Genrikh V. Zalevskii

Background. Personality is not simply an end product, but rather, it is a process. Therefore, empirical work on personal meaning-building should examine the genesis of meaning and provide a content-based description of personality in terms of personality traits. Such a description suggests a systemic view of personality, where the meaning-based approach is supplemented with the definition of personality traits. The value and meaning potential of personality encompasses three dimensions: worldview, behavior, and cognition. 

Objective. The aim of this study is to identify the properties of personality, reflecting the features of polar strategies of meaning formation in acmeological terms by age, gender, and professional characteristics. 

Design. The present study considers the influence of various acmeological factors on meaning-building and concentrates on its two polar strategies: adaptive and developing strategies. We developed nine bipolar scales of personal traits with sublevels by applying the semantic differential technique. In total, there were 145 participants in the study. Participants were grouped according to three criteria: age, gender, and profession. 

Results. The obtained indices of meaning-building strategies did not coincide in all the differentiated groups, which clearly speaks in favor of acmeological dynamics of the respondents’ personal profiles. We stratified the sample according to the mean score of the basic marker of “life meaningfulness,” which enabled us to establish differences in characteristics of actual polar strategies of meaning-building. e respondents who did not fall into either of the two groups are “between the poles.” They often have an under- developed meaning-building strategy as a result of poorly formed ways of organization and actualization of personal meanings or the presence of a transitional form of situational conceptual initiations. 

Conclusion. The personal profiles that were identified represent multifactor models of the personal value and meaning dimensions, which can predict actual meaning-building strategies using semantic differential scales and indicators (“life meaningfulness” from the Purpose-in-Life test) and help researchers to reduce the number of techniques employed in their studies.

Background. The catechol-O-methyl transferase gene influences the reuptake of monoamines (dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline) from the synaptic space. The structural peculiarities of this gene are linked with the duration of stay of neurotransmitters in the synaptic gap and the emergence and duration of emotional reactions, which may considerably affect a person’s level of aggressiveness; these peculiarities may manifest as psychophysiological characteristics.

Objective and design. This study investigated the amplitude, spatio-temporal traits and sources of evoked brain activity in men with several genotypes in the polymorphic locus Val158Met in the COMT (Catechol-O-methyl transferase) gene, levels of aggressiveness using the Buss-Darkee inventory, proneness to various types of deviant and addictive behaviors in accordance with the methods of A.N. Oryol and the preferred strategies of behavior during conflict in accordance with the methods of Kenneth Thomas. Statistical processing of psychodiagnostic data included dispersive (ANOVA) and discriminative analyses.

Results. This study found significant differences in the parameters of evoked brain activity components in responses to emotionally charged stimuli (“aggression”, “positive”, “tolerance”, “extremism, terrorism”) compared with neutral images. Student’s t-test (Holms- corrected for multiple comparisons) was used to analyze the EEG-VEP data.

Conclusion. This study confirmed the hypothesis of differences in spatio-temporal and amplitude parameters of evoked brain potentials in young men exhibiting differing levels of aggressiveness. The sources of evoked brain activity determined using sLORETA (Standardized Low-resolution Brain Electromagnetic Tomography) were different between carriers of different genotypes.

The research in question investigates life-purpose orientations and values of various groups of a population living in a multicultural area with a variety of ethnic and religious communities. Members may have different attitudes to one and the same set of values due to their specific cultural traditions and religious guidelines. A common set of life-purpose orientations and values as well as distinctly different ones were identified in the research. It employed an ethno-psychological questionnaire designed specifically to that end and psychometric instruments aimed at identifying the values of the adults of various ethnic identities and religious affiliations. Residents of a multi-cultural area in the south of Russia who belong to different denominations were surveyed. It is stated that there is a substantial difference between the sets of values held by Baptists and Buddhists and representatives of other ethnic and religious groups (Muslims and Christians) participating in this investigation. The survey found that all of the Baptist and Buddhist respondents were described by a high-to-medium level of civil identity. Indifference to ethnic standards and a failure to accept the culture of their own people were found among all of the respondents; it was displayed by a small proportion of Orthodox Christians, whereas all of the Buddhists under investigation had a positive ethnic identity, and a certain proportion of Muslims and Catholics as well as a tiny proportion of Orthodox believers reported that they placed a priority for ethnic rights over human rights. Among all of the denominations surveyed, the majority of respondents surveyed have a positive attitude towards both their own nation and other nations.

This article focuses on the role of the media in shaping the worldview of today’s youth. In Part 1, social attitudes and social stereotypes are described in the context of ethnic relations. Part 2 describes the research into social distance and ethnic and religious stereotypes conducted by I.V. Abakumova and A.V. Grishina. The study was conducted in two stages. First we analyzed various TV and radio programs, articles in the press and on the Internet, about migrant workers, published from March 2009 to March 2012, to identify the image of migrant workers in the Russian media, for further study of the perceptions of migrant workers by students in different professional fields. In the second stage, we modified E. Bogardus’s “Social Distance Scale” in order to assess respondents’ attitudes toward media images of migrant workers and, more importantly, to determine the social distance at which the respondent tolerates the images and therefore the migrants themselves. The last part of the article reports the main findings and conclusions of the study.

Background. This article is devoted to the problem of excessively rigid behavior, which the author has named “fixed forms of behavior” (FFB). This term was suggested to me by the concepts of P. Janet (idéefixe), S. Freud (Fixierung), and D. Uznadze (fiksirovanaya ustanovka– fixed set/attitude). By FFB, the author understands a broad spectrum of behaviors of a person or a group of people, which, according to the cultural norms of a given society for persons of a certain age, gender, and status,have become inappropriate, yet are repeated in situations objectively requiring that they change; the degree of realization and acceptance of the need for this change can vary.

Results. Through literature analysis and the collection of experimental data over many years of research, in which over 1,150 persons took part – 550 healthy subjects and 600 mental patients from a broad spectrum – and on the basis of a biopsychosocionoetic model of the nature of man and his health, and a system-network approach, it has become possible to distinguish the following models to explain the nature of fixed forms of behavior: neurodynamic, energy-economic, phylogenetic, person-environment relationship, dispositional, stressogenic, pathogenic, psychodynamic, learning (behavioral-cognitive), system (an excessively rigid system and structural relations between levels of action).