Background. Cultural congruence serves as a measure of the conformity of an adolescent’s behavior to age-specific rules inherent in a particular cultural context. A cultural context is a system of situations with pre-set behavior-regulating rules.

Objective. Rule-based behavior management is known to be an issue in adolescence. Teenagers often defy common rules, thus pitting themselves against adults. In our study, we recruited adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15 years (N=699) who completed a questionnaire on the rules that they have to comply with in their day-to-day lives.

Design. Based on 2,498 responses, we identified 70 rules that were mentioned in 98.15% of the responses. We then designed a cultural congruence diagnostics test to measure the extent to which an adolescent’s behavior fits invariable age-specific rules in the Russian cultural context. The rules are combined into four factors: management, safety, studies, and social interaction.

Results. These factors appear to be in line with existing theories on the adolescents’ social context. According to cultural and historical psychology, peers are considered as the most important subjects that adolescents interact with within their social context; this is confirmed by relevant items in the questionnaire. Studies, the factor that dominates in the pre-adolescent age, are still relevant, which is why the test features such factors as studies and management. Safety emerges as an important factor in the cultural congruence test for preschool children and primary school students. This factor helps regulate behavior in adolescence since safety rules are part of the typical rules in the adolescent cultural context.

Conclusion. The test design features the following psychometric properties: internal consistency of the scale (Cronbach’s alpha), discriminatory power (Ferguson’s coefficient), validity, and reliability.

Background. The Psychological Risk Factors of Deviant Behavior in Adolescents In- ventory was developed based on “empirical keying” comparisons of answers to a pull of self-regulation-related items in clinical (drug addicts) and control groups. 

Objective. To reveal differences between adolescents with delinquent behavior from drug addictions and controls using the Psychological Risk Factors of Deviant Behavior in Adolescents Inventory and to study their relationships to anxiety, depression, and personal resources. 

Design. 760 adolescents aged 13–17 from three schools of the Murmansk Region of Russia, 288 from eight Russian special education institutions for adolescents with delinquent behavior (prevalent diagnosis was F91), and 108 adolescents having drug addiction filled out the Psychological Risk Factors of Deviant Behavior in Adolescents Inventory. Adolescents from the control and delinquent behavior groups also filled out the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Additionally 280 pupils in the 10th- 11th grades and 99 adolescents with delinquent behavior in the 10th grade and up filled out the Hardiness Test, Life Orientation Test, and Self-Efficacy Scale. 

Results. Data reproduced results indicating higher dissatisfaction with relation- ships with parents, “black-and-white” thinking, a technology addiction tendency and antisocial tendencies, a low level of self-regulation and a high level of risky behavior and sensation seeking in adolescents with drug addictions that could be explained not only by psychological differences but also by different social situations or strategies in responding to items. Adolescents with delinquent behavior also reported higher anti-social tendencies, novelty seeking, as well as lower self-regulation. In both the clinical and control groups, there were reasonable correlations between better self-regulation (lower technological addiction and antisocial tendencies, better self-regulation and emotion control) and personal resources of self-regulation. 

Conclusion. Antisocial tendencies, novelty seeking, and lower self-regulation could be psychological indicators of self-regulatory deficiencies in adolescents with a risk of involvement in delinquent behavior, but further studies are needed to distinguish whether these differences are explained by self-regulation, social situation or strategy of responding to items in adolescents with deviant behavior compared to controls. 

Background. The study of emotional creativity has not received very much attention in Arab studies. Emotional creativity is a clear concept that appears in the everyday practice of individuals. 

Objective. The present study aimed to examine the effect of a training program on emotional creativity among undergraduate students.

Design. The study comprised 67 undergraduate students at the Hashemite University; the participants were divided between a control group (N=35), and an experimental group (N=32), and data was collectedusing the Emotional Creativity Inventory(ECI).

Results. The results showed that the training program was effective in improving participants' emotional creativity, and a statistically significant difference was found between the control and experimental groups, showing the effectiveness of the training program in favor of the experimental group. The researcher recommends that students begin to be trained in emotional creativity skills from an early age.

Conclusion. The results of data analysis in the current study document the impact of the training program in improving the level of emotional creativity among members of the experimental group. This may be due to the strategies and techniques used in the training program, which contributed to raising the level of emotional creativity.

Background. The problem of students’ adaptation to a new educational level (normative educational crises, according to Slobodchikov, 2008) is considered. Unlike the literature (Barber & Olsen, 2004; Akçinar, 2013; Symanyuk & Pecherkina, 2016; Nisskaya, 2018), we explored this problem from the standpoint of human agency and studied all categories of students to determine the general patterns of overcoming normative educational crises.

Objective. The study aimed to explore the general criteria of agency — capacity to use psychological resources to solve problems and achieve goals — while overcoming normative educational crises (crises of adaptation to new learning conditions).

Design. The participants were 383 students aged 7–18 years (81 first graders, 84 fifth graders, 110 tenth graders, and 108 freshmen). Students’ agency and psychological resources were surveyed at the beginning of the first academic year at the new educational level. Adaptation criteria (informational, behavioral, and affective) were estimated at the end of the academic year. By using the k-means method of cluster analysis, each category of students was divided into clusters with similar agency indicators. We also compared agency indicators, abilities, and personal traits in these clusters by using U-tests and exploring correlation links between the psychological resources and adaptation criteria indicators in each cluster by Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient.

Results and Conclusion. In each age category of students, we observed many significant correlation links between the psychological resources and adaptation criteria indicators only in the cluster of students with a high agency level. We also found only isolated correlation links (or absence of links) between the psychological resources and adaptation criteria indicators in the clusters of students with a low agency level. This finding confirms our hypothesis that only students with a high level of agency use their psychological resources to successfully overcome normative educational crises. Students with a low agency level do not use their resources in full during normative educational crises: These students, despite their capacities, have a negative emotional state and problems in learning and behavior. This finding is also true for each age category of students. Thus, without human agency qualities, the intellectual and personal resources of students can remain unused during the period of adaptation and further training, as the results of the study demonstrated.

Background. In this article, we present the results of a study on the fathering characteristics of Russian men, in early and middle adulthood, brought up with and without a father. There is a theory that fathering practices are determined both by early childhood experiences, as well as by marital relationships in adulthood, because of the links between co-parenting and fathering. Thus, we hypothesize that the fathering characteristics of men in early and middle adulthood, brought up with and without a father, will be different.

Objective. We studied the characteristics of fathering and marital satisfaction in middle adulthood among Russian men brought up without a father, who suffered from paternal deprivation in childhood.

Design. Ninety married men (48 fathers who experienced paternal deprivation in childhood and 42 men brought up in two-parent families) were assessed on a number of measures.

Results. The statistical analysis of the data, including descriptive statistics, t-test and correlation analysis, let us distinguish between the two groups of fathers. Significant t-test differences between the two groups were found in caregiving identity, breadwinning identity, attitudes towards parenting, and marital satisfaction. Also, men brought up in paternally deprived homes, unlike the men from two-parent families, were more likely to indicate difficulties with father-child relationships and gender role conflict in parenting, and give greater relevance to their female partners’ attitudes and expectations towards their fathering.

Conclusion. The lack of a father’s influence on men in childhood strengthens the influence of marital relationships on fathering, in maturity.

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.

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 articles concerns the relatively and new and specifically developed in Russia methodology of research of social consciousness. The purpose and in the same time the method of the research using this methodology is reconstruction the system of categories (superordinate personal constructs in the terminology of G. Kelly) through which people perceive world and events around him (her). Especially it is very powerful method when dealing with political and socio-cultural issues, because allows to explicate implicit stereotypes which typically are very deep and difficult for diagnostic. Several examples from different topics of political psychology will be presented.

This article looks at the content strategies of the Russian media and discusses whether they conform to humanitarian values. The content strategies that prevailed in different eras and the social and psychological effects that they engendered are compared. Special attention is paid to conflicts of values and other negative consequences of the communicative incompetence of the media in Russia; this lack of competence poses a threat to the information security of society.

This chapter explains the strategy for the sociocultural reform of education as a socialization institution that plays a key role in the focused development of value systems, standards, paradigms, and behavioral patterns in the population of Russia. The author reveals the role education plays in modeling such phenomena of social development as the social consolidation of society, the civil identity of representatives of various social groups and national cultures, the encouragement of social confidence, the successful socialization of oncoming generations, and the social stratification of the population of Russia. This chapter also considers the benefits of the sociocultural reform of education as a growth driver for the competitive strength of the individual, the society, and the state and for the further design of long-term programs for the social and economic development of Russia, including the federal education-development program.

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.

Play and playfulness are basic features in early childhood education. The elements of play are pleasure, a sense of freedom, and the co-construction of shared meaning through the use of rules or rhythms. Play and learning are closely related in early childhood. But when the focus on the educational benefits of play becomes too strong, the most essential feature of play is lost: children’s pleasure. Young children in group settings often have to adapt to the teachers’ demands related to security, hygiene, and social norms and values. But the playfulness of the teachers helps to overcome differences in power in the caregiver-child relationship and prevents young children from becoming overburdened with strict rules and group discipline. Play and playfulness are a resource of shared pleasure and creativity in learning processes.