2023. vol. 20. No. 1

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, people began to use the Internet more actively. Accordingly, the question arises of how the accelerated digitalization, which became one of the results of the pandemic, has affected various aspects of our lives, including our attitude to the political power institutions. This article discusses the relation of Internet usage activity and the trust toward the political institutions in European countries. There are contradicting data in the literature regarding the relationship between institutional trust and the activity of using the Internet. We assumed that the direction of relationship is associated with the efficiency of the state power institutions. Based on the government effectiveness index, we have chosen five European countries with the highest government efficiency and five countries with the lowest. To assess the activity of using the Internet, we used data from the European Social Survey (ESS) that show the average frequency of Internet use during the month and the average duration of its use during the day. The dependent variables were respondents' assessments of their own trust in the different political institutions. Next, using multiple regression analysis, we assessed the relationship between two indicators of Internet use activity and trust in each of the institutions. The results of the regression analysis demonstrated that in the countries with low government efficiency, the activity of Internet usage is negatively associated with trust in various political institutions. In countries with high government efficiency, we found a positive relationship between Internet usage activity and institutional trust.

This study attempts to analyze the relationship between involvement in the Internet space and institutional trust among Russians of different generations. This study is based on data from Round 8 of the European Social Survey. The data was collected between 2016 and 2017. The sample for Russia includes 2,430 respondents. The analysis was carried out using the method of multiple linear regression. Our study showed that the nature of the relationship between Internet use and institutional trust varies depending on their generation. Young people (18-30 years old) are the most active Internet users and they also have the highest levels of institutional trust relative to other generations. Furthermore, an increase in the time spent on the Internet is associated with an increase in institutional distrust among young people. Representatives of the middle (31-44 years old) and older (45-80) ages use the Internet relatively less frequently and have lower levels of trust in institutions. At the same time, the involvement of these age groups in the Internet space is associated with higher levels of institutional trust. Understanding the nature of the relationship between institutional trust and Internet use is important for the government policy planning and strengthening institutional trust among Russians.

The COVID-19 pandemic has a significant negative impact on people’s life and behavior. This happens due to circumstances beyond the control of people, which lead to social isolation, increase in fear, anxiety, and other negative feelings and states. However, these negative feelings and states may have not only negative consequences, but also trigger prosocial behavior as a coping strategy. Prosocial behavior online is a relatively new domain of prosocial behavior developed due to an increase in ICT use in recent decades. Prosocial behavior online is more safe and less costly than offline one, and thus can be more relevant in times of the pandemic. This research was aimed at identifying the relationship between negative emotional states actualized by the COVID-19 pandemic (fear of COVID-19, stress, anxiety, depression) and prosocial behavior online. Cross-sectional study was conducted on a Russian sample (N=215) with the help of such instruments as Scale of Prosocial Behavior in an Online Context, Fear of COVID-19 scale and DASS-21. Regression analysis has shown that fear and anxiety contributed to prosocial behavior online, while depression inhibited it. The relationship between stress level and prosocial behavior online was not statistically significant. The results are discussed considering arousal potential of different negative emotional states.

The COVID-19 pandemic has unprecedentedly influenced social interactions, which can be implemented both in real life (offline) and on the Internet. Prosocial behavior as a type of social interactions has a positive impact on individuals and society, especially during crises. Prosocial behavior is determined by various factors, including individual values and contextual factors as the most influential ones. The form of prosocial behavior and its determinants may differ in different periods of the society functioning. Therefore, studying prosocial behavior before and during the pandemic, and identifying factors of its implementation in various contexts is a relevant task. This study explores the relationship between individual values and prosocial behavior, in an offline and an online context, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Russia. A cross-sectional study with two sub-samples – the “pre-pandemic” group (N=304) and the “pandemic” group (N=187) – was conducted online, using the short version of Human Values Scale by S. Schwartz (ESS-21) and scales of prosocial behavior in online and offline contexts. Results show that during a pandemic people are less likely to engage in prosocial behavior offline and rely less on Self-Transcendence values. At the same time, in “the pre-pandemic” group, Self-Transcendence values contribute to prosocial behavior in both contexts, while Self-Enhancement values contribute to prosocial behavior in the online context. Next, in the “pandemic” group, Self-Transcendence values and Openness-to-Change values promote prosocial behavior in both contexts, while Conservation values discourage it. The results are discussed regarding the impact a pandemic has on people's lives.

In 2019 the federal project “Digital Educational Environment” aimed at creating and implementing a digital educational environment in educational organizations was launched. The COVID-19 pandemic foregrounded this project and accelerated its implementation. The forced digital transformation of the education system, implemented in a short time, requires an assessment of its results not only from a technical point of view, but also from the point of view of socio-psychological factors that affect the quality of students' involvement in the digital educational environment. This paper provides the empirical results of an investigation of a relationship of higher-order values and social capital with involvement in online learning. The study’s sample is presented by 405 students at the National Research University “Higher School of Economics”. The main data collection method is a socio-psychological survey which includes Williams` social capital scale, Schwartz’s 21-item portrait values questionnaire, Involvement in online learning’s scale, and questions about socio-demographic characteristics (gender and age). The results of the Pearson correlation analysis illustrate that involvement in online learning relates to social capital and higher-order values, while its relation to age and gender was not found. The results of additive multiple moderation analysis demonstrates that higher-order values contribute to involvement in online learning and social capital tends to change the nature of this relationship. While bonding social capital differentiates the values of involvement in online learning related to higher-order values, based on one's own level, a higher bridging social capital inclines to make this relationship negative in some cases.

The study goal was to empirically test the direct and indirect effects of involvement in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and family social capital. To test these effects, we interviewed 104 families (parents and adolescents, n = 208). The direct effect test showed that the involvement in ICT use is a significant predictor of family social capital. At the same time, there is an inverse relationship: the higher the level of involvement of family members in ICT use, the lower the level of family social capital and all its components, especially trust. This means that the more adolescents and their parents are involved in ICT use (Internet, tablets, phones and other gadgets), the less they trust each other, pay attention to needs and mutual support, and the relationship becomes more distant and formal. As we can see, the primary results obtained using the construct of “family social capital” confirm the “displacement hypothesis”, according to which involvement in ICT use reduces the time for contacts between family members and they “displace” direct interaction, making it formal. The indirect effect test showed that the involvement in ICT use is a significant mediator of the relationship between family social capital and subjective well-being. In this case, involvement in ICT use acts as a coping strategy if individuals are not satisfied with their relationships with relatives. The results obtained confirm the “social compensation hypothesis”.

The involvement of Russians in information and communication technologies using (IICTU) affects not only business relations and the search for information, but also friendly contacts in the online space. In this regard, it is important to understand the role of IICTU and on-line intra- and inter-ethnic friendships in the intercultural attitudes of residents of the multicultural Russian society. We conducted a socio-psychological survey in 2019-2020, the sample included 337 residents of eight regions of Russia. Using structural equation modeling and mediation analysis, we found that IICTU of Russians predicted the intensity of online intra- and inter-ethnic friendships. On-line inter-ethnic friendly contacts had a direct positive effect on the attitudes supporting multicultural ideology and social equality and a negative direct effect on the intolerance of Russians. The more intensively Russians communicate with inter-ethnic friends in the virtual space, the more significant their readiness to accept cultural diversity, social equality and tolerance. This result allows us to speak of a universal role of intercultural on-line friendships for positive intercultural attitudes. Additionally, such contacts mediated the relationship of IICTU with intercultural attitudes. Friendly intra-ethnic contacts in the network were positively associated with attitudes supporting both multicultural ideology and intolerance. We can say that the creation of networks that include representatives of only one ethnic group and intensive communication of its members can potentially contribute to the intolerance of Russians. In general, the results of the study showed the importance of developing virtual space for intercultural communication.

Online experiences of ethnic discrimination may constitute major stressors not only for self-esteem of ethnic minority, but also for the self-esteem of ethnic majority, with the growing involvement of the planet's population in information and communication technologies. Today, research has increasingly begun to raise the question that discrimination, acculturation and intercultural orientation of ethnic majorities have hardly been studied, since almost all attention was directed to the study of these phenomena among ethnic minorities. This study fills this gap by examining the association between online ethnic discrimination and self-esteem of Russian majority members, taking into account the potential mediating factor of ethnic online orientation expressed in involvement in ethnic online networks and the manifestation of ethnic online activism. A cross-sectional study was undertaken among 229 ethnic majority members based in the Moscow region of Russia. The research included methods designed to identify the level of online ethnic discrimination, self-esteem, involvement in online ethnic networks and online ethnic activism. The path analysis shows that perceiving online ethnic discrimination is associated with the preference of ethnic online orientation, which in turn results in the growth of self-esteem. At the same time, the negative direct effect of online discrimination on self-esteem remains. The results of the study are discussed through the prism of the acculturation of the ethnic majority in the online environment.

The study of the event perception is a relatively young, but rapidly developing field of cognitive psychology, which is based on an integrative view of the process of human perception and the cognitive underpinnings of this process. The objective of the study was to identify the specifics of the division of the visual narrative into events by preschoolers, primary school students, high school students and adults, and, based on the obtained data, to reconstruct hypothetically and compare the event models that each of these groups relies on. Wallace Chafe’s Pear Film was used as a stimulus material. It is shown that the models of events constructed by preschoolers and primary school students, are “planar” in nature, while high school students and adults are characterized by “volumetric” models. It is also shown that the division of the narrative into events by high school students has no notable difference from that of adults, i.e. the key age for the transition from “planar” to “volumetric” models is a high school age. In addition, for primary school students, a correlation was found between event perception and other cognitive and communication skills. The strongest correlation was found between event perception and the minuteness of the retelling, which provides some evidence for the thesis about the dominance of “planar” models for primary school students. In addition, the results obtained were considered from the perspective of the theory of mind also taken in the aspect of cognitive development.

Depending on the conditions, masked primes can either speed up the reaction to a related target (positive priming, PP) or slow it down (negative priming, NP). A masked priming paradigm is often difficult to apply because the results obtained depend on a large number of factors, which make them difficult to replicate. One possible reason for this may be that the PP and NP effects overlap each other. Is such overlap possible, given that the conditions required for PP and NP to be detected are different? We examine one of the conditions contributing to the occurrence of NP instead of PP – the task complicated by the presence of a distractor. Does the NP mechanism continue to function when this condition is not met? This question is discussed from the perspective of various accounts of negative priming. Based on the negative choice theory proposed by V.M. Allakhverdov, we hypothesize that NP may occur at the stage when a target enters consciousness: in this case conscious recognition in the absence of distractors also slows down, but when the motor response is given automatically, such a slowdown does not manifest itself in longer RTs. In the current experiment, we tried to detect this slowdown indirectly. The subjects were presented with target words without distractors, preceded by masked primes that matched the targets in the half of the trials. During each trial, the background color was changing; after naming a target word, the subjects indicated on a special scale what the background color was at the moment when the word appeared. While RTs revealed no NP, the effect was observed in the color task: when the prime and the target matched, the subjects chose the later color as an answer.

With the help of the author's technique "Dynamics of professional lifestyle", spatial characteristics of the conditions of the social environment were studied as the potential resources for one’s social success. Respondents assessed the role of environmental conditions as "factors for professionalism", as well as the dynamics of their professionalism with their age, which varied from 20 to 65 years (retrospectively and prospectively). Socio-demographic and service characteristics were recorded. 482 men and women aged 30-50 were interviewed, including 132 civil servants, 221 managers, 129 engineers and heads of industrial enterprises. During the stage-by-stage division of the sample into social groups (men/women, specialists/managers, realized/unrealized in the family sphere), environmental conditions were singled out as the factors for one’s success; the criteria were the official position and completeness of realization in the family sphere (specialists and managers who have been married for at least 5 years and with children, and those who are not married and without children) were distinguished. Correlation analysis, t-comparison and two types of statistics were used: "raw estimates" and their derivatives – sums for selected groups. It was found that the same conditions of the social environment differ in their impact on representatives of different sexes, ages, working in different sectors, with different social experience. The differences lie in the composition, range and structure of the actualized environmental conditions as resources, in the extent to which different types of success are determined, in the degree to which a space of human life is off-limits to a person, etc. In relation to some manifestations of one’s social success, the influence of certain environmental conditions can be positive, while in relation to others – negative. The hypothesis was confirmed that the combined effect of several positive environmental conditions at once does not have an effect that enhances the result.

The objective of this study was to identify the match value between self-assessment and indirect assessment of stress by children of primary school age. The participants of the study were 132 junior schoolchildren aged 8-12 years, studying in grades 3-4 in a school in the Moscow Region. Indirect evaluation was measured with the projective Etkind's Color Test of Relationships; two indicators were chosen: the first one was the child's assignment of a stressful situation as "pleasant" (high significance) or less pleasant (low significance); the second indicator was the child's assessment of stress as a positive or negative phenomenon. Self-assessment of stress was measured with the Perceived Stress Scale for Children, PSS-C. It was shown that at the age of 8-12 years, children are able to assess stress differently: negatively – as a distress, and positively – as an eustress. Depending on the degree of relevance of the stressful situation for the child and its negative indirect assessment, indicators of self-assessment of stress change. In children who perceived stress as a relevant situation and indirectly assessed it negatively, self-assessment of stress was high; if the stressful situation was indirectly assessed as positive, the self-assessment of stress was low. At the same time, positive assessment of stress can also be an indicator of a successful coping with it or attest to the psychological defenses that prevent the child from overcoming feelings of anxiety and stress.