The Power to Live with Disasters: Adaptive Believing Processes of the Self and World

Abstract

Eight factors have been identified in the personal characteristics that contribute to increased chances of survival in a disaster (“power to live”). To understand the role of the believing process during disasters, I will map these eight factors onto the two-dimensional matrix defined by the four credition functions crossed with three levels of internal schema of the self and world. In the face of adversity, the enclosure function seems to contribute the factors problem solving and emotional regulation by adaptive belief organization at the physical or interpersonal level and social-value level, respectively. For survival in the context of group dynamics, the converter function may facilitate the factors altruism and leadership by intimate association of the social situations with relevant interpersonal behaviors at the physical or interpersonal level and social-value level, respectively. In the face of confrontations with values, the stabilizer function can support the factors stubbornness and self-transcendence by protecting the values or beliefs in the physical level and interpersonal or social-value level, respectively. Finally, in the context of the optimization of the modulator function, the factor active well-being may facilitate the maintenance of the environment on the physical level and and etiquette do so on the interpersonal or social-value level. The mapping was in part validated from etiological perspectives. This map supports the comprehensiveness of the eight-factor model of the power to live and provides hypotheses of its neurocognitive underpinning. This, in turn, suggests the utility of the combined framework of the credition and the levels of internal schema.