Vasilyev, Igor A.

Relevance. The motivation for this work stems from the fact that there are an insufficient number of tools in the Russian psychology that are suitable to investigate the content of human goals.

Objective. Development of a new method for investigating the content of human goals.

Methods. The method of incomplete sentences; clinical conversation; a modification of the projective technique of R. Emmons "Assessment of Personal Aspirations".

Results. A modification of the method of R. Emmons "Assessment of Personal Aspirations" is carried out. The changes made in the proposed version concern not only the incomplete sentences presented to the respondent for their completion, but also the scales of evaluation of personal aspirations (goals): their content, sequence of presentation, and the assessments used. For the analysis of human goals the following 17 scales are introduced: importance, clarity, difficulty, effort, the ability to focus, the degree of enthusiasm, joy, frustration, success in recent times, the probability of success, the influence of circumstances, control over one’s actions, progress, importance for one’s family, the degree of social utility, support, external-internal cause. The estimates of the proposed scales use six-point graduation: from 0 to 5. All the innovations made in the methodology are justified and the necessity of their implementation is shown. The author's interpretation of the data obtained includes: analysis of the content of the selected aspirations (goals) and their classification, which consists in revealing regularly reproduced goals, analog goals and development goals; analysis of the goals by separate scales on the basis of the respondent's evaluation judgments and by the connection of scales with each other; assessment of the influence of the goals on each other, which becomes harmonious or disharmonious. The approbation of the method and possible spheres of its application are discussed.

Conclusions. The declared method is correct, has a great potential for expanding the interpretation and allows one to better understand both the content of the goals and the means for achieving them.

The studies held within the O.K. Tikhomirov’s school in psychology of thinking pro vide an approach toward solving the following problem: what are the actual positions and the roles the emotions play in human thinking processes, and in general — in the systemic interactions between human beings and the universe. The paper says that human emotions reflect, or provide dynamic models of such properties of the elements of the external world, which represent neither specific subjects nor objects, but instead belong to the psychological system «active human being in the universe». The correspondence between a human being and the universe is reflected in emotions and in systemic psychological properties, such as meanings, senses, and values. The paper discusses psychological mechanisms of emotional reflection of these properties.

The contribution of the O.K. Tikhomirov’s school in the field of psychology of thinking is analyzed, and the main elements of the personal meanings theory of thinking are presented: namely, personalityrelated determination of thinking, regulative function of emotions, actual genesis of goalsetting and senseformation processes, creative thinking, and the impact of information technologies on the transformations of intellectual and communicative activities.