Editorial

Zinchenko, Yu. P. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia Federal Scientific Center of Psychological and Interdisciplinary Research, Moscow, Russia

The current issue of Psychology in Russia: State of the Art presents topical articles in clinical, cognitive, social, and developmental psychology.

The clinical psychology section opens with an article by Boris B. Velichkovsky, Irina F. Roschina, and Natalia D. Selezneva, who have investigated cognitive control and memory in healthy people with a genetic risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Olga Yu. Shchelkova and Ekaterina B. Usmanova contribute to the development of oncopsychology by addressing quality of life and relation to disease in patients with bone sarcoma. The article by Vera A. Yakupova, Elena I. Zakharova, and Ajdar N. Abubakirov deals with another promising branch of clinical psychology — perinatal psychology applied to infertility treatment — and presents exploratory research on the mental state of women with an IVF pregnancy.

In the cognitive psychology section Elena V. Vorobyeva, Pavel N. Ermakov, and Oksana S. Saakyan discuss, on the basis of their empirical findings, the relationships between the achievement motivations and temperaments of psychology students with different lateral organization profiles. The article by Anastasiya K. Belolutskaya is a contribution to creativity studies; it deals with the concept of the “multidimensionality of thinking” and methods for its investigation.

The social psychology section is the most voluminous in this issue. Several articles address the problem of psychological security and stability from different viewpoints. Irina A. Baeva and Nina V. Bordovskaia have studied the psychological safety of the educational environment and the psychological well-being of Russian secondary school pupils and teachers. To facilitate desired changes in the Russian educational environment, one can refer to the work by Elena A. Shmeleva, Pavel A. Kislyakov, Larisa F. Luneva, and Ludmila D. Maltseva; it deals with psychological factors in the readiness of teachers to ensure social security in the educational environment. In secure settings young students are able to take risks and engage in innovation; the value-motivational structure of the innovativeness of these students is presented in the article by Olga V. Mikhailova.

Outside the school context, people’s social and psychological stability may be assessed by migration processes, among other indicators. As an example, these processes have been examined in the Pskov Region and are discussed in the article by Svetlana D. Gurieva, Svetlana N. Kostromina, Larisa A. Tcvetkova, and their colleagues. Finally, Olga G. Lopukhova has evaluated another significant factor that influences the psychological well-being of contemporary society, especially adolescents and young adults — the impact of gender images in commercials on selfconsciousness.

The two articles in the developmental psychology section address the issue of problematic behavior in adolescents. Anatoly N. Alekhin, Natalya N. Koroleva, and Eugeniya I. Ostasheva describe certain semantic structures of world image as internal factors in the self-destructive behavior of today’s teenagers. And Irina V. Vorobyeva, Olga V. Kruzhkova, and Marina S. Krivoshchekova explore the genesis of vandalism in ontogeny — from childhood to adolescence.

This issue closes with a book review by Natalya V. Grishina that shares her experience of reading A. I. Dontsov’s recent book, The Phenomenon of Envy.