The study performed a comprehensive examination of interrelationships among intelligence, motivation, and personality traits in problem solving that requires a combination of prognostic activity and following logical rules.

Objective. To determine the role of motivation, personality traits, and intelligence in predicting choice of strategies and the effectiveness of problem solving (using the Wason selection task). 

Method. Seventy-five undergraduate and graduate students from Moscow and Saint Petersburg participated in the study (age M = 21.2, SD = 2.6) and were asked to perform a problem-solving task on a computer. They also received a set of questionnaires: the Ten Item Personality Inventory (Big Five), Personal Preferences Schedule (motivation), two subtests aimed at measuring verbal crystallized intelligence (Mill-Hill and Verbal Analogies) and fluid intelligence (Three-Dimensional Rotation, Matrix Reasoning).

Results. Fluid intelligence showed a positive correlation with extraversion, while verbal intelligence showed a negative correlation with agreeableness and conscientiousness. These three personality traits were also related to problem-solving effectiveness. Fluid intelligence showed a negative correlation with guilt, while verbal intelligence showed a positive correlation with achievement motivation. Intelligence scores were not related to the success of problem solving in the Wason selection task, and neither were emotional stability and openness to experience. 

Effectiveness and the duration of decision making in different attempts to perform the task were correlated with motivation of autonomy, guilt, aggression, and, at the statistical trend level, with motivation of achievement and intraception.

Conclusion. The data largely supported the general hypothesis regarding the role of non-specific motivational tendencies in solving the Wason selection task. For this deterministic problem, we found positive correlations of decision making with motivation of autonomy and endurance, whereas negative correlations were obtained for motivation of aggression.

The article analyzes the concepts of “Ability”, “Professional suitability”, “Professional psychological selection”, in the development and understanding of which a significant contribution was made by E.A. Klimov. Professional psychological selection is considered as a system, the systemforming factor of which is the professional suitability of a person who chooses a specific profession. The content of the concept of ability includes the motivation and experience (knowledge, skills, and abilities) of the individual, by analogy with the dynamic functional structure of personality developed by K.K. Platonov. Its own definition of the term “Abilities” is presented.

Process of generation of activity with allocation of problems which it is possible to correlate with concepts need, motive, motivation, prompting to activity is analyzed. Affirms, that generation of activity assumes presence at the subject of the behavioral problem arising at actualization of needs, at acceptance by the person of requirements of a society or under the decision of the person. The motivation is understood as mental maintenance for the process of activity generation.

The paper presents an ontological conceptualization of the phenomenon of extremity, which is considered in the context of personality transformation in the trans-ordinary world. Methodological principles and scientific logic of conceptualization are proposed and specified in the following concepts: the experience of being and non-being, personality work, meaning and behavioral personality work, positive and negative extremity, the meaning of life and the meaning of death, the nature of the construction of psychological effects of extremity — psychic trauma and personal transformation.

The article continues the discussion of complex social and cultural motivating systems, which took start in the author’s previous paper. The ideas of social and cultural motivation in sociology, ethnomethodology and narrative approach are analyzed. Relying on M. Foucault’s concept of ‘dispositif’ and on the numerous data, collected in sociology, social psychology, studies of culture and narrative therapy, a three-level model of social and cultural motivating is suggested, which distinguishes between the basic level of a dispositif, it’s conscious level and the actual social field. The model makes it possible to coordinate different mechanisms of social motivating. 

The article deals with the complex social and cultural motivating systems, which were described in sociology, social psychology and the studies of culture but are hardly known within psychology of motivation. M. Weber’s concept of “ethos”, K. Levin’s concept of “social field” and M. Foucault’s concept of “dispositif” are analyzed in detail. 

Motives of the terrorist activity are revealed through the analysis of psychological mechanisms of realization of basic human needs at the stages of involvement in a terrorist organization and participation in them. Psychological appeal of terrorism in the context of the problem of the influence of modern technology on the dynamics of the boundaries of the norm and pathology is discussed.