Articles

The article describes various aspects of symbolic mediation and is aimed at showing its specificity. The author views a situation of uncertainty as a structural element of a symbol and introduces the notion of a symbol being a special tool for orientation in such situations. On the one hand, a symbol is contrasted to a sign, and on the other, is regarded as a transitional form in the process of its mastering. Author pays special attention to understanding the role of symbol in connection with understanding of play and its role in child’s development. Emotional and cognitive functions of symbol are defined and illustrated by examples.

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.

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.

Over the past several years, the possibilities for Russia’s economic growth have been discussed widely. This problem is unquestionably topical. However, do material factors alone determine the well-being of a society and its people? Since the mid-1980s, the overwhelming majority of indicators of the psychological state of Russian society have been demonstrating a negative tendency, and this trend not only reflects on the citizens’ sense of self but also creates obstacles on the way to the country’s innovative development.

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.

Participants in Experiment 1 completed a 36-item life events inventory (LEI) in their native language (Russian) two separate times, over a 1-week period. Between the two LEIs, participants got 12 items translated from Russian into English and 12 items in Russian. They performed a series of English-language exercises on translated items and Russian-language exercises on non-translated items. After performing exercises on items translated from Russian into English participants increased their confidence that these life events had occurred in their personal past. There was no similar effect for nontranslated items and for control items. Experiment 2 was run to examine if two factors - a change in linguistic context and a change in level of abstraction taken together boosted the effect. Participants completed a 24-item LEI in Russian two separate times, over a 1 -week period. Between the two LEIs, participants got 12 of these life events at the higher level of abstraction (e.g., "Got lost in a shopping mall" or "found yourself at an unfamiliar public place") translated from Russian into English. Participants translated the event from English into Russian and wrote a sentence using the gist of the item. After performing language exercises on items at the higher level of abstraction participants increased their confidence that these life events had occurred in their personal past. The magnitude of effect was almost twice bigger than in Experiment 1. These results indicate that a change in linguistic context can produce imagination inflation. We discuss our findings in terms of familiarity misattribution, whereby processing fluency is experienced as familiarity and misattributed to autobiographical memory.

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.

The psychological component of terrorism in four major attitudes is considered in the article: psychology of terrorism, psychology of counteraction to terrorism, psychological training of experts and the psychological help to victims of terrorism. Socio-psychological factors of development of terrorism, including concept of "contributing events" as well as hypothesis "frustration-aggression" are investigated. Specific features and the external factors promoting involving into terrorism are analyzed. The system of measures of counteraction of transformation of groups of risk is presented to the potential terrorist organizations, including in aspect of the control over ideology, education, education and work of mass media. Features of work with victims of acts of terrorism and extreme situations, minimization of its negative consequences are made out. Psychological reactions of the experts, engaged by liquidation of consequences of actions of terrorism, resulting works with victims of extreme situations are revealed. Features of vocational training of the personnel working with victims of terrorism and extreme situations are specified. Ways of overcoming of the negative psychological consequences arising at experts as a result of long contact to victims of extreme situations are presented.

This article looks at the main symptoms of the crisis in psychology. The author believes that in addition to the traditional manifestations that have dogged psychology since it emerged as an independent science, there have appeared some new symptoms. The author identifies three fundamental "ruptures": "vertical" ruptures between various schools and trends, "horizontal" ruptures between natural science and humanitarian psychology and "diagonal" ruptures between research (academic) and practical psychology. In the author's opinion, these manifestations of the crisis of psychology have recently been compounded by the crisis of its rationalistic foundations.

The present volume collects some examples of scientific work done by contemporary Russian psychologists, both empirical and theoretical, in different directions of research. Russian psychology in its development has undergone various times, some of them could be characterized as significant intensity of research, some could be described as essential decrease in volume of the leaded development. Those changes were mostly determined by the external reasons: political revolutions of the beginning and the end of the twentieth century, two World wars, which have influenced all areas of Russian life, economic and political shocks of the first half and the end of the same century, ideological restrictions (during the Soviet period) that were imposed on studied problems and treatment of the results of those studies, and also in the form of significant reduction of communication between the Russian and world psychology, etc.

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.