SUMMARIES

 

Cultural practices of constructive and destructive diversity maintenance in complex systems

A.G. Asmolov, S.S. Sorokina

 

This paper considers tolerance as a norm of diversity maintenance. It is argued that tolerance doesn’t presuppose acceptance of any diversity. The necessity to distinguish between constructive and destructive diversity is stated. An attempt to find the questions, answers to which would help researchers to feel the difference between tolerance and patience, is made. The mechanisms of differentiation between tolerance and patience are analyzed through the cultural practices of constructive diversity elimination and destructive diversity maintenance. On the one hand, we consider the origins of totalitarianism and phenomena of cultural dehumanization practices via the analysis of relevant philosophic, scientific and literary works. On the other hand, we investigate the mechanisms and cultural practices of “repressive diversity”, basing on the works of M. Lifshitz, G. Markuse, J. Baudrillard. Referring to the researches made by M. Bakhtin and V. Bibler, a dialogue as a practice of constructive diversity maintenance is revealed. The analogy of destructive and constructive diversity from the field of clinical psychology is brought. It is demonstrated that from the historic-evolutional point of view both – “intolerance towards diversity” and “tolerance with no borders” – are risky strategies for the existence and development of complex systems.

Keywords: tolerance, tolerance threshold, patience, reduction of diversity, totalitarianism, constructive diversity, destructive diversity, polyphony, cacophony, dialogue, preadaptation, adaptation, cultural practices.

 

Theoretical foundations of Western post-truth and Russian lying

V.V. Znakov

 

The paper analyzes how the three existing social forma-tions (“society of consumption”, “society of knowledge”, “society of emotional experiencing”) relate to the scientific conception of the three realities of human existence: the empirical, the socio-cultural and the existential, arguing that understanding of each of them is based mainly on knowledge and meaning, or on opinion and sense, or on emotional experiencing and empirical experience. The fundamental cause of emergence of “society of emotional experiencing” is transformation of the human world-based on other values and motives: people are orientated towards a model of “good life” in which emotional experiencing of what is desirable becomes prevalent. Research has shown that in a “society of emotional experiencing” the category of objective truth becomes less important. A considerable part of the contemporary world is evolving in the direction of devaluation of truth and prevalence of goals and values of communication.
One of the manifestations of the tendency is active use of the word “post-truth” that denotes circumstances in which objective facts have less impact on public opinion than appeals to emotions and personal convictions. The paper describes two main aspects of the phenomenon, analyzing common traits of Western post-truth and Russian lying, and maps out two guidelines for further research into Western post-truth and Russian lying: 1) correlation of cognitive and personal foundations of untruthful statements; 2) rational conscious and emotional unconscious components of utterances; 3) inner psychological conditions and outer societal circumstances encouraging emergence of alternative realities.

Key words: understanding, post-truth, objective truth, lying, “society of emotional experiencing”, values.

 

A conception of socio-emotional instruction and objectives of moral education

R.G. Apressyan

 

 The paper is a philosopher’s commenton proliferation in the world, including Russia, of programs of socio-emotional instruction (aimed at development of emotional intellect and emotional culture) and attempts at expanding their content by means of incorporating an ethical component. The potential of such programs for moral education is very high because they set a new goal – formation in a child of social and emotional competencies instead of the traditional pedagogical approach which consists in communication of ideas and convictions (which are quite often reduced to patriotism and collectivism). The realization of these programs would be impossible without appropriate ethical philosophical content.
So far, from the theoretical point of view, moral notions presented in programs of emotional instruction are of general anthropological nature. From the point of view of the ethical norm, they present varying versions of eudamunismus. Programs of moral education or programs of socio-emotional instruction must be based on a functional and normative understanding of morality as a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon which defines value orientations, such as solidarity, equality, respect, care, virtue, perfection. These value orientations reveal the content of morality which reflects its principal functions: communicative (ensuring effective and beneficial communication between people) and perfectionist (aimed at moral growth of a person with respect to others and self). Techniques of social moral instruction could only be effective if the above value orientations were translated into the language of specific emotions, communicative and reflective skills.

Key words: emotional intellect, socio-emotional instruction, morality, ethics, social moral education, education, functional and value-imperative heterogeneity of morality.

 

Educational environment and emotional development in preschool children

O.V. Almazova, A.K. Belolutskaya, D.A. Bukhalenkova, A.N. Veraxa, M.N. Gavrilov

 

The paper presents findings of a study of the link between quality of the educational environment of kindergartens and the level of emotional development of the children. Scales for a complex assessment of quality of education in preschool institutions (Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale–Revised, ECERS-R) were used to assess quality of the environment. The techniques “Theory of consciousness” and “Understanding of emotions” were used for diagnosing emotional development in preschoolers. The study was conducted in 2016–2018, the subjects were 706 children aged 5 to 6 (Me = 5,6 years) from 34 senior groups ofMoscow kindergartens; 357 (50,6 %) boys, 349 (49,4 %) girls. The study did not discover any direct link between quality of the environment and characteristics of emotional development in preschoolers. The following parameters of the educational environment proved to have the most impact on emotional development of children: “use of speech for development of thinking”, “availability of a place for solitude”, “equipment for development of motor skills”. Cluster analysis revealed 3 levels of quality of the environment: low, medium and high. It was discovered that the level of consciousness (Theory of Mind – ToM) is meaningfully higher in preschoolers from medium-level educational environments than in all the others. Analysis of performance on individual tasks from the techniques “Theory of consciousness” and “Understanding of emotions” confirmed that development of consciousness (ToM) and mastering of behavioral norms are on the whole more successful in groups with the medium quality of the educational environment. At the same time capacity for decentering is better developed in children from the high quality environment.

Key words: quality of educational environment, kindergarten, emotional intellect, theory of consciousness.

 

Links between the world image of Baku adolescents and the type of family interaction

A.V. Vizgina, M.A. Jerelievskaya

 

A study was carried out to discover characteristics of semantic links forming the basis of the world image of adolescents from families with different styles of interfamily interaction. 45 adolescents and their parents, all residents of Baku, participated in the study. With the help of cluster analysis of respondents’ answers to the I.M. Markovskaya’s questionnaire “Interaction child–parent” the families were classified into three groups differing in the style of interfamily interaction. The adolescents completed the tasks of describing a family and of free sorting of notions. The method of mathematical scaling allowed the researchers to construct sixdimensional semantic spaces in adolescents in each group. Analysis of the spaces revealed how certain aspects of family upbringing affect formation of the system of notions relevant to the adolescent’s developmental situation. In the first group strictness and control on the parents’ part combined with a strong emotional link with the adolescents leads to coexistence of a positive image of the family as a united whole which provides support and protection in return for obedience, and a negative attitude to discipline and obedience which hamper self-realization and development of autonomy. In the second group the relationship of cooperation, with parents providing autonomy for the adolescent, but nor ensuring adequate level of emotional understanding, leads to formation of a positive attitude to separation and adulthood in combination with low emotionality of the world image and devaluation of positive emotions. Semantic links discovered in adolescent girls from the families of the third group characterized by overprotection with elements of dominance and indulgence, demonstrated no desire for separation and personal autonomy which may be explained by their satisfaction with the actual relations in the family that fulfill the adolescent’s basic needs.The findings are explained from the standpoint of the social cultural approach.

Key words: adolescents, cluster analysis, family interaction, semantic space, personal autonomy, semantic links.

 

What ensures reliability of a student’s actions in an examination

V.I. Morosanova, E.V. Filippova

 

The paper presents findings of a study of regulatory and personal predictors of reliability of students’ actions in the situation of the Unified State Examination, arguing that conscious self-regulation acts as the psychological foundation of reliability of students’ actions and is a universal regulatory resource ensuring stability of a student’s performance in an exam. A special algorithm for calculating indices of reliability of students’ performance in exams was developed, described and applied in an empirical study involving 231 students of eleventh grades. The findings demonstrate that development of stability of conscious regulation of learning activity is a universal regulatory resource ensuring reliability of students’ performance in exams. The specific regulatory resources are the level of regulatory processes (planning, modeling, programming, assessment of results) and personal regulatory characteristics (flexibility, regulation). It appears that reliability of performance, general development of conscious self-regulation and low anxiety level can serve as predictors of the examination mark. Stability of regulatory processes, low anxiety level and high emotionality are also predictors of correctness of a student’s actions. The paper describes regulatory and personal characteristics of students with varying degrees of academic achievement with respect to reliability of their actions.

Key words: conscious self-regulation, reliability of actions, personal and regulatory predictors, school anxiety.

 

Notions of death and suicidal behavior in Internet communities of young people

E.D. Chizhov, K.I. Alexeyev

 

The paper presents first findings of a study of death-discourse in young people’s Internet groups connected with the idea of death (suicide), which is the most frequent subject of Internet discourse occurring in more than half of the texts selected for analysis. Authors of Internet diaries usually describe their own suicidal behavior, the suicidal attempts they have already undertaken and their desire to end their life. The paper describes problem situations which a person seeks to resolve by means of suicide, indicating factors both increasing probability of suicide (suicidal or risk factors) and decreasing it (anti-suicidal or pro-tective factors). The study confirmed theoretical notions of death as deliverance from pain and suffering of the problem situation, as well as importance of other people and society as a whole in young people’s suicidal behavior. Other people emerged in the context of problem situations and suicidal factors (misunderstanding, lack of support, mockery, isolation), as well as in the context of protective factors (love of the meaningful others, support). The authors dwell briefly on the issue of truthfulness of the texts: even if the texts discovered on the Internet are imaginary, they still reflect theoretical notions of suicidal behavior.

Key words: death, suicide, problem situations, risk factors, protective factors, youth Internet diaries, discourse analysis.

 

Personal life position: making theoretical notions operational

D.A. Leontiev, A.E. Shilmanskaya

 

The paper reviews attempts to integrate the notions of personal life position and of constructing the notion of personal life position (PLP) in the contemporary context and also presents a new questionnaire “Personal life position”. Analysis of literature shows that the notion of position is multidimensional and many-faceted. There are two leading approaches to treating the notion of position: as objective position in a group and as a subjective attitude. The best researched approaches view personal position as something that combines the objective and the subjective aspects, the outer world with the inner. However treatment of position as a relation of the subjective to the objective does not provide convincing arguments for introducing the new notion, therefore it is important that life position should be viewed not as attitude to life in general, but as attitude to one’s own life, as a relation of the subjective to the objective within the self. The issue of making the construct of life position operational as an instrument of measurement was raised a relatively short time ago. Development of this instrument, in spite of its small size, has taken a long time. It was only recently that the latest version of the questionnaire yielded satisfactory psychometric results, which is a signal that the work may have been completed.
The technique is based on an original model of life position according to which life position is described as an attitude of a person to their own life. The questionnaire PLP consists of 12 statements classified into three scales measuring life harmony, life awareness (reflection of life position) and activeness of life position (subjectness). The technique was developed on a sample of 367 respondents, its scales are reliable (Cronbach’s alpha 0,68–0,82), the structural validity has been confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. In spite of its compactness (four items on each scale) it yields sound psychometric indices and correlates with the structural model. Numerous confirmations of the validity of the questionnaire are still awaiting publication. The new questionnaire seems to be a promising research instrument for psychology of personality as it may be applied to solving new types of psychological problems.

Key words: life position, subjectness, awareness, harmony.

 

Psychosis, language and freedom of behavior

E.Yu. Zavershneva

 

Nature of psychoses is analyzed on the basis of cultural historical psychology, Lacan’s and existential analysis with emphasis on the hypothesis, suggested at different timesby L.S. Vygotsky, J. Lacan and L. Binswanger, that psychosis is caused by loss of a person’s capacity for free behavior. This condition brings about a number of existential manifestations of psychosis, such as blurring of the boundary between Self and the world, watering down of the motivational hierarchy, transformation of the semantic system of consciousness, destruction of higher affects and links with reality, reversal of the relation “object – word”.The author indicates guidelines for researching the role of inner speech in the development of delirium, exteriorization of inner speech and its transformation from the vehicle of thought into a means of mechanical compensatory holding together of a personality in psychosis. The author emphasizes importance of psychological research into the link between events, freedom and speech for constructing a general theory of psychosis.

Keywords: psychosis, freedom of behavior, language, affect, L.S. Vygotsky, J. Lacan, L. Binswanger.

 

Effectiveness of the psychological block of complex rehabilitation and prevention programs

E.I. Rasskazova, A.Sh. Tkhostov, M.S. Kovyazina, N.A.Varako

 

The paper is devoted to the recommendations and models for evaluation of the effectiveness of psychological interventions that are suggested in health and rehabilitation psychology and important for providing a psychological block of complex rehabilitation. Three key aspects of the problem are discussed: the complex nature of rehabilitation and its tasks, the need for patient commitment and the interference of evaluation with the whole rehabilitation process. It is demonstrated that the evaluation of the effectiveness of the psychological block of rehabilitation and prevention programs cannot be reduced to assessing the dynamics of individual functions or conditions of the patients. Evaluation should promote the active participation and involvement of patients and their families in rehabilitation. The basis for selecting priority tasks and agreeing on the optimal methods for their achievement by the patient, his relatives and different specialists of the team are offered by such models of social programs as PRE-CEDE-PROCEED and RE-AIM. The PRECEDE– PROCEED model offers a schema for assessment of the possibilities and limitations of rehabilitation, including consideration of social, epidemiological, behavioral and environmental, ecological and political issues. The RE-AIM model additionally indicates that intervention or a program cannot be effective unless sufficient coverage is provided for those in need, the possibility of correctly applying and accepting the program (agreement with it and understanding its importance) within the routine work of medical personnel, including, long-term maintenance. The methods of participatory and empowering evaluation are focused on the active participation and involvement of the patient or group, emphasizing the discussion of opportunities instead of needs, the continuous process of striving for health, the balance between ideographic and nomothetic evaluation methods and between “contactless” methods and methods of interaction.

Key words: psychological rehabilitation, health psychology, efficacy, RE-AIM model, empowering evaluation, participatory evaluation.

 

Gender differences in making moral decisions

T.I. Medvedeva, S.N. Enikolopov, O.U. Vorontsova, O.U. Kazmina

 

The paper analyzes gender differences in moral decision-making, focusing on the link between moral choices and characteristics of rational and emotional decision-making. A study was conducted using the technique “Moral dilemmas” suggested by J.D. Green and translated into Russian. Capacity for rational decision-making was assessed with the help of the Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST); emotional decision-making was assessed with the help of the Iowa gambling task (IGT).
The subjects were 70 people (34 men and 36 women). It was discovered that men are more inclined to make “personal choices”, i.e. choices in favor of utilitarian benefit, a rationally understood “profit”. The difference between men and women in performance on “Moral dilemmas” is not linked to cognitive mechanisms of rational decision-making, but depends on neuro-cognitive mechanisms of decisions based on emotions. Women are less inclined to make “personal choices” which may be attributed to the fact that women tend to ignore rare, remote emotional experiences. If these memories are revived, women begin to make “personal choices” more often, thus adopting the “male” mode of behavior.

Key words: moral dilemmas, gender differences, sex differences, decision-making, WCST, IGT.

 

Development and empirical testing of a theoretical model of productive analogy

О.I. Маslenkova, U.А. Тiumeneva, E.V. Movchan

 

The authors are in the process of developing and testing a theoretical model of productive analogy which would more accurately reflect processes of creating new scientific and technical ideas than the currently popular model of thinking on the analogy. It is assumed that the structure of productive analogy includes 1) coding of the actual task, its key elements and relations between them; 2) scanning of background information or longterm memory for situations or tasks or their elements similar to elements of the current task; 3) comparison of the discovered analogues to the current task with the aim of finding the most appropriate; 4) decision-taking and assessment. The authors argue that thinking on the analogy which is measured by classical four-component tasks (a:b::c:d), although it includes comparison of analogies, cannot represent the actual process of decision-seeking because of the existence of response variations that block scanning of background information and affect coding of initial relations. The authors argue that it is necessary to include coding of the structure of the task and scanning of back-ground information as processes involved in generating a productive analogy. A study was conducted with participation of students (n = 98) in order to test three regression models involving: 1) traditionally measured comparison of analogues; 2) scanning of background information; 3) coding of the structure of the task. It was discovered that inclusion of scanning and coding in the model of productive analogy brings about meaningful increase of the ratio of explained dispersion in effectiveness of generation of productive analogies. Growth of the explanatory power of the new model is not caused solely by adding new cognitive dimensions. It was also discovered that, although a greater number of semantically distant productive analogies were generated, close analogies more often turned out to be correct. The findings prove validity of the theoretical model of productive analogy, but also show that further improvement of the model is required by means of including in it the process of restructuring of the initial task.

Keywords: productive analogy, completion of tasks, thinking on the analogy.

 

The problem of the control group in dermatoglyfics

I.G. Shirobokov

 

 The subject of the study is nonrandom variability of finger patterns in samples used for analysis in prognostic dermatoglyfics. The latest findings point to specificity of finger patterns of people inclined to deviant and addictive behavior as compared to control groups. The characteristics of the control samples are not totally random. Part of the people always avoid fingerprinting due to psychological reasons correlating in their turn with their individual dermatoglyfic profiles.
The study was aimed at testing the hypothesis of non-random statistically meaningful differences between dermatoglyfic characteristics in groups of volunteers who were the first to agree to fingerprinting and of those who appeared last. The methods used were logical, comparative and formal statistical analysis. As a result medium group meanings of 50 different dermatoglyfic indices in 18 different ethnic samples were established. It was discovered that the participants who arrive last differ meaningfully from the first volunteers in frequency of simple types of patterns. They may be also less motivated and less emotionally balanced. The samples taken from volunteers may only be compared if psychological pressure exercised on the potential participants is equal. Such samples cannot be used as controls in assessing people who were forced to undergo fingerprinting (convicts and people suspected of criminal offences).

Key words: dermatoglyfics, multiple comparisons, prognostication, finger patterns.

 

Specificity of the notion of personality in Soviet psychology

V.A. Ivannikov

 

 The author analyzes approaches to understanding personality in Soviet psychology which were developed on the basis of Marxist principles formulated by S.L. Rubistein. Among them are recognition of the role of activity in development of man and his mind, of the role of the object world generated by human activity in development of the human mind and of the role of history of mankind in generation and development of consciousness. The problem is that both science and common sense recognize personality as something that exists objectively, but do not indicate the criterion of personality as a special reality. Therefore there is no generally recognized definition of the term. Unlike Western psychology which treated personality as a special formation in an individual, a special pattern refracting outside influences on the individual and determining one’s behavioral responses, Soviet psychology treated personality as the subject of relations with the world and of activity in the world. Social relations prevailed, but the role of activity in development of personality, the role of society and influence of history of mankind on personal development were also emphasized. Absence of a uniform definition of personality prevents generalization of theoretical and empirical findings on personality. Comparing the approaches of Western and Soviet Psychology one may say that the Soviet approach opens more prospects for understanding the human being as a social being emerging within a biological organism and using that organism for realizing his activities as a social entity, which provides opportunities for looking into emergence of man as a personality in the history of mankind and analyzing characteristics of personality as the subject of special relations of a person with other people and society.

Key words: personality, activity, subject, relation.