2008. vol. 5. No. 4

The article is devoted to the research of visual semantics. Analogy is drawn between different forms of metaphorisation (so called tropes such as metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, litotes, oxymoron and the like) used in rhetoric and philology and visual forms of figurative material which, to our view, allow to produce a metaphor. The study is carried out in the domain of painting. It is stated that function of metaphorisation lies not only in embellishment of  speech as it is believed in philology and rhetoric but from the point of view of psychological science it serves as a means of transformation of creator's and spectator's consciousnesses, a means of  generation and transformation of a visual image sense. The question of energetic (magic) potential of image is raised.

The article describes the influence of reflection of images related to alcohol on the smell produced by a participant. The possibility of registration of ethanol vapor in participant's exhalation by means of alcohol tester «Drive-safe» as a result of the reflection of images, the smell and taste of alcohol is proved empirically. Two types of positive reactions to reflection of alcohol images are revealed. The first one is fixation on alcohol images that is the emergence of alcohol in exhalation and retention of this effect after the moment when a participant begins to think about something else. The second one is a classical switching that is the emergence of ethanol in exhalation when alcohol is thought about and its disappearance when the process of imagination has stopped. It was registered that in some cases the effect of image reflection could be stable and last up to 20 minutes after the experiment was finished. It was demonstrated that in a half the cases registration of alcohol vapor in exhalation is accompanied by its presence in saliva.

The article examines the contemporary points of contact between psychological and computational models of creativity. It demonstrates that the cognitive modeling notions are applied in interpretation of empirical phenomena of creativity in modern psychological studies. At the same time computer modeling as a means of evaluation and comparison of predictive power of models of creativity keeps aloof from psychological theorizing and empirical data of psychology.

The issues of moral consciousness contents, of the system of personality-relevant meanings and personal relations are of a special interest for scientific psychology. The given study of person's moral consciousness structure was carried out by means of reconstruction of parameters of personality-relevant meanings which form the basis for self-perception and perception of other people, objects and relationships. The author concludes that person's moral consciousness contents are defined by components of decency and civic position, culture-cognitive component, personality-oriented component. The comparison of factorial structures and locations of role positions in their semantic spaces allows to conclude that personality-relevant meanings which form the contents of constructs are contradictory and they depict the relationships that a person builds with its environment.

The study examined the relations between the peculiarities of interaction (such as context and type of resources), its aims (increase of production, a reward according to one's deserts, preserving good relations, and restoring of justice) and the choice of distributive justice norms. The results of the study allowed drawing several conclusions. Firstly, the interaction aim influences the choice of distributive justice norm which is used when the resources are shared between the participants. Secondly, two factors — interaction context and type of distributed resources — influence in their turn the choice of aim of interaction. Thirdly, the interaction context also influences the understanding of what it means «to restore justice».

The article presents the results of a study which was carried out on a Russian sample and dealt with a new socio-psychological construct «social axioms». The study showed that the universal structure of social axioms revealed by M. Bond and K. Leung in their cross-cultural studies is replicated on the Russian sample with some changes and it has certain specificity. In addition the authors have revealed some interrelations between the social axioms and the socio-economic and socio-political beliefs of Russians.