Petrenko V.F.

Relevance. The problem of finding the meaning of human existence is relevant at all times and in all Nations. The study of this problem has a pronounced interdisciplinary character. In the presented work interests of psychology of art, semiotics of cinema, psychology of religion, ethics intersect, and for processing of the received data the modern mathematical apparatus of multidimensional statistics is used.

Objective. Based on the perception of the film on the Buddhist theme to explore the depth of its understanding by a group of young Russians: to highlight the system of personal constructs (Kelly) perception of the film; to determine the cognitive complexity of the group consciousness of respondents-viewers; to analyze personal meanings that have arisen in different viewers with a particular understanding of the film.

Methods. We used methods of psychosemantic research using the method of triadic choice J. Kelly and the subsequent scaling of characters of the movie and the added roles on the personal designs made by respondents. The respondents, 38 graduate students, undergraduates and students of different faculties of Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Results. Application of the method of triadic choice G. Kelly made it possible to reveal a system of personal constructs and on their basis to build a semantic space, set by the basic categories-factors, through the prism of which the perception and awareness of the film. Received 8 interpretable factors, showing the elements of the fabric of the film and made the focus of understanding of the respondents: "Youth, inexperience — Wisdom, maturity", "Selfishness — Humanity", "Focus on the sacredness — Focus on secular life and society," "Passivity, inertia — Active life position", "Rationality — Following the passion", "Openness to experience — Conformism", "Afflicted, miserable — Enjoying life", "Masculinity — Femininity".

Conclusions. Viewers of a feature film realize its meaning in different ways and at different levels. Some are aware of it at the level of the storyline and evaluation of the characters; others are aware of the philosophical, existential meaning of the work and relate it to their spiritual quest. The work of art as a carrier of the meanings inherent in it requires the viewer to actively comprehend, initiates the work of thought, counter spiritual creativity of understanding.

The method “Fairy Semantic Differential”, during which a respondent should assess a number of fairy-tale characters according to a set of personal characteristics, is designed for the individual work of a psychologist with children 4—9 years old. Personality characteristics, according to which the characters are evaluated, are formulated in terms that parents, teachers use when dealing with children of this age. An analysis of the child's attitude to this or that fairy-tale character allows us to determine the specificity of his (her) moral-value sphere. The method also allows evaluating of real adults, who are significant for the child (parents, teachers, etc.) Comparison of fairy-tale characters' ratings with those of a significant adult makes it possible to reveal the specifics of the child's attitude to this adult. The article discusses quantitative indicators that can be calculated using the data of the answering the questionnaire. These indicators characterize the child’s personality, his (her) understanding of interpersonal relationships with surrounding people, dimension of categorical space of interpersonal perception, content of this categories and its hierarchy, the level of cognitive development in this area, the degree of socialization. The method allows measuring self-esteem indices. The results of an empirical study of Moscow primary schoolchildren using the method “Fairy Semantic Differential” are presented, during which a psychometric analysis of the indicators was conducted. It was shown that the cognitive complexity of interpersonal perception, determined by the method “Fairy Semantic Differential” is significantly higher among adults, does not correlate with intelligence tests. Socialization increases with age, is significantly higher among girls than among boys, partly correlates with known methods that measure the level of social adaptation of a child, the degree of differentiation of moral and conventional norms, verbal intellect. The analysis of self-esteem indices reveals significantly higher self-criticism among girls, than among boys.

Psychosemantic approach is most in demand when it comes to research collective representations, allowing to identify the underlying attitudes and stereotypes that are poorly reflected upon, or hidden because of social undesirability, and therefore difficult to diagnose. Political leaders’ perception is just such an example. The article deals with a number of images of contemporary political leaders and historical figures who have played at one time a significant role in world politics in the student audience perceptions of South Korea. Psychosemantic author’s technique “The image of a political leader” was used to obtain empirical data. 107 subjects (females and males) took part in the survey. The study included the construction of multi-dimensional semantic spaces, projecting the operational model of categorical perception structures of political leaders. For data analysis methods of multivariate statistics were used (principal component analysis and discriminant analysis).

The article is devoted to the mental attitude, implicit models and basic metaphors, which make specifics of a paradigm in any psychological theory. The author describes the social climate and moral values within that the psychological theories had been created. 

Purpose of this polemical article is author’s aim to view problem of consciousness (it’s history begins from the Classic greek, indian and Chinese philosophy, it has several thousands years history) in wide context of contemporary physics and semiotics. lack of significant advances in contemporary psychological science in the studying of consciousness demands, in our opinion, both philosophical, methodological bases of this problem and conceptual frameworks of this area. On the material of altered states of consciousness we study interpretation of consciousness as secondary perception in a sign form (what rises up to hegel) or interpretation consciousness as system of a meanings which is mediates world view (l. vygotsky, a. leontiev, a. luria).

The paper presents analysis of meditation as a form of achievement of altered state of consciousness by concentration of attention and «calming of mind». Buddhist psychopractices and contemporary psychotherapy are compared in the frame of work with imagination. The authors analyze Buddhist Tantric meditation on images of spiritual creatures, which allows the transformation of personal traits in probationer. It is argued that under the conditions of meditation the process of change of categorization takes place, right up to complete stoppage of categorization in nirvana.