Vol 3, No 1 (2017)
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8-27 1
Abstract
Many studies demonstrate the importance of cardiac signals sensitivity in recognizing one's own emotional processes. The present study investigates the relationship between interoceptive awareness, emotional experience, cardiovascular reactivity, heart rate and galvanic skin responses to different emotional stimulations from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). During 4 experimental sets 60 participants (9 male) were confronted with neutral and emotional IAPS pictures. After each set, participants appraised emotional experiences and interoceptive awareness on an 11-point Likert scale. Heart rate changes were recorded during the baseline and during slide presentations. At the end, participants flled in the Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire and Toronto Alexithymia Scale. Results replicate in Russian participants the results of American and European investigations and add new details on the issue of the relationship between the perception of interoceptive signals and recognition processing of one's own emotions.
28-39 1
Abstract
Morality and empathy are foundational components of human life in every culture. The abundance of empirical results obtained by researchers in such felds as developmental psychology, psychology of emotions and neurocognitive psychology confrms that there is a complex relation between empathy and moral judgment. Thus, data reveal that empathy either facilitates a moral judgment or choice or prevents it, due to the multi-component mechanism of the empathic experience. This paper reviews current studies, drawn from proximate areas of psychology, that show the role of motivational, emotional and cognitive components of empathy in situations of moral choice.
40-48 3
Abstract
The article presents the results of a study that show aspects of how a moral consciousness functions under two conditions: admitting the possibility of perpetrating an illicit act and excluding such a possibility. Here, the moral consciousness is operationalized by the mechanisms of moral disengagement, sages of moral development (according to Lawrence Kohlberg). The connection between moral consciousness and Machiavellianism and psychopathy was also analyzed. The results show the difference in how a system of moral consciousness functions when there is a possibility of perpetrating an illicit act and when such a possibility does not exist.
49-63 4
Abstract
The paper reports on the evolution of the concept of ambiguity, and presents a classifcation of its various types and of the main approaches to the problem of ambiguity within the context of the decision-making problem. In particular, two main approaches are described: the frst emphasizes ambiguity as an attribute of a situation, while the second claims that ambiguity is a personality-determined emotional experience. The problem of constructing a mental representation of ambiguity and the possible role of language in this process are also considered.
64-73 1
Abstract
One of the central concepts of our research is psychological observancy, i. e. the ability to understand individual psychological characteristics of another person from their external and nonverbal manifestations. The concept of professional vigilance, the ability to notice essential features of objects and phenomena, is based on psychological observancy. The particular character of nondepartmental security personnel's work calls for thorough observancy of people, the ability to notice signs that foreshadow a risk of their committing illegal acts. Our main purpose was to fnd out the corelation between professional vigilance and individual psychological characteristics. One of the fndings of our research is that professional vigilance of those in this job is closely connected with personality traits: in a simulated professional situation employees with a higher level of aggressiveness and a lower level of observancy are inclined to ascribe some inadequacy to the actions of the observed person
74-80
Abstract
D. Kahneman and A. Tversky suggested that in conditions of uncertainty people rely on heuristics that sometimes lead to systematic errors. In 2014, Austrian psychologists F. Jasper and T. M. Ortner created an Objective Heuristic Thinking Test, aimed at assessing the degree of individual commitment by a person to three types of heuristics — heuristics of representativeness, availability, and binding. In this work, an attempt was made to adapt the Objective Heuristic Thinking Test on the basis of a selection of Russian-language materials. Confrmatory factor analysis did not confrm the three-factor structure of the test. Exploratory factor analysis reduced the number of questions in each of the scales of the purifed structure of the adapted version of the methodology. The purifed structure of the adapted version of the methodology has a low percentage of explained variance (55%). An objective test of heuristic thinking showed satisfactory test-retest reliability, satisfactory reliability for internal consistency of all the questions of the test, and low construct validity.
81-86
Abstract
The present study compares attentional bias for positive and threatening stimuli. However, only a small number of studies used taboo words for Russian-speaking people, although such material clearly refects emotional processing of information. Taboo words were included in the dot-probe task. In our study, we tested the idea that taboo words, compared with neutral distracters, will impair emotional attention. Participants (n = 43) performed the dotprobe task (MacLeod, Mathews, Tata, 1986), then they were asked about words, which they remember. There were no statistically signifcant differences between the neutral and taboo words. We found a correlation between the number of correctly named words and attentional bias for presenting words on 100 ms (r = 0,431, p < 0,05). Subsequent research will focus on procedure of the dot-probe task. This research showed the need to control the emotionality of words for participants. Larger effects of attentional bias for taboo words can be obtained with the use of a large number of probes.
87-97
Abstract
In the current study we investigated how the presence or absence of categorical labels for a particular object in an experiment can infuence our visual search of that object if it is placed among distractors which also have categorical labels in the experiment or have no labels. We hypothesized that a visual search for a labeled target would be more effective if it were located among non-labeled distractors. We also hypothesized that a visual search for a non-labeled target would be more effective if it were located among non-labeled distractors. The last hypothesis was put forward because we thought that labeled objects would attract our attention more than non-labeled ones, which would interfere with a search for a non-labeled target. Our experiment consisted of two stages. In the frst, preparatory stage, participants acquired new categories and learned labels for half of them. In the second, experimental stage, participants performed the visual search task. In total, we conducted three studies where we varied the manner of target designation. Our results show that participants do a search faster if a target is located among distractors which are also labeled, or else non-labeled, like the target (experiment 1a). In trials where there were two targets on a screen, located among labeled and non labeled distractors, participants tended to fnd a labeled target among non-labeled distractors frst (experiment 1a). Unfortunately, those results were not replicated in the following experiments (experiments 1b and 2), where the search task was harder for participants.
98-108
Abstract
The work is devoted to the investigation of electroencephalographic activity of executive functions in problem solving. We compared differences in solving insight and algorithmic problems. In the work of A. Lavric and colleagues it was shown that the activity of the executive functions is higher when subjects face algorithmic problems (it is necessary to operate with elements of the problem and to save representations in the working memory) and is not essential for insight problem solving. This study is an adaptation of Lavric's study with Russian-speaking participants. Our fndings contradict the results of the original research: the executive function is more prominent in insight problem solving. We conclude that the executive function accompanies the problemsolving process in the case of both algorithmic and creative problems. Differences in data obtained from different samples are the result of using the computer version of the experimental stimuli and of the type of problems chosen for the experiment. The study identifed criteria that might warrant further investigation in fnding answers to the question about the role of the executive functions in insight problem solving.
109-113 2
Abstract
This text serves as a short introduction to the journal section “Personal Diaries and the Varieties of the Soviet Self”. The introduction briefy discusses how the study of diaries developed in European humanities of the 20th century, and how, at various times, this type of study placed emphasis on historical, literary and anthropological methods. We show that the diaries analyzed by this section's authors are a new type of sources that was not taken into account during the previous stage of discussions regarding the “Soviet self”.
114-135 6
Abstract
Based on the diaries of Al. Dmitriev, this article presents an attempt to reconstruct the life-world of a Soviet worker during the period 1941–1955. In terms of his social status, Alexander Dmitriev belonged to the new type of labor aristocracy. His “I” is a fusion of Soviet culturedness and the traditions of settlement-based old Russian craftsmen. The cultural dominant of his personality is individualism armed with the techniques of survival in the Soviet environment. His strategy of conduct is built in accordance with his personal economic interest. Dmitriev has many advantageous social traits: education, profession, social status, gender, experience in urban socialization. He uses them as resources for survival and social advancement. The author concludes that the result of the Soviet cultural revolution was restoration of a petty bourgeois culture that had adapted to the Soviet way of life.
136-157 2
Abstract
This article analyses the diary of Nina Lashina (1906–1990), which was published in 2011. This work could be termed a diary of “everyday life” or a “diary of an ordinary woman”. When analyzing this text, the author presupposes that a diary narrative is a space where an ongoing process of self-identifcation is taking place. However, this narrative always involves leitmotif models and biographical schemes that are essential for the author of the diary, and self-description and self-representation are carried out within this framework. The article demonstrates that the key concepts in Lashina's diary are those of “ordinary life” and “women's everyday life”, and a central legitimizing metanarrative is the history of a mother's self-sacrifce.
We interpret deliberate marginalizing of one's own Self through the concept of “ordinariness” as one of the tactics of “wandering out”, according Michel de Certeau's terminology. These tactics manage to redefne the institutional efforts implemented by the Power. At the same time, Lashina's diary demonstrates her deep dependence on dominant notions of the woman's role — self-sacrifcing mother and responsible wife, one who constantly controls the life of her husband and family. Such matriarchal practices are depicted by the author of the diary as inevitable and necessary for survival. On the other hand, the idea of “heroic life” and the hagiographical model of biographical narrative are used in this text not to describe civic virtues or or a religious spiritual exploit, but rather to represent the everyday female existence engaged in ceaseless efforts to overcome chaos, the entropy of everyday life.
We interpret deliberate marginalizing of one's own Self through the concept of “ordinariness” as one of the tactics of “wandering out”, according Michel de Certeau's terminology. These tactics manage to redefne the institutional efforts implemented by the Power. At the same time, Lashina's diary demonstrates her deep dependence on dominant notions of the woman's role — self-sacrifcing mother and responsible wife, one who constantly controls the life of her husband and family. Such matriarchal practices are depicted by the author of the diary as inevitable and necessary for survival. On the other hand, the idea of “heroic life” and the hagiographical model of biographical narrative are used in this text not to describe civic virtues or or a religious spiritual exploit, but rather to represent the everyday female existence engaged in ceaseless efforts to overcome chaos, the entropy of everyday life.
158-184 1
Abstract
The article discusses how “ménage à trois” as a literary motif functions in Ivan Goncharov's novel Oblomov. This motif is an important aspect of the many-sided reception of Rousseau's Julie, or the New Heloise in the Russian novel. As intermediate links of this receptive couple (Rousseau — Goncharov) we consider different circumstances of how the frst and the second halves of Rousseau's novel were perceived in European and Russian literary and cultural contexts. We also discuss those literary and historical instances in XVIIIth — XIXth Russian culture that were based on the idea of that it was (im)possible to fnd love and create a family utopia in the form of a ménage à trois.
185-198
Abstract
This articles focuses on Evgenii Kharitonov's Ph.D. dissertation, “Pantomime in Instruction of Film Actors”, which he defended in 1972. Kharitonov (1941–1981) is now known as a poet, playwright, and prose writer, and as the founder of contemporary Russian gay literature. We discuss the meanings of his dissertation in some different contexts: Soviet studies of theater pantomime from the 1960s–1980s, represented by monographs and textbooks by Alexander Rumnev, Elena Markova and Ilya Rutberg; as well as Kharitonov's own works. Unlike most authors of Soviet studies of pantomime, Kharitonov implemented the structural-semiotic method in his work. However, his consideration of pantomime as a representation of “natural”, “non-restricted” human movements covertly contradicts the culture-centrism common to the Soviet structuralists of the 1960s. We show that Kharitonov's theory of pantomime and his prose and poetry were united by the author's interest in the “non-normativity” of human gestures, behavior and consciousness. Apparently, Kharitonov inherited this interest from the well-known dancer and director Alexander Rumnev, one of his mentors. Rumnev was active in the 1920s and 1960s.
ISSN 2412-9410 (Print)
ISSN 2782-1765 (Online)
ISSN 2782-1765 (Online)