Personality psychology

There is a lack of information concerning the features of cognitive processes in personality disorders, as well as the brain mechanisms of the pathogenesis of these diseases. Luria’s neuropsychological approach demonstrated its heuristicity in estimating the cognitive status of patients with mental disorders and can be employed to identify the brain bases of non-psychotic mental disorders (including personality disorders).

The objective of this research is to study the features of neurocognitive functioning in patients with schizoid personality disorder and schizotypal personality disorder (against the norm), employing Luria’s neuropsychological methodology. Hypotheses: 1) While both types of personality disorders are related to schizophrenia spectrum disorders, the specificity of the neurocognitive functioning of each personality disorder will be observed in addition to general neuropsychological signs. Specific neuropsychological symptoms point to different brain deficits, which allows conclusion to be drawn regarding differences in the pathogenesis of each personality disorder; and 2) Luria’s methodology neuropsychology is adequate for the study of neurocognitive functioning in personality disorders.

The study was conducted using qualitative and quantitative analyses (according to Luria) of neuropsychological testing data in a group of fifty male patients aged 19,2±3,7 years with pathocharacteristic domain disorders. The group consisted of 30 schizoid personality disorder patients and 20 schizotypal personality disorder patients.

Statistically significant differences (p <0,005) in neurocognitive function (regulatory processes, memory, spatial function) between the healthy controls and patients with personality disorders were observed.

Specific cognitive disorders pointing to the dysfunction of front-thalamoparietal connections were characteristic of both groups. Lateral differences were discovered for both patient groups. The neuropsychological symptoms related to left hemisphere dysfunction were characteristic of the patients with schizotypal personality disorder. Neurocognitive deficits related to right hemisphere deficiency characterized the patients with schizoid personality disorder.

This article examines personality subjective well-being and describes its psychological structure, general components and characteristics. An overview of foreign theories and studies on subjective well-being is presented. Correlations among related concepts such as happiness, life satisfaction and subjective well-being are also described. Subjective well-being is seen as a multivariate construction of a stable nature in mobile equilibrium. It is argued that a type of professional activity can have great importance and a positive impact on an individual’s social life, health, identity shaping and psychological wellness. This article’s findings are substantiated by the survey administered to 2229 respondents divided into groups according to their area of business: students, psychologists, doctors, teachers, engineering and technical staff, representatives of service industries, workers, military men, and prisoners. The descriptors identified two types of natures: positive, directed to a person’s inner world (happy, lucky, optimistic) and to the outer world (trustworthy, competent, successful), and negative (pessimistic, unhappy, envious). This division of nature type was categorized according to the participants’ subjective well-being index. Empirical evidence has shown that occupational specificity influences a person’s subjective well-being. A substantial difference was found in subjective well-being index of the respondents. A higher index is typical of students and military men. Educators and industrial intelligentsia also demonstrate an increased level of subjective well-being, whereas prisoners tend to have a low level of subjective well-being. The same low index is characteristic of servicing trade representatives and psychologists.

The objective of this research was to assess the motivational potential of psychology students using an egoskopiya method. Heart rate and EEG data were recorded while the participants performed the Mehrabian achievement motivation test. Thirty students of the Faculty of Psychology of Southern Federal University who were aged between 20 and 30 years participated. The psychodiagnostic study involved 136 students from the Faculty of Psychology of Southern Federal University who were aged between 18 and 49 years. To determine the lateral organization profiles of sensory and motor functions, a computer-based testing program termed “Profile” was used. The Compact Russian Structure of Temperament Questionnaire (STQ-77) was used to evaluate the features of temperament. 

The results revealed that people with a strong motivation to succeed exhibited a predominance of right features in their lateral organization profiles. Their cardiovascular systems were in more activated states than those of the people who were extremely motivated to avoid failure. The observed temperament features of psychology students with different levels of achievement motivation indicated that the level of achievement motivation is related to the properties of temperament such that students with lower levels of achievement motivation (i.e., motivation to avoid failure) exhibited the temperament traits of Neuroticism and Impulsivity in addition to low values on the scales for the Sensitivity to Sensations, Intellectual Ergonicity, and Sensitivity to Probabilities. High levels of achievement motivation (i.e., motivation to strive toward success) corresponded to the psychology students’ propensities for Sensitivity to Sensations, high levels of Intellectual Ergonicity, high levels of Sensitivity to Probabilities and low values on the scales of Impulsivity and Neuroticism.

This study aims to fill a gap in the current research on the personality organization of frequent videogame users. The scientific literature in this area refers only to the existence of risk factors that increase the likelihood of abusing videogames and their negative consequences on the mental health of users (Gentile et al., 2011; Lemmens, Valkenburg, & Peter, 2011; Rehbein & Baier, 2013). In this study, a sample of patients who reported spending an excessive amount of their time playing videogames were recruited from Instituto Quintino Aires–Lisbon/Oporto and took the Rorschach Personality Test (Exner, 1993, 1995). Two other samples—one consisting of patients who reported not playing videogames, and the other of patients who were discharged from the institution after psychotherapy—also took part in the study. The patients in the first sample revealed less exposure to the relational sources of stress that are necessary for socioemotional development and less interest in others than did patients in the other samples. Other results regarding the personality structure of the subjects in the three samples are compared and discussed in light of cultural-historical psychology.

The motivation system in adolescent high school pupilsstudents of was studied (9^th and 11^th grade students) on the basis of a complex approach and a comparative analysis of emotional attitudes and a deliberate preference of values (general and educational). It was shown that the significance and accessibility of analyzed groups of values are, to a considerable extent, determined by a dominant motivation. Also, a tendency was found towards the contra-positioning of conscious and emotional attitudes with values — values which are highly attractive on the motivation-and-emotional level, but on the level of conscience, are underestimated compared with other ones. This also determines the further trend of development of a personality in the direction of acceptance of sociallyapproved general and educational values, and leads to the convergence of personality development of schoolchildren at that stage of their life. Also revealed were certain gender- related features of value orientations, which were relatinged to the more advanced development of girls when compared to boys of the same age.

In our research we made a substantial psychometric analysis of the scales of F. B. Berezin’s version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), the MMIL, which is widely used in various spheres of psychological practice. Since the mid-1990s in Russia there have been many essential transformations in thinking and values that have been caused by changes in social and economic reality. For this reason, we need to continue our work on specifying the meaning of the MMIL tasks and, then, on updating the test norms and keys. Such psychometric updating is necessary for maintaining the efficiency of the method. For our update, we constructed linear norms for the test; we tested the questionnaire for the normality of the distribution of points; and we checked the validity (including external validity), the reliability coherence of the scales, and the variability of the points. The necessity of readapting the MMIL was thus demonstrated. Questions that display low variability and that are not significantly correlated with the scale they belong to, which reduces their differentiating potential, may be excluded from the test or reformulated.

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.

The study was undertaken to find relationships between personality and temperamental traits (estimated with the help of the Adult Personality Traits Questionnaire by Manolova, Leonhard and the Russian version of the Structure of Temperament Questionnaire (STQ) by Rusalov V. & Trofimova I. (2007)) on the one hand, and parameters of intonation (mean ΔF0, tone span, speech rate, duration of speech and mean duration of syllables interval) on the other hand. The parameters of intonation were measured on sample recordings produced by 30 male and female participants. 60 recordings of natural monologues on proposed topics were obtained in situations of the presence and absence of a conversation partner. Demostrativity (as a personality trait according to Leonhard’s typology) was found to significantly affect mean ΔF0, tone span and speech rate in the presence of an interlocutor. Social Tempo (as a dimension of temperament according to Rusalov’s model) affects the speech rate. In the absence of an interlocutor, only an interaction effect of Demonstrativity and Communication Activity on the same group of vocal parameters was obtained. The presence of an interlocutor proved to be a special condition for the most explicit appearance of Demonstrativity. Temperamental indices that describe the Communication realm seem to moderate the appearance of Demonstrativity in different conditions. Most explicitly, the key feature of people with strong Demonstrativity is a high speech rate.

Conceptual grounds of the system anthropological psychology, that allow to represent the innovative potential of a personality in the context of understanding the mechanisms of self-development of a person as an open self-organizing system, are discussed in the article.

Russian psychology has brought into the world science at least two great ideas: the conditioned reflex (Pavlov) and the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky). These concepts were formulated before “iron curtain” fell. Since then Russian science dropped out from the view of western colleagues for decades. Now it is challenged to re-join international mainstream. Are we in a position to contribute? A key concept for Russian psychology is personality impact on psycho-physiological functions and causal approach to self-determination. The concept of selfdetermination appeared in Western theories in 1980-es and since then it has been developed in the context of teleological humanitarian approach. In Russian science the concept of self-determination dates back to 1934, when it was defined by Rubinstein as “sub’ekt”. Self-determination of ontogenesis of psychophysiological functions resulting from confluence of ontogenesis and social development was explicated by Russian scientists whose theoretical reasoning and empirical results are compared to Western counterparts.

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.

In the present paper we suggest that people experience history from four perspectives: Participant, Witness, Contemporary and Successor. These perspectives differ in the proportion of experience, knowledge and personal meaning that is available. We empirically demonstrated greater malleability of memories about terrorist attacks that were experienced as a Witness than as a Contemporary. We also review research on the extent to which people spontaneously use historical events as a reference for dating personal memories. In our Moscow sample (N = 476), historical references were present in 5% of people. We found that 17% of participants listed historical memories in their life stories, as indicated by where they placed events along a Life Line. There was a tendency to balance negative historical experience with positive events from the Contemporary perspective (Gagarin'61, Olympic Games'80). Older participants included historical memories in their Life Lines more often than younger participants did, while the majority of historical memories referred to the age before 29. Participants recollected historical memories only from periods in their past that fell within what is called the "reminiscence bump" - a lifetime period that covers the age interval between 18-28 years. The proportion of historical content in individual autobiographical memory is deter­mined by: 1) objective history; 2) experiencing historically transitional events in youth; 3) being older than the "reminiscence bump" period and 4) having at least a decade time distance toward historical event

Throughout human history, in-group solidarity has been achieved at the price of confrontation with out-group individuals ("them vs. us" mental scheme); this has been guaranteed by religious or quasi-religious ideologies. However, in compli­ance with some basic evolutionary patterns, the traditional mechanism of social aggression-regulation is actually becoming counter-productive and threatens to destroy planetary civilization during the next decades. The author argues that the perspectives of global viability essentially depend on whether or not the human mind develops new mechanisms of strategic meaning-construction and solidarity regardless of large-group (confessional, national or class) mythologies.

The article describes the development of an integrative bio-psycho-social model of personality disorders. This model is based on the interconnection of intellect, self-regulation, self-identity, and social relationships. The prognostic value of the category of “affective-cognitive style” is estimated on the grounds of a meta-analysis of various empirical studies and theoretical models. The article discusses the results of clinical and experimental studies that specify the functions of cognitive differentiation and integrity and of symbolic mediation and reflection in the regulation of the content, emotional valence, temporal stability, and spatial organization of intrapsychic representations of self and interpersonal relationships, as well as the systemic organization of defense and coping operations.

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.