Vol 5, No 2 (2024)

The work provides a theoretical analysis of the connection between observers’ judgments about the psychological traits of perceived people and the structural features of the latter’s faces. The structure of faces that cause persistent effects of perception, known as the phenomena of face perception, is analyzed: Attractiveness Halo Effect, Babyfaceness, Face Identity, Familiar Face Effect, Averageness. The relationships between observers’ judgments about the psychological qualities of people with different facial fWHR indexes are described. Integral facial characteristics of perceived people have been identified that determine observers’ judgments about their psychological traits: proportions of horizontal and vertical dimensions of the face, asymmetry, averageness, signs of emotions, fertility, ill health, gender and age characteristics. A connection between facial symmetry/asymmetry and the balance of parts of the autonomic nervous system has been identified

The article presents an analysis of video recordings of the dynamics of expressions of fear, anger, disgust, surprise, joy, sadness, contempt, embarrassment, and pride from the ADFES database was performed. For the initial marking of key points, OpenFace 2.0 software was used. Principal component analysis was performed for the resulting sets of key point coordinates. Each selected principal component is characterized by explanatory power, a load vector at discrete moments in time corresponding to video frames, and a spatial vector encoding the directions of displacement of key points.

It has been established that the individual unfolding of emotional expressions over time is well described by the first principal component. At the same time, the spatial consistency of the first principal component for sets of video recordings of different emotional expressions varies significantly. Emotional expressions are characterized by the following indicator of spatial consistency (ascending): contempt – 0.03, sadness – 0.26, fear – 0.47, anger – 0.56, joy – 0.73, embarrassment – 0.78, disgust – 0.81, surprise – 0.95, pride – 0.96. High spatial consistency is achieved due to the uniform execution by sitters of holistic changes in head orientation that are not included in standard descriptions of signs of emotional expressions.

The dynamics of facial expression on the combined data set (12 sitters) is described by a combination of one to five principal components. Thus, in general, most of the analyzed dynamic expressions are complex in nature, including several simultaneously unfolding expressive movements.

To clarify the nature of dynamic expressions, it is planned to conduct a principal component analysis with partially recorded content patterns corresponding to specific partial facial features, and perform video image reconstructions in which the dynamics of key points of the face are determined by a given set of principal components.

Currently, due to dramatic social changes, the task of a personal search for meaning in a world filled with seemingly meaningless suffering is becoming especially urgent. When faced with individual traumatic experiences and collective psychological trauma, more and more people experience a loss of meaning in life, a discrepancy between personal values and life circumstances, and a feeling of powerlessness and loss. From the perspective of the personological approach, these phenomena are described as a crisis of meaning in life as a consequence of a short- or long-term psychotraumatic state, which leads to maladjustment (Karpinsky, 2015). While in psychotherapeutic practice the goal of correcting life-meaning crises is set by logotherapy, in philosophy the main branch of philosophy that addresses ways to overcome the feeling of lack of meaning in a changeable, dangerous and unpredictable world is stoicism. This review provides an interpretation of the ideas of the ancient Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus from the point of view of the logotherapeutic concept of W. Frankl and a comparative analysis of these two schools in order to further reinforce the therapeutic concepts of applied logotherapy with philosophical foundations.

The article discusses the main approaches to determining the criteria of norm and pathology in clinical psychology. The possibilities and limitations of the clinical (nosocentric) approach to the definition of norm and pathology, the limits of its applicability are discussed, and examples of its application in psychological practice are given. The article analyzes the criticism of the clinical approach to the definition of norm and pathology from the perspective of the antipsychiatric course. Various variants of the normocentric approach to the definition of norm and pathology are considered: statistical, humanistic, adaptive, evolutionary. The conclusion is made about the relativity of the criteria of norm and pathology and the need to combine different approaches in clinical practice.