Mikhail V. Godunov

Background. Personality is not simply an end product, but rather, it is a process. Therefore, empirical work on personal meaning-building should examine the genesis of meaning and provide a content-based description of personality in terms of personality traits. Such a description suggests a systemic view of personality, where the meaning-based approach is supplemented with the definition of personality traits. The value and meaning potential of personality encompasses three dimensions: worldview, behavior, and cognition. 

Objective. The aim of this study is to identify the properties of personality, reflecting the features of polar strategies of meaning formation in acmeological terms by age, gender, and professional characteristics. 

Design. The present study considers the influence of various acmeological factors on meaning-building and concentrates on its two polar strategies: adaptive and developing strategies. We developed nine bipolar scales of personal traits with sublevels by applying the semantic differential technique. In total, there were 145 participants in the study. Participants were grouped according to three criteria: age, gender, and profession. 

Results. The obtained indices of meaning-building strategies did not coincide in all the differentiated groups, which clearly speaks in favor of acmeological dynamics of the respondents’ personal profiles. We stratified the sample according to the mean score of the basic marker of “life meaningfulness,” which enabled us to establish differences in characteristics of actual polar strategies of meaning-building. e respondents who did not fall into either of the two groups are “between the poles.” They often have an under- developed meaning-building strategy as a result of poorly formed ways of organization and actualization of personal meanings or the presence of a transitional form of situational conceptual initiations. 

Conclusion. The personal profiles that were identified represent multifactor models of the personal value and meaning dimensions, which can predict actual meaning-building strategies using semantic differential scales and indicators (“life meaningfulness” from the Purpose-in-Life test) and help researchers to reduce the number of techniques employed in their studies.