2024. vol. 21. No. 2

It is believed that solidarity is motivated by positive collective feelings (group cohesion, social responsibility, etc.), as well as by individual empathy of group members. Motivation may change vector if all members of society are potential victims of a pandemic. An analysis of data obtained from an online survey of 331 Russian-speaking respondents (19 countries) from March 2021 to April 2023 revealed a weak link between empathy (both affective and cognitive) and the solidarity attitudes on safe behavior. On the contrary, a significant correlation was found between negative Ego-feelings (fear for oneself and health) and the expression of the most important solidarity attitudes – wearing masks, social distancing and vaccination. This contradicts the old tradition of considering individual empathy as the principal factor of collective solidarity. In particular, the bodily metaphor of rapprochement, embracing with others, which is the core of empathy, contradicts the requirement of physical distance. A positive correlation was also noted between the pronouncement of solidarity attitudes and the experience of material aid to strangers. Fears for oneself and empathy for others are experiences with opposite vectors. Fears can block empathy. Thus, the phenomenon of synchronous behavior of people, similar to solidarity, but with nonspecific negative motivation, was discovered. We believe that solidarity – like activity should be distinguished from conscious, trained solidarity based on the belief that suffering and unprotected groups and people need to be supported by the state and other citizens.

Current analysis represents a rationale for the relationship between the two concepts: “ingroup projection” and “covert prejudice”, and the phenomena behind them. Prototypicality allows group members to consider their ingroup as the most normatively “correct” one. When studying ingroup projection, the primary focus of attention was a negative attitude towards another group, expressed openly, but in recent decades, researchers have increasingly documented the transformation of prejudice into covert, subtle forms: symbolic, ambivalent or aversive (Brown, 2010). Covert forms of prejudice or, in other words, a hidden negative attitudes towards another group attract the attention of researchers primarily due to the sudden transition from an outwardly neutral or positive attitude to a negative evaluation of an outgroup with a subsequent behavior. However, a precise comparison of ingroup projection and forms of covert prejudice has not previously been carried out in the scientific literature. Our analysis reveals that ingroup projection can be considered as a tool for a cover prejudice maintaining and enhancement. Moreover, this support might be different for different forms of covert prejudice. The most significant relationship is to be expected for symbolic forms, forms that mainly reflect a search for ways of an outwardly legitimate cover for a negative attitude towards other groups. Ambivalent forms of prejudice can both intensify and transform into other forms (for example, dehumanization) with the strengthening of the ingroup projection. Aversive bias, we suggested, should be less related to the ingroup projection; nevertheless, the social norms of interaction that ingroup projection can make both clear and vague take on special significance in this case. The paper ends with a discussion of the directions for studying the relationship between ingroup projection and forms of cover prejudice in the Russian context. In particular, the civic identity content of the inhabitants of Russia is discussed, and the conflict between value orientations that can lead to the transition of prejudices into covert forms is considered.

This article presents the results of three experiments aimed at studying moral conformity under conditions of passive virtual pressure in the Russian cultural context. Moral conformity is defined as a social pressure-induced change in public moral behavior. The experiments used moral dilemmas as stimulus material, and moral behavior was assessed through the frequency of specific answers to these dilemmas. Social pressure was exerted by informing participants, who were filling out an online form, about the percentage of people responding to moral dilemmas in a certain way. This type of influence is considered as a passive virtual form of social pressure without an explicit identifiable source. The results of the first two experiments showed that passive virtual pressure leads to a change in the frequency of consequentialist responses, indicating the emergence of moral conformity. However, no differences between genders were found in the patterns of moral conformity. In contrast to foreign studies, an effect of asymmetric conformity in favor of the consequentialist majority, rather than the deontological majority, was observed. The third experiment, which differed in design and set of moral dilemmas from the two previous studies, showed that both consequentialist and deontological passive virtual social pressure induce moral conformity for all three types of dilemmas (personal, impersonal, and third-person dilemmas). It was found that women respond significantly less to consequentialist pressure in the case of third-person formulated dilemmas. Thus, conforming moral response may depend on the specific design of the study, the type and content of moral dilemmas, as well as the individual characteristics of the participants.

Against the backdrop of alarming rates of migration population loss in the Omsk region and limited resources that can objectively retain youth in the region, there is an increasing need to analyze potential factors associated with the preconditions for the migration behavior of youth, taking into account their sociodemographic characteristics. The sociodemographic specifics of the relationships between migration attitudes and the components of subjective well-being, resilience, attitude towards the city of residence, and assessment of the migration attitudes of loved ones among Omsk students were studied. Sample: 313 schoolchildren (56.2% girls, 43.8% boys) from 14 to 17 years old and 390 students (69.7% girls and 30.3% boys) from 18 to 22 years old. Methods: testing, questionnaires, one-way analysis of variance and regression analysis. It was found that universal predictors for migration attitudes in groups of students and schoolchildren are low attachment to the city and expressed attitudes of loved ones about migration. In most of the studied socio-demographic groups, migration attitudes were associated with career orientation towards stability of place of residence, social-normative and existential-activity well-being. Specific individual psychological predictors of strengthening the migration attitudes in Omsk schoolchildren were high rates of involvement among girls, high levels of existential-activity well-being and career orientation toward service among boys, and in Omsk university students the significant factors were low rates of involvement, orientation toward entrepreneurship, and job stability among young women, expressed career orientation to challenge among young men. Taking into account the results, directions for preventing migration risks were proposed for each socio-demographic group.

The article examines the contribution of the famous Soviet and Russian psychologist Arthur Vladimirovich Petrovsky (1924–2006) to the formation of the history of concepts of psychological science. It is argued that although the study of concepts (categories) in recent years has become increasingly important in Russian psychology as a kind of self-reflection strategy, the problem of the conceptual field of this science was first posed half a century ago and still remains unresolved. The purpose of this study was to determine the role of A.V. Petrovsky in the formation of the history of the concepts of psychological science; the main task is to analyze the author's main publications on this topic in order to identify his research on the transformations of the meanings of the basic concepts of psychology in the course of its historical development. The main method of research was the bibliographic method, the source base consisted of textbooks and monographs written by the scientist mainly in the 1990s. As a result of the conducted research, it was found that thanks to the efforts of A.V. Petrovsky, the interest of the professional community in the problem of the categorical and conceptual apparatus of psychology was supported during the crisis period for Russian science, research in this field was updated, the development of a categorical “grid” of psychology was carried out in line with the created and developed by him and his co-authors (V.A. Petrovsky, M.G. Yaroshevskiy) theoretical psychology, the history of the concepts of “attitude” and “personality” was studied. Based on this, it is possible to state that the significant contribution of A.V. Petrovsky is included in the conceptual history of psychological science in our country, and he himself is considered one of the pioneers of this kind of research in Russia.

In the early 1990s, the author published a book where she theoretically, phenomenologically and empirically substantiated the role of reflection in the formation of professional, creative, and ethical attitudes of a scientist. The book developed a methodology for converting the conceptual model of attitudes and their reflexive mediation into various practices of reflection oriented to the adult developing personality. This article highlights the results of the author’s new research focused on the problem of developing theoretically grounded reflective practices in the field of general personology. The methods of hermeneutics and conceptual modelling were used to identify the potentials of reflection in individual life: cultural, psychological, existential, and practical. We emphasized the practical potential of reflection, which, in unity with other potentials, determines the development of specific reflective practices, including their intentional, significative, operational, semantic aspects. The forms of reflection that set the content and structure of various reflexive practices have been identified. These forms include self-exploration, self-evaluation and recognition of self-value, self-reflection, self-expression, inner dialogue with a significant Other, reflection on a life path. Based on references to culture, psychology, and the experience of individual self-knowledge, as well as on the outlined classification of forms of reflection and the model of step-by-step construction of reflective practices, the author, following the main goal of the research, proposes a number of reflective practices. These include the practice of reflective disclosure of one’s life problems; the practice of reflective dialogue of the Self with another as “You”; the practice of dialogical achievement of self-identity of the Self; the practice of reflection of key life experiences; the practice of reflective discovery of the unknown Self. The developed practices are oriented to application in personality research, in the context of counselling and psychotherapeutic work and in individual self-knowledge.

The Wason selection task is designed as a refutation attitude and based on the K. Popper principle of falsificationism. The numerous studies have revealed that specific forms of the task are solved better than abstract ones. However, researchers explain this phenomenon differently. The aim of the study is to introduce and explain the better solution effect by varying the coherence level and the assumption form of selection task conditions. The notion of “coherence” is introduced in the theory-theory concept approach to denote the connection between two concepts, as well as between the attributes of one concept. We have introduced three levels of coherence: formal coherence means the absence of any meaningful connection, external coherence implies the presence of an external “context”, and internal coherence includes the causal connection between the assumption concepts as well. Based on the selection task modifications analysis, it was found that conditions are implicitly formulated in the form of rules or hypotheses, which implies different testing strategies. The following hypotheses were tested: 1) the selection task solving efficiency will increase with the growth in the assumption attributes coherence level; 2) tasks with rules will be solved better than tasks with hypotheses on the same assumption attributes coherence level. The sample includes 193 subjects (median age 23 years, 60% female, 51% with higher education). Selection task modifications were used as stimulus material, where the coherence levels and the assumption form were varied. As a result, both hypotheses found statistical support. The novelty of this paper lies in the methodological separation of selection task modifications both by the assumption form – rules or hypotheses, and by the coherence level of the tested assumption – formal, external and internal. The introduction of two forms and three levels of assumption coherence allows us to integrate the selection task solution factors revealed in different studies within a single explanation of the inclusion of the tested assumption in different kinds of theories.

Self-regulated learning (SRL) refers to the processes of setting goals, monitoring progress, selecting learning strategies, and revising learning goals. Research evidence shows positive associations between SRL and academic achievement, motivation, well-being, and other constructs. The purpose of this paper is to establish the initial evidence of the construct validity of the SRL Strategies survey for elementary school students. The SRL Strategies survey includes 12 items, focusing on the strategies of environment, time, and learning management ranging from 1 (almost never) to 4 (almost always) on a Likert-type scale. The unified validity framework (Messick, 1995) was used to conduct the validation study by collecting content, internal structure, convergent, discriminant, and response processes evidence. The application of classical test theory (CTT) using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, reliability estimates, and Pearson’s correlations on a sample of 1,877 fourth graders provided initial evidence of construct validity by suggesting a one-factor model, which was confirmed on another sample of elementary school students (n = 317). The additional item response theory (IRT) analyses provided evidence of differential item functioning for Items 2, 5, and 6 based on student gender, but not on location. Combined evidence from CTT and IRT analyses resulted in acceptable properties of the combined one-factor SRL Strategies survey (α = 0.83; ωh = 0.71, ωt= 0.85). As a result, the SRL Strategies survey can be recommended for the use by researchers and practitioners.

Traditional insight studies assumed that there is a special class of problems called “insight problems” whose solution would cause feelings of insight. However, it has been previous shown that insight problems can be solved in both insightful (with Aha! experience) and step-by-step (without Aha! experience) ways, and exactly the same is observed for analytical problems. The present work addresses the question whether it is sufficient to use the problem types to detect insightful feelings or whether it is necessary to use the solution types. For this purpose we collected the dataset of previously published open data which used Danek and Wiley’s questionnaire for subjective ratings of insight phenomenology. Joint analysis showed that using solution types provided greater benefits for insight investigation than using problem types: insightful solutions were more pleasant, sudden, and relieving than step-by-step solutions, but insight and analytical problems differed from each other on only suddenness scale. We concluded that relying only on the problem type is not the best strategy for investigation of insight, because insight and analytical problems are quite similar in terms of the Aha! experience. The use of solution types is much more fruitful and distinguishes various situations in the process of problem solving. The obtain results were interpretated in the context of relationships between the Aha! experience and representational change.

This article presents a pilot study with the objective to create and test stimulus material, which consists of photographic portraits of adults and children expressing various emotions. The uniqueness of this work is due to the approach to organizing the creation of stimulus material, in which the models demonstrated emotions not according to an established pattern of facial movements corresponding to a specific emotion, but according to their ideas about the expression of emotions in a certain situation. The inclusion of photographic images of individuals from the Russian population, of different genders and age groups, can be considered an additional advantage of this study. We tested 294 color photographs of 5 models of different age groups (from primary school to the elderly), depicting 14 emotions (pride, anger, joy, irritation, amusement, disgust, pleasure, sadness, relief, despair, interest, fear, surprise, anxiety). Testing took place on the crowdsourcing platform Yandex.Toloka, where 5099 people took part in the study. The answers were analyzed using two approaches. In the first instance, the respondent's answer about an emotion was counted as correct if the emotion s/he chose exactly matched the one depicted in the photograph. The second approach assumed that the respondent’s answer was correct if it corresponded to a group of emotions related to one or another valence. The results of testing stimulus material developed using a non-classical approach showed recognition accuracy in determining the valence of emotions rather than the emotions themselves. An analysis of the possible influence of individual differences (including culture-specific ones) on recognition accuracy may be needed for the interpretation of the results, however, based on the pilot nature of the study and its limitations, this hypothesis still requires additional verification.