PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERMINANTS OF STRESS RESILIENCE IN MILITARY PERSONNEL COUNTERING INFORMATION-PSYCHOLOGICAL ATTACKS: THE ROLE OF SUGGESTIBILITY, ENVIRONMENTAL DEPENDENCE, AND SPIRITUAL VALUES

In the era of fifth-generation hybrid warfare and pervasive digital connectivity, cyberspace and social media platforms have evolved into primary theaters of cognitive and psychological confrontation. Military personnel are systematically targeted by destructive information-psychological attacks (IPAs), including deepfakes, demoralizing video footage, fabricated statistics, and manipulative narratives designed to erode combat morale and induce acute stress reactions. Grounded in Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman's cognitive-transactional theory of stress, this empirical study investigates the socio-demographic, professional, and individual-psychological determinants of stress resilience among military personnel countering information-psychological threats. A total of 266 questionnaires were administered to active-duty officers, sergeants, contract servicemen, and cadets serving in military communication and information-technology units of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Uzbekistan; following data screening, 250 valid protocols were analyzed. Psychodiagnostic assessment utilized the Author's Scale of Susceptibility to Information-Psychological Attacks (S.M. Tuychieva & F.M. Saydjanov), K. Gottschaldt's Field Dependence/Environmental Dependence Questionnaire, O.P. Eliseev's Suggestibility Assessment Scale, B. Botirov's Spiritual Values Evaluation Methodology, Yu.V. Shcherbatykh's Stress Assessment Inventory, and V.Yu. Rybnikov's 'Prognoz' Neuro-Psychic Stability Scale. Non-parametric statistical processing via Kruskal-Wallis H-test and Spearman's rank-order correlation (SPSS) revealed that primary exposure to destructive content does not differ significantly across military ranks (p > 0.05), whereas cognitive appraisal and stress susceptibility are strongly differentiated by age, rank, and length of service (H = 16.78, p <= 0.05), with young servicemen aged 18–28 exhibiting the highest vulnerability (M = 4.45 vs. M = 3.16 in personnel aged 53+). Furthermore, correlation analysis demonstrated that high suggestibility (r = 0.997, p < 0.01), environmental dependence (r = 0.996, p < 0.01), and uncritical value conformity (r = 0.956–0.997, p < 0.01) act as powerful psychological predictors that synchronously amplify intellectual, emotional, behavioral, and physiological stress manifestations. The findings substantiate the necessity of differential psychoprophylaxis and targeted cognitive-critical training in military education.