Adaptation to emergency situation: emotions and subjective well-being

Analysis of scientific publications showed that the initial phase of adaptation to emergency situation was the destabilization of the system "needs and the ways to satisfy them". The system is reflected in emotional reactions and subjective well-being. This paper focuses on the subjective well-being and emotional reactions of people who experienced flood in the Far East of Russia in 2013. There were 223 participants in the study, aged between 17 and 56 years old. The data were collected in four different conditions: the first group of participants evaluated the level of their own well-being and emotional reactions during last week; the second group gave a retrospective evaluation of the reactions in the emergency situation. The third and the forth groups evaluated their reactions to the information about the potential flood risk in the nearest future. The third group was offered brief ambiguous information about the potential flood risk in the nearest future. The fourth group was provided with detailed information about the potential flood risk. The differences between the groups were evaluated through the use of Mann-Whitney U test. Spearman's rank correlation analysis was used to find the relation between subjective well-being and emotional reactions. The study showed that the level of retrospective evaluation of subjective well-being during an emergency situation was significantly higher than the level of well-being of people who evaluated it within last week. The potential flood risk in the nearest future was not considered by people as a factor that significantly affected their well-being. The results were interpreted by Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis Theory. Results of correlation analysis showed a large number of correlations between subjective well-being and emotional reactions in everyday life. The result indicated that subjective well-being demonstrated positive associations with joy, interest, curiosity, and sense of security. Subjective well-being in everyday life is negatively associated with fear, frustration, disappointment, panic, fear, grief, despair, depression, disgust, and shame. The number of emotions related to subjective well-being in an extreme situation was reduced. The retrospective evaluations of the well-being in emergency situations was positively associated only with sense of security and negatively associated with state of confusion. The study allows us to conclude that maintaining of high-level subjective well-being restrains uncontrolled growth of negative emotional reactions that can destroy adaptive behavior in difficult situations.

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