Lomonosov Psychology Journal, 2023, 1, 303.

Background. The COVID-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented model for psychology to explore the factors of adherence to recommendations, vaccination and protective actions in a situation of uncertainty.

Objective. The aim of the study is to reveal the relationship between attitudes towards health and readiness for treatment with adherence to recommendations and protective actions during the pandemic.

Methods. In November-December 2020, 523 respondents aged 18 to 65 filled in scales to assess their tendency for monitoring information about the pandemic, level of anxiety caused by the pandemic, vaccination, and protective actions during the pandemic, their readiness for vaccination, illness-related locus of control, self-efficacy in relation to treatment, “hypochondriac discourse”, as well as readiness for treatment and ideas on the specifics of medication.

Results. Respondents were more willing to actively comply with safety recommendations if they (1) had external locus of control in treatment — this effect was both direct and indirect, which implied higher pandemic anxiety; (2) believed in alternative medicine methods; (3) declared readiness for treatment; and also (4) valued health care as a resource conservation, which influenced compliance indirectly — through the higher pandemic anxiety. Adherence to self-isolation was higher with health being more important as a means of protection against risk (both direct and indirect effects) and indirectly (because of greater pandemic anxiety) as well as with an external locus of control for treatment. Vaccination readiness depended on the internal locus of control for illness causes, lower internal and higher external locus of control for treatment, and also distrust toward the medical system. At the same time, mistrust in the medical system was characterized by two indirect effects in relation to lower readiness for vaccination: on the one hand, distrust was associated with greater anxiety about the pandemic and therefore greater readiness for vaccination, and on the other hand, with greater anxiety about vaccination and therefore less readiness for it. Respondents reported better lifestyle control in cases of more pronounced self-efficacy, confidence in the importance of taking care of health and resorting to the methods of alternative medicine, as well as declared readiness for treatment. Outdoor trips were associated with self-efficacy and confidence in the importance of treatment with alternative medicine. Both of these effects were not explained by pandemic anxiety and vaccination anxiety.

Conclusion. Active and passive adherence to recommendations, as well as other ways of caring for health, depend differently on attitudes towards health and readiness for treatment.

Background. The present study of professional identity in the representatives of the information technology sphere is connected to the problem of directing modern specialists in the world of work which is rapidly changing and structuring the system of tasks in a new way. This requires the compliance of the psychological characteristics of an employee with computerised forms of job functions. The present work aims to research the features of professional identity among representatives of the information technology sector with different job experience in order to understand identity transformations during the professionalization in a more profound way.

Methods. The respondents are offered to fill in a questionnaire for social status data, the «Trust in technology» questionnaire (Akimova, 2020), semantic differentials for the evaluation of one’s personal qualities (Ginetsinsky, 1994), and the evaluation of oneself as a professional (Serkin, 2016).

Sample. It has totaled to 52 respondents studying and working in the field of Network and System Management, Innovation, Information Systems and Technologies related to the IT sphere.

Results. The data demonstrate two statistically significant trends in the development of the professional identity in the representatives of the IT sphere: the linear and the structural ones. The first trend shows the gradual entry into one's own specialty which is expressed in a consistent complication of ideas about oneself as a professional, the growth in confidence in one's own qualification, competence, and knowledge. The second trend is supported by restructuring the emerging ideas about oneself in the profession with the growth of real practical experience. Unlike students, in working specialists, it is expressed in «ignoring» personal characteristics and emphasizing professionally important qualities against the background of a growing confidence in technology and the degree of mastery.

Conclusion. The common feature of all the participants under the study is a positive attitude towards the introduction of information technologies and experiencing difficulties in mastering them. Professional identity of the respondents belonging to the same professional field which is characterized by rapid and diverse change has got features that distinguish different stages of professionalisation.

The results obtained make it possible to adjust the training programmes of IT specialists, taking into account the required competences as well as personal characteristics in order to approach the model of a specialist in the IT field.

Background. The uniqueness of human face perception mechanisms and their variability has become a subject for extensive investigation and wide discussion in the recent decades. While now the concept that human face is perceived as a whole is taken as a fact, the same cannot be said about the structure and methods to measure holistic processing. In the present study the factor of symmetry is investigated as one of the possible aspects of configural processing of facial perception.

Objective. The aim of the study was to apply the inversion method to the investigation of how distortion of facial configuration perception impacts the rating of its symmetry/asymmetry.

Sample. 54 participants (24 female and 30 male) aged 18 to 68 (mean age 26) took part in the study.

Method. An intra-individual experimental design was used. Participants rated asymmetry of normally oriented and inverted face-stimuli on a five-point scale. To set the symmetry level, left eye and/or mouth regions were rotated around their fiducial points, there were three rotation angles for each feature region. Zero asymmetry faces were created by blending halves of normal and mirror images of the sample face-stimulus. The mean asymmetry subjective ratings were submitted to repeated measures analysis of variance and paired samples t-test.

Results. The study revealed significant differences in the asymmetry ratings of upright and inverted faces: normal upright faces with rotated features were rated as more asymmetric compared to inverted. Thus, we may conclude that symmetry perception is affected by inversion. It was also revealed, that the effect of the eye region and the lips region rotation were not equivalent: the higher the level rotation of the eye area was the more significant the difference between the rates of upright and inverted faces was, while rotation of the lips area did not result in higher difference between the rates.

Conclusion. The observed face-inversion effect in the perception of symmetry in facial stimuli suggests that (a)symmetry is a component of holistic (configurative) processing of human face perception. At the same time, the contributions of individual features to the overall facial configuration may differ.

Background. Symptoms of compulsive repetition or “intrusion” (unwanted thoughts, flashbacks, images, disturbing dreams, nightmares) are often considered as a distinctive feature of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Cognitive models claim that PTSD symptoms are stimulated and become chronic due to an overly negative assessment of the traumatic experience and/or its consequences. The relevance of the study is due to the possibility of using external assessments as an early psychological aid tool.

Objective. The work aims to repeat the study of the University of New South Wales (Australia) on the degree of influence caused by various types of external cognitive assessment of obsessive memories on the frequency and intensity of their subsequent occurrence. The research targets to create a precedent in Russia for the study of traumatic stress in the laboratory.

Sample. 30 healthy psychology students participated in the study. Their stress level results did not exceed the level of normative values.

Methods. The main method of research was the experiment. Participants who received one of two preliminary instructions giving either a benevolent or a control assessment of obsessive memories were offered to watch a film with scenes of a real car accident. Having watched a traumatic film, the participants solved a problem on cognitive interference. Then the presence/absence and intensity of intrusive memories were recorded with the use of the Intrusion subscale of the Traumatic Event Impact Assessment Scale (IES-R) and two questions on the beliefs about intrusions.

Results. The study showed that watching a traumatic film causes an equally low level of obsessive memories in groups with positive and control instructions.

Conclusion. The results of two studies (University of New South Wales and Lomonosov Moscow State University) showed similar trends regarding the level of intensity of obsessive memories for groups with benevolent and control instructions. The study provides initial causal evidence that a maladaptive external assessment can enhance the occurrence of obsessive memories, despite the fact that a benevolent or control interpretation of symptoms has no such side effect. This observation is important to take into account when conducting psychoeducation. The practice of studying traumatic stress in the laboratory is evaluated as positive and recommended for use in Russia.

Background. Many studies have been devoted to the relationship between the perception of facial expression and emotional intelligence (EI). As a rule, the study of this issue involved the tasks of expression recognition with stimuli expressing strong basic emotions. However, differences in the success of expression recognition in groups with different levels of EI are not always significantly pronounced. This may be connected to the fact, that the recognition of basic expressions is too easy for subjects with both high and low EI scores. In order to conduct a more effective study of this issue, it is necessary to complicate the task of facial expressions recognition. To this end, one of the configurational effects of E. Brunswick stating that neutral faces with different configurations of facial features are perceived as emotionally colored, can be used. Under these conditions, a more adequate task is not to assess the success of expression recognition, but to assess the attractiveness of the face, which is closely related to the perceived facial expression. Thus, faces with positive expressions are more often rated as attractive, and vice versa. It is assumed that the study of the perception of neutral faces will reveal the features of the relationship between the perception of facial expression and EI.

Objective. The study is meant to explore the relationship between the perception of facial attractiveness and EI. It was assumed that subjects with different levels of EI would evaluate the attractiveness of neutral faces differently.

Sample. The experiment involved 49 people (20 men and 29 women, in the age range of 18–35 years).

Methods. Images of faces were presented on a monitor screen. Eye movements were recorded during stimuli presentation. The level of EI was assessed based on the results of the “Test of emotional intelligence” (TEI) (Sergienko et al., 2019). We calculated indicators of TEI for all branches of EI (the abilities to recognize, understand, manage, and use emotions), as well as the total score of EI. An analysis of face attractiveness scores as well as eye movement parametres (duration and number of fixations, duration of saccades) was carried out for two groups of subjects with high and low EI scores.

Results. It has been shown that there is an inverse correlation between the ability to recognize emotions and the average scores of facial attractiveness: subjects from the group with a high ability to recognize emotions rated the attractiveness significantly lower than the group in which this ability was less developed. Other EI ability branches (understanding emotions, managing emotions, and using emotions), as well as the total EI score, were not significantly associated with facial attractiveness scores. Various explanations of the resulting phenomenon were discussed. There were no significant differences in the duration and number of fixations, in the amplitude of saccades, as well as in the distribution of dwell time in the Areas of Interest (AOI) when looking at facial images between groups with high and low EI scores.

Conclusion. It was found that subjects with a higher ability to recognize emotions tend to perceive neutral faces as unattractive. Also, no significant differences were found in eye movement scores for groups with high and low EI scores. The absence of differences in eye movements in groups was most likely to be explained by weak relationship (or lack of relationship) between visual perception and such a high-level construct as EI.

Background. The increase in migration flows and the general mobility growth in the modern world exacerbates the existing problems and causes a number of new ones in the sphere of interaction between cultures and religions. Former homogeneous in terms of cultural and religious background regions become multi-confessional and multicultural territories. Modern people are usually not so deeply rooted in traditional confessions in accordance, with their place of birth, but rather choose their religion themselves and can even construct an individualized religion based on the elements of various confessions. So, it is relevant to analyze individual trajectories of the religiosity development and the factors influencing them.

Objective. The study aims to qualitatively analyze individual religious and spiritual development and construct an empirical typology of religious trajectories in conditions of confessional and cultural diversity.

Methods. The qualitative research design was chosen. The method of semi-structured interview was used to collect data. Basing on the theory of faith development by J. Fowler, the concept of religious styles by H. Streib and the dynamic model by K. Reich we developed an analytical tool that combines macro- and micro-dynamics of individual religiosity. The study was carried out as a case study, cases were compared with each other and grouped into types based on the common features found in them. The final interpretation was obtained by integrating the interpretations of several researchers with different positions regarding religions.

Sample. In total, more than 40 semi-structured interviews with Christians and Muslims were conducted, transcribed and analyzed. The article presents 9 cases aged 20 to 38 (27.8±5.8; 6 women, 3 men) that represent two types.

Results. The article describes two (out of four developed in the study) types of individual religiosity dynamics: “religion as an individual choice” and “religion by inheritance”. The respondents of the first type, although they were christened in childhood according to the Orthodox tradition, were brought up in non-religious families. In their youth they choose a confession not typical for their parents, relatives and close friends. Their common feature is a certain distance from their peers during childhood and adolescence. The dynamics of their individual religiosity is associated with the search for their own “existential territory”, “spiritual home”. The respondents of the second type were brought up in religious families. The dynamics of their individual religiosity is determined by an intertwining of psychological factors (the need for separation from parents, overcoming infantile projections), and the actual religious (spiritual) search. The features, problems and challenges characterizing each of two types are analyzed.

Conclusion. The analytical tool proposed to construct typology makes it possible to explore the general psychological factors that determine the trajectories of development, without ignoring the importance of spiritual search. The results obtained in the study open up the room to conceptualize the ways of spiritual development in the context of two main processes related to each other — mastering tradition and separating from it.

Practical application of the results. The study describes the challenges and difficulties faced by young believers that may be helpful for psychological counseling for Christians and Muslims. The authors also hope that the article will be useful to those who are engaged in the fields of secular and religious education.

Background. This article presents data from a longitudinal study of understanding mixed emotion in preschool and primary school-age children, as well as the relationship of emotion understanding to the development of thinking. Understanding mixed emotions is viewed as children's ability to recognize and interpret emotions consisting of two simultaneous emotions of different valences. In contrast to the majority of other works following Piaget's theory, our work, follows the structural-dialectical approach and examines how the understanding of mixed emotions is connected not only to formal operations, but also to dialectical actions which allow us to look into the way a child forms the unity of two opposite emotions.

Objective of the study was to analyze how understanding mixed emotions develops in children aged 5-6 and 7-8 and to assess the nature of changes in the relationship between understanding mixed emotions and indicators of cognitive development in these two age groups.

Sample. Data were obtained by diagnosing 80 children, including 42 boys (52.5%) between 2019 and 2022.

Methods. Preschoolers’ understanding of mixed emotions was assessed using a set of tasks consisting of three stories whose characters experienced atypical emotional experiences (Veraksa et al., 2022a). To diagnose the formal-logical thinking, the Probability, Scale and Cylinder methods (Piaget, Inhelder, 1951; Piaget et al., 1948), which were part of the classic Piaget tests, were applied. The development of dialectical thinking was assessed with the techniques “Drawing an Unusual Tree”, “What can be at the same time?”, and “Cycles” (Veraksa et al., 2022b).

Results. Analysis revealed that children in the first grade were more successful in completing mixed emotion tasks than children in the older preschool group. It was found that the success in comprehension tasks for mixed emotions among older preschoolers and first graders was related to the development of multiplication operations (formal-logical operations) and operations of mediation, serialization, and reference (dialectical operations).

Conclusion. The peculiarities of the connection between the understanding of mixed emotions and the development of formal and dialectical thinking in children aged 5-6 and 7-8 were revealed.

Background. The concept of "professionally important quality" (PIQ) of a person, introduced in the beginning of the past century in industrial psychology, is now also used in psychology of professional sports. Modern studies of PIQ are based on an intuitive, empirical understanding of what the qualities or properties of a person are, how they arise, function and develop in sports acts, what the criteria of their importance in achieving high results in sports are. This concept of PIQ does not explain the correlation between particular qualities or their connections to indicators of success in performance. This creates the need and urgency of searching for and developing such a theory of PIQ, which would reveal their essence as well as the underlying correlations between possible psychological mechanisms of PIQ in connection with the success of sports acts.

Objective. The purpose of this study is to analyze the existing definitions of the concept of PIQ in professional activity and sports acts. The article seeks to formulate a theoretical concept of PIQ, as well as to justify the application of this concept not only to athletes, but also to other main components of sports activity (to their objects, tools, motives, goals, etc.). This goal also includes the description of the differences between the methods of constructing empirical and theoretical concepts.

Methods. When developing the theoretical concept of PIQ (as well as other concepts of the theory of acts), the method of constructing concepts "from the general to the particular" is used, which is similar to the method of "ascent from the abstract to the concrete" (Zinoviev, 2002). The concepts of "property", "quality" and PIQ are consistently built on the basis of a more general concept of "interaction" with the world, which is interpreted, as mutual influence, leading to a change in people and the world in some directions. Interaction is also considered as the main dynamic relationship between people and the world, in which social, psychological and other properties and relationships of people, including their PIQ, are generated, manifested and developed.

Results. The connection between the concepts of "property" and "interaction" is established in the article by identifying the properties of a person with the directions of the changes occurring in human interactions with the components of the world. The result of a person's change in the direction corresponding to a certain property correlates with the value of the property, which can be expressed in numbers or described in words.

When analyzing the concepts of PIQ developed in applied psychology, the following definition was formulated and justified: PIQ is the quality of the components of sports acts that is "necessary or useful" for their successful development or implementation and can be statistically significantly related to the indicators of success in the act. The concept of anti-PIQ is logically dual. This quality is "not necessary and harmful" to achieve success in mastering or performing a sports act. The proposed concept of PIQ expands the traditional idea of these qualities, which are usually correlated only with the subjects of professional acts. The article states the possibility to expand the "subject attribution" of the concept of PIQ, which contributes to more accurate and differentiated description and diagnosis. The concepts of professionally important conditions and methods of performing sports acts are considered on the example of their diagnostics on a simulator with the elements of virtual reality.

Conclusion. The main conclusion of the study is that empirical methods (correlation, etc.) of studying professionally important qualities of people can and should be supplemented by theoretical methods in studying these qualities. This will contribute to a more accurate diagnosis based on understanding of the mechanisms of their development and "binding" into individually specific systems.

Background. In recent years, the resting state of the subject in the absence of obvious external sensory stimuli and cognitive tasks has become the subject matter of extensive study. Interest in studying the subjective aspect of calm wakefulness has increased since the emergence of neuroimaging studies indicating the existence of a cerebral network that increases its activity in resting state. There is a variety of methodological approaches to assess the content of the stream of thoughts in calm wakefulness. The issue of elaborating a universal tool to register the subjective aspect of the restful state remains relevant.

Objective. The study aims to analyze the existing methodological approaches to the research of the subjective part of the resting state.

Methods. Review and analysis of existing research into the content of the stream of thoughts in calm wakefulness.

Results. Studies of the free stream of consciousness in a state of calm wakefulness, such as questionnaires, structured interview, reports on the current state at the time of a random signal have been analysed in the current work.

Conclusion. The conducted literature review demonstrated the methodological diversity of assessment approaches to the subjective aspect of the restful state, and also showed the need to take into account various factors affecting the reliability of the results obtained. The necessity of applying additional methods to solve specific research problems as well as the possibility of developing a high-quality universal diagnostic tool to analyze the content of the stream of consciousness in rest are being discussed.

Background. The growing interest in the historical development of social systems requires an assessment of the possibilities for a quantitative comparison of psychological characteristics in a person and society of different eras.

Objective. The study aims to reveal the structure of social values and features of contemporary images according to verbal and visual texts of the cultures in the past.

Methods. Behavior characteristics describing G. Hofstede’s basic cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 1980) were used to encode texts. Psychosemantic assessment of the works of art perception was carried out with the use of a scale based on the multifaceted Five Factor Model of personality by P. Costa, R. McCrae (FFM; NEO-PI-R questionnaire adapted by V.E. Orel et al.) and the scale of individual image perception in media communication by L.V. Matveeva et al.

Sample. A) Ancient Greek and Roman texts of 7^th c. BC — 4^th c. AD, Old Russian texts of 11^th–17^th centuries, Byzantine texts of 5^th–15^th centuries and texts of medieval European culture according to the 17^th c. — a total of 205 separate texts.

B) Visual stimulus material on cultures: Ancient Greece (7^th–1th c. BC); Ancient Rome (7th c. BC — 4th c. AD); Byzantium (5^th–15^th cc.); Russia (11–19 cc.); Europe (9^th, 11^th–17^th cc.) was assessed by respondents of different ages from 14 to 70 (N = 68).

Results. Reliability analysis and confirmatory factor analysis generally supported the structure of the five-factor model of personality and the basic dimensions of culture by G. Hofstede on the material of historical texts and works of art. The least stable dimensions are Hofstede’s Masculinity and Openness to Experience factors of the personality model. An exploratory factorial analysis of data on historical texts yielded a factor structure reflecting specific aspects of Hofstede’s dimensions. In general, the correlations between personality traits and basic cultural dimensions described by G. Hofstede and R. McCraе (Хофстеде, МакКрэй, 2010) are reproduced. The differences mainly relate to the FFM factor “Extraversion”. The features of social situations described in historical narratives that are not fixed by the characteristics of behavior that describe the basic dimensions of culture according to Hofstede are discussed.

Conclusion. The subdimensions of modern models of personality and cultural values make it possible to obtain a fairly adequate quantitative assessment of the cultures of the past.

Background. In the modern psychology of coping, there is a strong need to create a tool to measure appraisals of difficult life tasks (DLT). The DLT is one of the most common types of life situations associated with the achievement of significant goals.

Objective. The aim is to adapt the questionnaire, which measures the cognitive appraisal of difficult life situations, to research special types of difficulties (life tasks) and to estimate psychometric properties of the developed version of the questionnaire.

Sample. The study involved 1032 respondents aged 17 to 67 years (M_age = 23.86; SD = 6.53; 686 women), students and specialists of various profiles.

Methods. The research had a survey design. Three questionnaires were used in the work: “Appraisal Criteria of the Difficulty of One’s Life Situation”, “Types of Orientations in Difficult Situation”, “Ways of Coping” questionnaire. To process quantitative data we used confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, Cronbach’s α coefficient, Student's t-test, Cohen's d coefficient. Content analysis was used to differentiate between the types of situations.

Results. A new structure of the questionnaire for appraisal criteria has been developed. This structure corresponds to empirical data on life tasks and includes 7 scales: 1) general features of difficult life tasks, 2) uncontrollability of the situation; 3) unclearness of the situation; 4) need for a quick and active response; 5) difficulty of making a decision (dilemma); 6) difficulty of predicting the situation; 7) negative emotions. The scales showed a sufficient consistency (Cronbach’s α value varied from 0.548 to 0.805). Correlations, descriptive statistics of the scales, and a pattern of score distribution are presented. Differences in the appraisal of the difficulties by men and women were revealed on the following scales: general features, negative emotions, unclearness of the situation, and difficulty of making a decision (women have higher scores on average). Convergent validity testing revealed expected relationships between the scales of the questionnaire and other constructs. General features of difficult life tasks include the significance of the situation and its consequences, great effort, anxiety, and subject’s influence on the consequences of the situation.

Conclusion. This study tested a questionnaire that measured subjective appraisal of a difficult life tasks. The reliability and validity of the questionnaire were confirmed. The questionnaire can be used to analyse and compare life tasks of different types, as well as to develop models that include parameters to assess difficulty and coping strategies.

Background. This study examines risk factors for the mental health of a student in the condition of increased academic load. Introduction of new technologies and multilingualism in educational technologies influence emotional life of an adolescent. The overall excellent performance of a pupil may hide risks of adaptation disruption.

Objective is to discover anxiety and aggressiveness manifestations among adolescents studying under high academic load.

Methods. Analysis of the psychological characteristics of adolescents at risk for maladaptive perfectionism was carried out with quantitative and qualitative research methods. Applied techniques and methods involved the method by Prikhozhan to study the Self-Image of teens in the age group of 12–17 years; Buss — Perry Aggression Questionnaire as adapted by S.N. Yenikolopov; APS-R Perfectionism Scale as adapted by S.N. Yenikolopov; incomplete sentences; the Hand Test; pathopsychological test; extended clinical conversation; Torrance figurative subtests; Sociometry.

Sample. The study involved 245 students of the 8th grade of four schools. Two schools offered in-depth study of 2 foreign languages and the other secondary schools did not.

Results. According to the research, the markers of maladaptive behavior of a successful pupil are trait anxiety, maladaptive perfectionism, hostility, and anger. About 20% of the participants fall into the risk group for anxiety. Objectively, their performance is high, though teenagers have doubts about their success, demonstrate tendency for delaying, inability to start doing something. In this case the anxiety is caused by fear of failing to meet self-imposed high standards. Failure to comply with your requirements and рrocrastination is higher in schools with advanced studies of two foreign languages. Self-esteem anxiety is related to the components of Self-Image: intelligence, situation at school, communication, self-confidence. Non-conformity to self-imposed standards and procrastination are related to anger.

Conclusion. In two schools, the number of highly anxious teenagers ranges from 12 % to 20 %. In the gymnasium, only highly anxious teenagers were found. Anxiety correlates with various indicators of aggressiveness. Slaney’s procrastination/anxiety scores are positively correlated with adolescent anger and hostility. Indicators of maladaptive perfectionism according to Slaney are associated with the components of the Self-Concept. Objectively, the success of the students is good, but teenagers doubt their success, they show a tendency to procrastinate, an inability to take action. In this case, the anxiety is caused by the fear of not meeting the high standards set for oneself. The markers of the maladaptive state of a highly anxious student are maladaptive perfectionism, hostility, and anger. According to the results of qualitative research methods, destructive personality tendencies can be observed in highly anxious adolescents. The manifestations of anxiety and aggressiveness of the surveyed adolescents are similar in all schools. Failure to comply with your requirements and рrocrastination is higher in schools with advanced studies of two foreign languages.