where one can be transformed into another under certain conditions.
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