Background. Addressing global environmental challenges requires an understanding the factors that influence pro-environmental behaviour. 

Objective. This review summarises Chilean research that explores how environmental knowledge, nature connection, and prosociality influence such behaviour. The review summarises Chilean studies on these driving factors and discuss their implications for environmental education strategies. 

Design. A focussed review was conducted of Chilean studies that employed the General Ecological Behavior (GEB) scale. This self-reported measure captures a wide range of pro-environmental actions (e.g., recycling, conservation efforts) and environmentally harmful behaviours. The review acknowledges the existence of broader Latin American research on this topic.  

Results. The review highlights the importance of specific types of environmental knowledge for pro-environmental behaviour. Knowledge about human impact on ecosystems (human-impact system knowledge) and knowledge of actionable solutions (action knowledge) emerged as key determinants. Interestingly, a knowledge deficit regarding personal effectiveness in environmental protection (effectiveness knowledge) was evident in the Chilean population. In addition, the review emphasises the role of prosocial tendencies, mediated by nature connection, in driving pro-environmental behaviour.  

Conclusion. Developing effective environmental education programmes in Chile should prioritise fostering diverse environmental knowledge and strengthening connections with nature. Both environmental knowledge and nature connection can empower individuals and leverage prosocial motivations for positive environmental action. A key limitation of the Chilean studies reviewed are their reliance on cross-sectional data. This type of data allows for the identification of associations but cannot definitively establish causation. To strengthen the causal inferences, future research should employ interventional study designs.

Background. Motherhood in Chile is complex and challenging -marked as it is by a growing number of women raising children on their own, against a backdrop of multiple social, cultural and economic factors- as well as a significant decline in birth rates. Perezhivanie is a Russian word, originating in Russian scholarship.  This concept integrates the personal, social, and environmental dimensions of individual experience.  This study adopts a cultural-historical approach grounded in Vygotskian theory, proposing perezhivanie as the unit of analysis.

Objective. To study the perezhivanie of Chilean women in relation to the psychological, social, and cultural factors underlying the complexities of motherhood.

Design. This study uses a qualitative epistemology and adopts a constructive-interpretative paradigm proposed by González-Rey. As a research strategy, it uses a case study design and applies a purposive sampling method which allows to recruit 10 Chilean mothers to whom the episodic interview technique proposed by Flick is applied. Data analysis was conducted following González-Rey’s method to interpreting subjective productions.

Results. The main findings indicate that participants construct a perezhivanie marked by guilt and frustration within a social framework characterised by family difficulties, of monoparenting, and lack of economic resources, all associated with cultural patterns that reinforce the unequal distribution of parenting responsibilities and gender stereotypes in society.

Conclusion. The study concludes on the importance of studying and providing comprehensive responses to the complex reality of motherhood in Chile.

Background. Encounters with threats can lead to a motivation to justify the existing social system, which can be expressed through endorsement of system-justifying beliefs.

Objective. The aim of the study was to examine how different types of threats contribute to endorsement of system-justifying beliefs in the economic domain.

Design. We tested a theoretical model (N = 577) with internal threats (fear of death), economic threats (threats of poverty and socio-economic inequality), and subjective threat perception (belief in a dangerous and competitive world) as predictors; system-justifying beliefs (economic system justification, opposition to equality, dominance, and antiegalitarianism) served as dependent variables, and sociodemographic characteristics were included as control variables.

Results. Structural equation modeling showed adequate fit in the Russian context. Belief in a competitive world positively predicted dominance, antiegalitarianism, and opposition to equality, while belief in a dangerous world negatively predicted economic system justification. Fear of death positively predicted opposition to equality, whereas perceived economic threats (poverty and inequality) negatively predicted antiegalitarianism, and opposition to equality.

Conclusion. Dangerous and competitive worldviews, internal and economic threats contribute to the support of system-justifying beliefs in the economic domain.

Background. Extreme events, including warfare, lead to transformations in moral norms and the heightened intensity of moral disengagement mechanisms, which may be prolonged or become irreversible. Research to identify the factors that reduce the frequency of moral disengagement mechanisms among adolescents can lead to understanding how to prevent and decrease the intensity of destructive behavior.

Objective. To identify the emotional states and fundamental belief systems that correlate with the intensity of moral disengagement in adolescents from combat zones, compared to peers in a control group.

Design. The study employed the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales (DASS-21) to assess the severity of negative emotional states; the revised World Assumption Scale (Russian adaptation) to measure the intensity of five fundamental beliefs; and the Propensity to Morally Disengage Scale (Russian adaptation) to evaluate the extent of moral disengagement. The sample consisted of 196 adolescents aged 13 to 16. 98 participants were residents of a combat zone (Belgorod Region) and 98 participants from various regions of the Russian Federation with no exposure to combat danger.

Results.  The study revealed a significant deterioration across all assessed indicators of emotional state, as well as a reduction in fundamental beliefs about the benevolence of the world, the trustworthiness of others, and self-worth among adolescents in the primary group compared to the control group. Adolescents from the Belgorod Region exhibited significantly higher levels of 5 (from 8) moral disengagement mechanisms. Predictors of the intensity of moral disengagement were identified.

Conclusion.  Living in a combat zone contributes to the intensification of negative emotional states, the breakdown of fundamental belief systems, and a prevalence of moral disengagement mechanisms in adolescents. Depression levels (directly) and beliefs in the benevolence and controllability of the world (inversely) predicted moral disengagement.

Background. e actual motive may be experimentally diagnosed through study of the system of perceived motivations. However, since perceived motivations are always expressed in terms that are not unambiguous (for a number of reasons, including age, gender, context, etc.), the experimental reconstruction of the actual motive is always as- sociated with an ambiguity in interpretation of the respondents’ perceived motivations. We need to use a method of diagnosing motivations that would allow us to identify, for the groups of students studied, not only the contribution of a particular perceived moti- vation, but also the substantive features of the designated motives, through the pattern of correlations of these perceived motivations.

Objective. This article presents the results of research on the age and gender specifics of learning motivations of high school students.

Design. Experimental identication of their motivational proles was made by means of factor analysis, separately for each of four groups of pupils (in Moscow schools with a traditional learning paradigm): two junior groups (8th-9th grades, 14-15 years old) of boys (62) and girls (59); and two senior groups (10th-11th grades, 16-17 years old) of boys (63) and girls (54).

Results. As a result, a motivational structure specic for the corresponding gender and age was identied and described.

Conclusion. We showed that as a child grows up, the orientation in learning becomes more and more generalized, with a stronger expression for boys than for girls. In the junior group, girls have a motivation that is oriented to the future, whereas boys do not; such motivations in boys are seen only in the senior group and are inextricably linked to the parents’ approval. Both for boys and girls, the content of their motivation for cognitive achievement in the older age group is based on two motives, which are independent at the younger age: curiosity and prestige. However, with girls, apart from a desire to learn new things, the aspiration to differ notably from others and to demonstrate their achievements to others is significantly greater than with boys

This article describes research on visual semantics, different forms of metaphor used in rhetoric and philology (tropes: metonymy, hyperbole, litotes, oxymoron, and others), and images, which are metaphorical also. The research was carried out using paintings. The authors state that the function of metaphor is to transform the sense of the image from a psychological point of view.

Background: Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), also known as domestic violence, spousal abuse, and relationship violence, among other names, is becoming a widely recognized social and public health problem. Theory and practice suggest it is vital that the issue be addressed comprehensively in both the healthcare and socio-legal contexts. The theoretical perspectives underlying inquiries into the nature and etiology of the IPV phenomenon are of fundamental importance in promoting our understanding of how to prevent, reduce, or eliminate the problem. In order to integrate various aspects of knowledge about the phenomenon, it is important to consider and evaluate the approaches to IPV currently prevalent in the field. 

Objectives: The present article aims to provide a critical overview of the existing theories, methodological frameworks, typologies, and definitions of Intimate Partner Violence. 

Design: The present paper reviews the international literature on the conceptual frameworks and definitions of IPV. First, it draws on the conceptual frameworks of violence; it then reviews relevant theories and definitions of IPV considered from sociocultural, individual, and integrative perspectives. The disparities, limitations, and explanatory powers of these theories, as well as their clinical and research applications, are discussed in an attempt to bring more clarity into the current state of understanding in the field. 

Results and Conclusions: Our review suggests that there is no universally accepted definition of IPV, nor a conceptual framework that would encompass the complexity of the phenomenon. Some of the theoretical frameworks for studying IPV appear to provide potential advantages over others, but their empirical viability has yet to be determined. We argue that, due to the complex multifaceted nature of IPV, a narrow theoretical stance might exclude a variety of exploratory factors and limit understanding of the phenomenon. 

An important direction of human cognitive development is the development of abilities at activities in complex dynamical environments containing multiple interacting structures (Dorner, Frensch & Funke, Spector, Voss). Cognition of the interacting structures by experimentation is the main function of causal-experimental thought (Demetriou). Usually preoperational children are not considered to have well-expressed abilities for causal-experimental thought. In the paper I describe heuristic rules for design of didactic multivariable objects stimulating preschoolers’ combinatorial experimentation and causal-experimental thought, the objects designed, and several studies of the children’s cognitive activity (exploratory learning) aimed at the objects and revealing their abilities to combinatorial experimentation. Participants: 623 children of 3-7 years old. It has been shown that the children successfully explore the objects containing hidden mechanical, logical and mathematical relationships by using strategies of combinatorial experimentation of various levels of complexity.

Measuring resilience to stress (or stress resistance) validly and reliably is an important theoretical and practical problem. Process-oriented stress theories assume that primary and secondary appraisals play an important role in determining the level of resilience. In the present study, a model of resilience based on the analysis of the interplay between primary and secondary appraisal processes is developed. Resilience is high if benign primary appraisals of taxing situations are accompanied by secondary appraisals of coping resources as being sufficient for controlling stressors. In an implementation of the model, the quality of primary appraisals is assessed through the assessment of anxiety, anger and depression, which characterize the most typical cognitive-emotional reactions to demanding situations. The assessment of secondary appraisals is restricted to the analysis of psychophysiological (functional) resources, which are involved in all forms of coping activities. The implementation of the model gives rise to a measure of resilience, which is shown to successfully predict the outcome of the stress process in a sample of Russian police officers.

When acculturation strategies of migrants and acculturation expectations of a host society do not coincide, psychological outcomes for members of the groups in contact can differ significantly. Berry (2013) proposed that intercultural relations can be understood on the basis of three hypotheses: the multiculturalism hypothesis, the integration hypothesis, and the contact hypothesis. Our goal was to test these three hypotheses in Russian majority and Asian minority groups. Migrants from Central Asia (N = 168; 88 ethnic Uzbeks and 80 ethnic Tajiks) and ethnic Russians (N = 158) were surveyed using a self-report questionnaire that included measures developed by the Mutual Intercultural Relations in Plural Societies project. Data processing was carried out using Structural Equation Modeling with the Russians and the migrants separately. We found significant and positive relationships between perceived security and multicultural ideology in both groups. We found a positive relationship between intercultural contacts and the integration strategy among the migrants from Central Asia. Intercultural contacts in the group of Russians was positively related to the expectation of integration and negatively related to the expectation of assimilation. The integration strategy of the migrants was positively related to their self-esteem, while the assimilation strategy was positively related to their sociocultural adaptation and life satisfaction. Among the Russians, the integration expectation promoted their better life satisfaction and self-esteem. The multiculturalism hypothesis was partially supported with both the migrants from Central Asia and the Russians: perceived security promoted an acceptance of multicultural ideology but didn’t promote ethnic tolerance. The contact hypothesis was partially supported in both groups: interethnic contacts were positively linked to the integration strategy of the migrants and the integration expectations of the Russians. The integration hypothesis was fully supported in the sample of Russians and partially supported in the sample of migrants. The migrants’ adoption of the assimilation strategy promoted their life satisfaction and sociocultural adaptation.

The article contains a brief review of the concept «context» which is gaining its place among the key concepts in modern theoretical and empirical psychology. A comprehensive analysis of scientific literature leads the authors to distinguish two complementary conceptions of context – structural (which regards a fragment of a text as a semantic system) and functional (which treats it as a mental sensegenerating mechanism). The authors suggest an understanding of mentality as a recursive-contextual phenomenon, where each fragment of its subject matter exists in the context of other fragments – parallel, preceding or ensuing. Such understanding may form a basis for the contextual approach in psychology.

Multiculturalism is an increasingly common characteristic of contemporary societies. In culturally diverse social contexts, virtually every person experiences intercultural contact on a daily basis. It is essential to understand that there must be both cultural diversity and equity in social participation for true multiculturalism to exist in these settings. Beyond its core definition, it is clear that multiculturalism is a complex concept encompassing many dimensions and meanings. First, the term is understood to describe a demographic fact, indicating the existence of cultural diversity in a society. Second, multiculturalism refers to the policies and programs that are in place to manage intercultural relations and acculturation. Third, multiculturalism refers to psychological phenomena, including individual attitudes and ideologies that accept or reject the demographic, civic and policy features of multiculturalism. This chapter considers Canadian multiculturalism policy, examining how the multiple meanings of multiculturalism vary around the world. Within this framework, I highlight the psychological processes and outcomes of multiculturalism, particularly in connection with acculturation, adaptation and intercultural relations and consider whether these processes and outcomes differ for dominant and non-dominant groups. I suggest some ways in which to enhance the positive outcomes of intercultural contact and the resultant acculturation outcomes. Finally, this chapter sets the stage for the presentation of the other chapters in this volume. It elaborates three hypotheses derived from Canadian multiculturalism policy: the multiculturalism, integration and contact hypotheses.

The paper introduces virtual reality systems as a new methodolology of carrying out both traditional and originally designed experimental studies in psychology and in a broader context - in neuroscience. This methodology, often differing from classical approaches toward planning and performing a study in cognitive, social, educational, organizational and numerous other disciplines within psychology, is placed in the context of genuine Russian and at the same time of world-wide psychological theories, conceptions and traditions. Advantages, currently available results, challenges and perspectives of the virtual paradigm in experimental psychology, psychotherapy and psychological rehabilitation are thoroughly described and analyzed. The ideas of immersive virtuality are also shown to play a profound role at diverse levels of innovative learning and teaching, including special, extracurricular, and college education. Besides, applied virtual reality sys­tems are presented as being of serious importance for the university students' training: it is expected that new generations of professional psychologists will use these systems extensively. The multifaceted theoretical activities and applied work of the staff and students affiliated with the Psychology Department, Lomonosov Moscow State University, aimed at development and usage of immersive virtual reality systems are fully presented in the paper.

One of the central topics in the studies of O. K. Tikhomirov and his collaborators was the link between cognitive and emotional processes. It is important not only how emotions are involved in the process of the productive performance of thinking tasks but also how cognitive processes mediate the involvement of the emotions in the regulation of activity. The efficacy of this regulation is represented through goal achievement and also through the correction of one’s actions in the case of wrongdoing. Reformation of one’s errors is the best way to improve one’s abilities and skills. In moral philosophy the central instance of this reformation is conscience, which ensures positive or negative self-appraisal of one’s own and others’ actions. Unfortunately, in psychology this concept remains unclear. The goal of this article is to clarify it in the context of the contemporary psychology of emotion. Studies of emotions have shown the significance of appraisal in determining particular feelings. The special role of moral emotions, mainly guilt and shame, in the self-correction of one’s actions is emphasized. According to this model, guilt and shame in particular can represent twinges of conscience in the mind because the cognitive dissonance between our (or others’) actions and values shapes the basis of all these phenomena.

This article presents an analysis of Vygotsky’s work on the psychology of art and his use of the image of Hamlet in the psychological analysis of personality. It also describes the capabilities of the dialectic method for assessing psychological problems. Reference to three dialectical oppositions—of the story and the plot, of the main character’s spinelessness and his insanity, and of subject and personality—allows the development of a theoretical analysis of the psychology of personality in its relationship to culture. Culture is defined as the system of normative situations. Keywords: image of Hamlet, dialectic method, culture, normative situation, personality, subject.

The work presents historiographic and theoretical methodological study of establishment of fundamental theses of L.S. Vygotsky’s cultural-historical concept within the field of clinical psychology.

We prove potency in application of contemporary philosophical concepts, which help distinguish between the types of scientific rationality (classical, nonclassical, and postnonclassical), for scientific reflection over the development of psychology and designation of paradigmatic status of cultural-historic concept suggested by L.S. Vygotsky and Vygotsky-Luria syndrome approach at the contemporary stage of science.

Present study of scientific works of L.S. Vygotsky and his followers demonstrated that fundamentals of cultural-historic conception suggested by L.S. Vygotsky and further developed in methodology of Vygotsky-Luria syndrome approach, these fundamentals presented the origins of not only non-classical, but as well post-nonclassical model of scientific rationality. They are characterized by post-nonclassical understanding of the object and method of psychological study and post-nonclassical mode of thinking of the scientists.

As it was showed, in works of L.S. Vygotsky there formulated general methodological requirements to organization of mental studies, which, on the whole, go in tune with the requirements introduced for study of complex self-developing systems. There were produced arguments to prove that the concept of Vygotsky-Luria syndrome approach describes mental syndromes as dynamic structures, which display the features of self-organization, self-determination and adaptive rationality. Hence, they can be regarded as open self-developing systems.

We assume and verify the hypothesis that the syndrome analysis, due to the features of post-nonclassic modeling of scientific rationality it reveals, may be regarded as theoretically productive methodological approach at the modern stage of science.

The article aims to demonstrate advances in methodological means suggested by Vygotsky’s cultural-historical concept in association with a theoretical model of a Person-centered diagnosis and practical use of the construct for clinical psychology and medicine. This, to a greater extent, arises from the fact that the cultural-historical concept (due to its humanistic nature and epistemological content) is closely related to the person-centered integrative approach. But for all that the concept corresponds to the ideals of postnonclassical model of scientific rationality with a number of ‘key’ features. Above all it manifests its “methodological maturity” to cope with open self-developing systems, which is most essential at the modern stage of scientific knowledge.

The work gives consideration to ‘defining pillars’ of Person-centered approach in modern medicine, to humanistic traditions of the Russian clinical school, and high prospects in diagnostics of such mental constructs as “subjective pattern of disease” and “social situation of personal development in disease” - within the context of person-centered integrative diagnosis.

This article discusses the need for implementation a cross-cultural study of subjective pattern of disease and its correlation with a particular “social situation of personality development under disease conditions”. It aims at development and substantiation of the model of person-centered integrative approach, enhancement of its diagnostic scope and, consequently, improvement of the model of person-centered care in modern psychiatry and medicine.

Background. Ideas about relationships between “I”, egocentric spatial orientation and the sense of bodily “Self ” date back to work by classics of philosophy and psychology. Cognitive neuroscience has provided knowledge about brain areas involved in self-ref­erential processing, such as the rostral prefrontal, temporal and parietal cortices, often active as part of the default mode network (DMN).

Objective and Method. Little is known about the contribution of inferior parietal areas to self-referential processing. Therefore, we collected observations of everyday be­havior, social communication and problem solving in patients with brain lesions local­ized either in the left inferior parietal cortex (LIPC group, n = 45) or the right inferior parietal cortex (RIPC group, n = 58).

Results. A key characteristic of the LIPC group was an overestimation of task com­plexity. This led to a prolonged phase of redundant and disruptive contemplations pre­ceding task solution. In the RIPC group, we observed disorders in reflective control and voluntary regulation of behavior. Abilities for experiencing emotions, understanding mental states, and social communication were to a great extent lost. Results are inter­preted within a multilevel framework of cognitive-affective organization (velichkovsky, 2002). In particular, we highlight the role of right-hemisphere mechanisms in self-refer­ential cognition, emotional and corporeal awareness. This is consistent with recent data on a profound asymmetry in connectivity of left and right hippocampi within the DMN (Ushakov et al., 2016)

Conclusion. It seems that the center of egocentric spatial representation plays a spe­cial role in accessing self-related data. Normally, the right hippocampus provides a holis­tic representation of surrounding and, thus, an easy-to-find gateway into much of what we used to call “subjective experience”. This heuristics becomes misleading in the case of right-sided brain lesions.