Volume #2, 2009

Yury P. Zinchenko – President of the RPS, Doctor of Psychological Science, Professor,
Dean of the Faculty of Psychology, Lomonosov Moscow State University
(international activity, executive duties, growth policy).
E-mail: zinchenko@psy.msu.ru.
...

The paper examines the methodological principles of the psychological study of ecological consciousness as one of the urgent interdisciplinary problems of XX–XXI century, caused by the aggravation of global ecological problems and the need for the realization of the “sustainable development”ideas. Ecological consciousness is considered as multilayered, dynamic, reflexive element of human consciousness, incorporating multivariate, holistic aspects of interaction of the human being as the H.S. and the Humanity representative with the environment and the Planet. The possibility of the more active introduction of Russian psychology in the process is argued for in connection with the existing conceptual approaches, which compose the methodological basis for ecological consciousness research. Among these approaches are considered: the principles of holistic study of the human being by B. Ananyev, the methodology of system psychological description by V. Gansen and G. Sukhodolsky, the idea of reflexivity of consciousness by S. Rubinstein, the humanitarian- ecological imperative of the development of consciousness by V. Zinchenko, the theory of relations by V. Myasishev, consideration of ecological consciousness as relation to nature by S. Deryabo and V. Yasvin, theories of consciousness by V. Petrenko, V. Allakhverdov and other Russian psychologists. The value component of ecological consciousness is distinguished as the most significant. The possibility of applying the Values’ theory of the by S. Schwartz for studying the ecological values is discussed along with the prognostic potential of the universalism value.

Article is devoted to the issues of symbolic mediation and diagnostic of time perception in sport. Distinction between iconic and symbolic mediation is discussed. Evidences of effective implementation of symbolic mediation in sport are examined. Means of optimization of sportsmen and sportswomen training by the instrumentality of symbol are considered. The results of time perception diagnostic of Russian synchronized swimmers are described. It was shown that sportswomen are greatly varied in accuracy and stability of reproduction of long (2–5 sec) and estimation of short (less than 250 ms) time intervals, which were filled with different contents – ticks of metronome, persistent sound, pressuring the button and etc. The improvement of individual characteristics of time perception is an important psychological resource of sports achievements increase.

The aim of this study was to reveal correlation between motivation and creative professional thinking. Four hundred and seventy-one Russians of different trades participated in the study. It was supposed that motivational structure and level of creative professional thinking were interrelated. The connection between motivational components and professional thinking was revealed. Tendencies of transition form situational level of thinking to oversituational one were determined. It was found out that motivational structure of workers with situational thinking was much more consistent than that of workers with oversituational thinking.

A questionnaire measuring web plagiarism (or academic cheating), worked out by Underwood and Szabo (2003) has been adapted and applied to the population of undergraduate science students in Russia. The students at four technical universities are questioned (N=292). The study shows the students perform webplagiarizing, i.e. take materials from the Internet and hand these materials in as their own assignments. Russian students are reportedly competent in the use of the Internet; they report to have rather few moral barriers towards plagiarizing; they believe most of their mates do the same; they are not sure their tutors are able and willing to recognize cheating; finally, they are competent enough in English and are hypothetically able to plagiarize in two languages.

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.

The concept of human functional states (HFS) is considered in the framework of activity regulation approach developed in Russian applied psychology. Aimed at the analysis of changes in regulatory mechanisms of on-going activity, structural methods for multilevel assessment of workers’ states are discussed. Three different strategies of data integration are proposed regarding the types of essential practical problems. Their usability is exemplified with the help of two empirical studies concerned with reliability of fire-fighters’ work in the Chernobyl Zone and effects of interruptions in computerized office environment. A general framework for applied HFS research is proposed in order to develop new ecologically valid psychodiagnostic procedures that can help to create efficient stress-management programs for enhancing human reliability and performance in complex job environment.

This article discusses an application of psychosemantic methods for the analysis of viewer understanding. As an example, the movie “Sibirskiy Tsiryulnik” (“The Barber of Siberia”, directed by a famous politician N. M ikhalkov) is taken, where Russian and American mentalities are juxtaposed. Basing on the works by M. Bakhtin and G. Kelly the concept of “art construct” is introduced. For the construction of semantic spaces of film perception the method of attribution of motives to film characters’ deeds was elaborated and used with the G. Kelly’s triadic method, followed by factor analysis.

This article reveals the motives of the terrorist activity. It analyzes psychological mechanisms of basic human needs that are implemented at different stages of involvement in terrorist organizations. The authors also discuss the causes of psychological attractiveness / desirability of terrorism in the context of influence of modern technologies on the dynamics of norm and pathology standards.

Recently mass media play crucial role in social counterterrorism activity. The article is devoted to analysis of possibilities of mass media in prevention of the development of terrorism. Socio-psychological factors of development of terrorism, including concept of “contributing events” as well as hypothesis “frustration-aggression” are studied. The psychological component of terrorism in three major attitudes is considered in the article: psychology of terrorism, psychology of counteraction to terrorism, and using mass media for prevention the development of terrorism. Specific features and the external factors promoting involving into terrorism are analysed. Role of mass media in covering the information about terrorism events is analysed from point of view related to prevention of development of terrorism. Some key recommendations on counterterrorism activity using mass media means are formulated.

The psychology of corporeality is a new and intensively elaborated branch of science. The theoretical foundations of its subject differ significantly from those of medical psychosomatics. In a given article some new concepts of this approaching discipline are introduced and the role of symbolic mediation in genesis of different psychosomatic diseases is discussed.

Basing on Vygotsky’s cultural-historical methodology, Bakhtin’s conception of inner dialogue, and some ideas of object relations theory, the authors propose an integrative approach to self-awareness in psychotherapy. Serious attention is paid to the predictors of borderline personality disorders and comorbid illnesses: pathogenic family conditions of personality development and, in consequence of them, splitting and structural distortions of self-awareness. The descriptive-analytic, semiotic and dialogical procedures of analysis of verbal communications between patient and psychotherapist were elaborated and approbated.

The theoretical model of the establishment of the syndrome of early infantile autism is elaborated including all the stages of this establishment. According to Vygotsky and his ideas about the hierarchical organization of pathological syndromes, there is the definition of the difference between the structure and the function of the primary (biological) and secondary (sociological) phenomena of the syndrome of early infantile autism.

The article shows the role of the attachment system (child-mother interactions) in development of a wide spectrum of individual personality characteristics. Emotional attachment of the child to mother is considered as a complicated system of internal regulation and a basis of typology of mental development. Results of a series of empirical studies show the connection between the type of attachment, formed at the early stages of child development, and characteristics of his/her autonomy, consciousness (self-concept and self-esteem) and empathy in preschool and middle childhood.

This study, which is a part of a Moscow longitudinal twin project, aims to explore genetic and environmental contributions to inter-individual variability of temperamental traits in adolescence on the basis of a Russian sample. 85 monozygotic (MZ) and 64 same-sex dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs aged 12 – 14 years completed the children version of Rusalov Structure of Temperament Questionnaire (C-STQ). The results of model-fitting analyses indicate considerable hereditary determination of individual differences in 3 out of the 8 C-STQ dimensions - social tempo, objectrelated emotional sensitivity, and social emotional sensitivity. Non-shared environmental effects explained the rest of the total variance in these dimensions. Individual differences in the other STQ dimensions were due to environmental factors.

An advanced strategic behavior, which we term, “Trojan horse” teaching (THT), is described. In this type of counteractive behavior, a “teacher”, ostensibly helping his or her rival to learn something, really teaches the rival useless or disadvantageous things. This interaction is an object of interdisciplinary research related to the theory of human capital, the theory of agency, knowledge management, the theory of conflict, and to social and educational psychology. Examples of THT in real life, and results of experiential studies, including the administration of a survey concerning people’s beliefs about teaching “with evil intent”, and a set of experiments with participation of adults and children, have been described. Possible directions of artificial intelligence systems development related to THT are described. General relations between: (a) counteraction to learning, and (b) development in spite of the counteraction are discussed.

The recent revolutionary changes in the cognitive psychology of development, touching upon the basic conceptions of psychology, are generalized in this article. The problem of theoretical changes connected with systemic evolutionary approach, dynamic nonlinear system theory, and connectionism, is discussed. The author analyses four basic theses of revolutionary changes: from sensory-motor infant to representative one; from the leading role of activity to the unity of perception and action; about the continuity of the subject formation, instead of axiom of subjectivity of the adult, mature person; about the continuance of genetic and environmental instead of social primacy in the mental development of a person. There are key arguments of new conceptions, obtained by the author and other researchers.

The study examined the relationship between self-, peer- and test-estimated intelligence, academic self-concept and academic achievement. Subjective evaluations of intelligence and academic self-concept had incremental predictive value over conventional intelligence when predicting achievement accounting for more than 40% of its variance. The obtained pattern of results is presented via SEM-model which accounts for 75% variance in the latent factor of academic achievement. Author suggests the importance of further studying complex sets of achievement predictors from ability, personality and mediating domains.

Some special features of feedback functioning in live movement control are discussed. Taking into account the multicoupling nerve structure of movement apparatus we inevitable are faced with a question about principles based in clousing of chanals’ central endings ensemble, which afferentiates movement, on effector centres ensemble which controls muscle periphery. When we speak about movement skill development such afferent-efferent connections (reciphering, as N.A.Bernstein named them) which would be adequate to perform given motor task do not exist in advance and they must to be developed during performing that task. The main role here play human perception of the information resulted from movement performance on the level of motor-sensory transition, when multidimensional vector of muscle dynamics transforms into dynamics of outer object environment. On the basis of selection of perseptual data new feedback structure is created which ensures steady functioning of the effectory patterns finded durng practice.

The article demonstrates the inadequacy in the traditional approach of psychology to the description of products of mental representation of perception. The principles of objective representation of subjective experience (principles of “mental map” construction) contain a whole range of contradictions. We propose a consistent mathematical description of the “mental map” based on psychosemiotic principles. Instead of the classical space of characteristics/properties we introduce semantic space that opens the way to a truly adequate representation of psychic reality. The article discusses metrics of the mental map, as well as substantiates the possibility of applying conservation laws to psychology. It is shown that it is possible to reach an adequate representation of research object in the humanities, equivalent to that of natural sciences in terms of accuracy. To verify a new approach, we make use of our theoretical deductions in the explanation of experimental data widely known in psychophysics and inconsistent with Stevens law.