Том 44, № 1 (2023)

The article presents a thematic and linguistic analysis of scientific publications of the staff of the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences for 1972–2021. The most frequent terms (by groups of history, theory and methodology, general psychology, social and economic psychology, personality psychology, engineering psychology, labor and organizational psychology, psychophysiology, development psychology) and specific key words are identified; the measure of lexical similarity of text corpus of publications from different decades is determined. On the basis of the obtained data, the dominant research directions of the staff of the Institute of Psychology in 1972–1981, 1982–1991, 1992–2001, 2002–2011, and 2012–2021 are established. The presented indicators are substantiated as a program and a set of procedures for quantitative analysis of the publication activity of a scientific organization.

Cross-modal correspondence effect (i.e., facilitated processing of congruent stimuli from different modalities) occurs not only when simple multi-modal sensory stimuli are processed together, but also during their simultaneous processing with words with emotional and spatial connotations. We tested a hypothesis that the magnitude of cross-modal correspondence effect, arising from concurrent processing of basic sensory and verbal stimuli, is differentially modulated by individual’s emotional state. Thirty-six volunteers (26 females, 18–34 years old) watched videos that evoked positive, negative, or neutral emotional states. This was followed by the main task in which they were presented with sounds of different pitch (low: 1000 Hz; high: 2000 Hz) simultaneously with words that differed in their emotional valence and were associated with different parts of space (low/high). The participant’s task was to identify the pitch (low/high) of the non-verbal sound stimuli. Two-way mixed ANOVA and subsequent pairwise comparisons (Student's t-test for dependent samples) were used to compare both mean reaction times and estimated parameters of the ex-Gaussian distribution. The results showed that the audiovisual correspondence effect became manifested in faster responses to congruent stimulus combinations compared with non-congruent ones (t(35) = -3.20, p = .005, dz = -0.53, 95% CI [-0.89, -0.18]). However, we did not find a large size effect of the induced emotional state on the magnitude of this correspondence effect (F(4, 68) = 0.49, p = 0.744, = .001). This result may be explained either by robustness of cross-modal correspondence effect and its resilience to emotional influence or by specific limitations of present study design.

The aim of this study was to explore the role of theory of mind - the ability to attribute mental states to other people to explain their behavior - in the development of social competence and prosocial behavior in adolescence. It is assumed that there is a difference in the manifestation of prosocial behavior and social competence in adolescents with different levels of theory of mind. Participants were 95 adolescents aged 12–15 years (M=13.8; SD=9.5; 46 girls). We used “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test to assess the social-perceptual component of theory of mind (assessment of the recognition of mental states by facial expressions) and the task of understanding higher-order false beliefs to assess the socio-cognitive component. We assessed the adolescent’s prosocial behavior during a group game of puzzles and calculated the ratio of the number of prosocial acts to time in seconds. Teachers assessed the social behavior of adolescents using a specially designed questionnaire. We also used a sociometric method to study the popularity of adolescents in the group. The results obtained testify to the different contribution of the socio-perceptual and socio-cognitive components of theory of mind to the development of social competence of adolescents. Adolescents who better understand the mental states of others and predict their behavior are more likely to act prosocially, are more persuasive and successful in mastering the school curriculum. Teachers are rated those who better recognize mental states by facial expressions as more helpful and popular among their peers. Adolescents with low level of theory of mind are rejected by their peers.

The article presents the results of a study of the predictors of students’ fears. The sample consisted of university students (N = 94,82% - women) aged 18–22. The measure of intensity of fears by Yu.V. Shcherbatykh and E.I. Ivleva, the questionnaire “Experience of close relationships” (ECR) by N.V. Sabelnikova and D.V. Kashirsky, Attachment Style Questionnaire by J. Finey et al. (ASQ) adapted by N.V. Sabelnikova, D.V. Kashirsky, the “Big Five” (5PFQ) technique by P. Costa and R. McCrae adapted by S.A. Shchebetenko were used in the study. Based on the principal component analysis (PCA), the structure of fears experienced by students was revealed. It included “fears of uncontrollable events” (changes in personal life, death, illness, etc.), “natural fears” (darkness, enclosed space, snakes, spiders, etc.), “social fears” (exams, public speaking) fears and “fear of losing self-control” (aggression towards loved ones, auto-aggression, etc.). The quality of the structural model has been verified by confirmatory factor analysis. The analysis of regression equations (MRA) revealed the dependence of individual groups of fears on avoidance of attachment relationships, neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness.

The focus of this article is the reflection of intelligence as ability in social media texts. The authors have developed a model of communicative environments according to which the manifestation of intelligence in a message depends on the communicative situation in which the information is transmitted. Thus, the cognitive complexity of texts is a consequence not only of the author's intellectual capacity, but also of his willingness and ability to adapt the complexity of messages to the characteristics of the recipient. This paper analyses data from individual social media profiles in relation to user intelligence test scores, as well as similar data obtained at a regional level. The study involved 438 subjects who took an intelligence test and provided access to their social media profiles. Facebook users were found to be, on average, more intelligent than VKontakte users, posting more posts containing text, posting less often overall. No significant differences in post characteristics were found between the two social networks. However, differences in the nature of the relationship between intelligence and cognitive complexity of messages were demonstrated for different social networks and for male and female subsamples of users. Correlations were found to be higher at the regional level compared to the individual level, higher for Facebook compared to VKontakte and higher for men compared to women. It is concluded that indicators of texts’ cognitive complexity from social media do reflect the intelligence of their authors, but the extent of this reflection depends on the characteristics of the communicative situation

In 2023, the 125th anniversary of the birth of Volf Solomonovich Merlin was celebrated. He is a well-known Russian psychologist, author of the theory of integral individuality, and founder of the Perm Scientific School of Psychology. The purpose of this article is to present the main milestones of Merlin's life and scientific work. The biography of the scientist is briefly under consideration, and the periodization of his scientific path takes into account. Four periods highlight his scientific efficiency, namely, 1924–1939 (pedology); 1940–1955 (differential psychology); 1956–1971 (personality psychology); 1972–1982 (system and integral approach to the study of human individuality). Further, the theory of integral individuality reveals its main features. The aim of the theory is to show a holistic fashion of a human's individuality. The integral means the study of individuality according to the criteria of hierarchy, teleological and causal determination, and polymorphism. The estimation of Merlin's scientific heritage points out its perspective nowadays. The Russian scientific community appreciates the contribution of Merlin’s scientific achievement due to which Russian psychology develops.

In recent years, our country and the whole world have faced a situation of a large-scale epidemic caused by the COVID-19 virus, which created favorable conditions for the development of cyberchondria. The aim of the study is to theoretically substantiate the attention of researchers to the phenomenon of cyberchondria and to adapt the methodology for studying the severity of cyberchondria (CSS) in the Russian sample. The results of the exploratory factor analysis of the study data showed full compliance with the structure of the original questionnaire: 5 scales were identified, the validity of which was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. All scales showed an acceptable level of reliability in terms of internal consistency. During the test of convergent validity, explainable relationships were found between the scales of the questionnaire and indicators of tolerance for uncertainty, psychological well-being and addiction to social networks.

The article presents a bibliometric analysis of the concepts analyzed by scientists from the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and disclosed in three volumes of the work “Development of modern concepts of psychology” (2018, 2019 and 2021). The generalization carried out for all the presented concepts made it possible to put forward a hypothesis about the existence of metaconcepts — the subject and the collective subject, which pull together the network organization of conceptual fields, setting the architecture of their system-network organization. The conducted bibliometric analysis of the concepts of three volumes showed that the mapping of concepts makes it possible to identify clusters of network organization, among which there are two, which can be conditionally designated as “individual subject” and “collective subject”. Only the morpheme “psychologist-”, outstripping all the others in frequency of occurrence. These results may support the hypothesis of the existence of “meta-concepts” and their role in the system-network organization. Comparative analysis of the concept map based on the author's keywords of publications indexed in Scopus for five years, “contraction” of terms into complexes that can be designated as individual and collective subjects could not be found, while the analysis of articles in the same database by the same authors discovered two centers in 20 years. The individual and collective subject become central concepts, with multiple connections. The question of hierarchical conceptual organization remains open due to the limited possibilities of bibliometric analysis, which does not allow revealing such relationships between concepts. Bibliometric analysis made it possible to show the network organization of modern concepts, the existence of thematic conceptual fields and leave open the question of their system-network organization.

The expansion of the conceptual field of psychology is a necessary reflection of the actions of the “fluid actor” in the “fluid modernity”. The possibility of its expansion is presented in connection with the understanding of the role of the psychologist from the position of “post-non-classical rationality”, which is guided by an abstract-analytical and (or) effectively transformative strategy. When choosing an abstract — analytical strategy, abstractly selected sides of the object are studied, where the parts define the whole, and cognition from the standpoint of “classical rationality” proceeds within the framework of the basic paradigm and its concepts. In this case, new concepts may arise if the study of the phenomenon is carried out transdisciplinary, when the position of V.M. Bekhterev on the extension of the laws that operate in the Universe, in particular the law of rhythm, is accepted. Its manifestation is noted as “rocking”, which can be correlated with the concept of “oscillation” common in physics and technology. The introduction of the concept of “fluctuations” and its manifestations into psychology is promising for describing the mechanisms of intellectual development, fluctuations of motivation, emotions, behavior. The choice of an effective transformative strategy is determined by the need to solve life problems when interacting with an object (another person) as an integral entity, type, individuality. The systemic and hierarchical structure of the conceptual composition is then supplemented by concepts that are formed in a hierarchically built community of like-minded people (at the horizontal level) and are “new cognitive tools”. The transdisciplinary approach makes it possible to use the concept of “consolidation”, which is used in studies of brain activity when the solution of an urgent problem is carried out by instantaneous restructuring of all brain systems in the direction of their “consolidation”. The concept of “mutual cooperation” is promising for the characteristics of a high level of joint actions of a collective actor. A significant expansion of the conceptual field occurs in the consultative and training options for using an effective transformative strategy, when coordination of actions to solve a problem and the transformation of participants into a collective actor is achieved by creating a new language of verbal and nonverbal concepts.