This paper presents results of piloting nine videos eliciting happiness, sadness, and neutral state in Russian and Azerbaijani samples (N = 100, 68 Russians, 32 Azerbaijanis, mean age 20 years, 68 % females and 32 % males) for the use in laboratory experiments, three videos for each emotion. Six videos – two for each emotion – were selected that induced effectively the target emotions in both cultures. Happy videos induced more intense happiness in Azerbaijani participants. No gender differences were found for Azerbaijan, whereas one of sad videos induced more intense sadness in Russian women compared to men. The selected set of videos can be used in the studies with emotion induction in the laboratory settings including cross-cultural studies in Russian and Azerbaijan.

The results of the study of marked out in experimental work person’s self-relation intrapsychic characteristics contributions to its personality psychic organization are discussed in the article. The psychological and mathematical discriminant analysis enables to define intrapsychic discrimination markers of different person’s self-relation measure over the range “adequate” to “inadequate”. The research results confirm that the more person exhibits his/her psychic resources (potential and qualities) in relation to him-/herself, the more he/she is able to establish the way of self-treatment that enables him/her to recuperate his-/herself and recognize own self-identity.

Paper is devoted to comparisons of inter- and intra-individual approaches to study functional and somatic reactions of individuals to subjective stress in the normative sample. Adult participants (N=79) appraised stress level, experienced somatic symptoms and filled the test of the differentiated assessment of a functional condition within four days in the evenings. In addition, illness frequency and quality of life were estimated. According to the results, appraisals of subjective stress levels, irritability, joints movements’ difficulties, headaches and symptoms that are rare in normative sample should not be averaged due to high variability. Application of the intra-individual approach in addition to the inter-individual one allows revealing cases of individual resistance and mobilization of a functional and somatic condition under the stress. Different patterns of the empirical relationships with illness frequency and quality of life are revealed depending on whether the average estimates of a stress and functioning, or individual sensitivity to a stress are measured.

One of the trends in modern moral psychology, ethics and morality is the study of the determining factors and psychological phenomena that are directly related to the level of emotional and moral sphere of the individual. Building on the two independent theories – stadial theory of moral future developments and theories of self-identity – is it possible to start an empirical study of the relationship of the two psychological constructs: the type of personal orientation and level of moral consciousness. Early studies of exactly the type of personal orientation serve as a descriptive (external) factors of a more general psychological phenomenon – the self. The hypothesis that the level of moral consciousness is linked to the type of personal orientation was not confirmed in our study, despite the commonality of the two conceptual constructs. Explanation of the causes and possible interpretations of this phenomenon is the subject of our article.

The results of the investigation of the reflection as a process that is took part in the activity are presented in the article. The psychological diagnostic technique for activity reflection measurement is proposed. The activity reflection measure is developed on the theoretical propositions of the activity system genetic conception that postulates that the person’s efficacy of his or her activity implementation is expressed with the state of being fully developed to reflect on the certain constructs of own activity. Participants considered of 585 persons. The results of development and approbation of the thee forms of standardized test of activity reflection diagnostics are discussed: the form ‘C’ for schoolchild of the comprehensive secondary school, the form ‘S’ for students of the educational institutions of Higher Education and the form ‘P’ for workers of various professions. The findings of the given study have showed the prospect of the proposition suggested in the activity system genetic conception that the reflection takes part in forming of any activity components by representing them for each other and for activity on the whole.

This essay describes two experimental studies, which demonstrate the existence of «dead zones» in visual attention. The phenomenon of «dead zones» manifests in the task of finding and identifying changes, and is one example within the currently widely-studied field of change blindness - the inability to find and/or identify visual changes of an object in a field of vision, under the conditions of interruptions of perception in the moment of the aforementioned changes. «Dead zones» in visual attention are starkly expressed «blindness» to changes in objects which are located in close proximity to an object which attracts higher attention. In Experiment 1, the phenomenon of «dead zones» is demonstrated in the context of a standard methodology of «flickering», designed to study change blindness in complex visual scenarios (Rensink et al., 1997). In Experiment 2, the phenomenon is demonstrated by a specially developed methodology of sudden changes. This essay discusses hypotheses of the possible mechanisms pertaining to these «dead zones» in attention.

The article investigated the role of spatial working memory in visual search for multiple targets, in particular, in subsequent search misses effect. This phenomenon is the second target omission after the first target has been found in visual search task. One of the theoretical interpretations of subsequent search misses is the lack of resources (attention and/or working memory) after the first target is found. Experiment investigated dual-target visual search efficiency in standard conditions and with additional spatial working memory load. Additional working memory load did not have any significant impact in multiple target visual search efficiency. The results can due to the role of object, but not spatial working memory in this task. Alternative explanation assumes using special tools and strategies.

The article presents a database of women’s faces for research in the field of social perception. Each of 55 models was photographed full-face under four conditions: with a neutral or smiling face with hair up or down. The database includes the results of facial morphometry (relative positions of homologous points), expert ratings of appearance style, scores of perceived intelligence and attractiveness. The peculiarity of the database is that, unlike the others, we preserved the natural style featured on the models: clothes, jewelry, and makeup. The database was approbated in the study of physiognomic and appearance style predictors of perceived intelligence and attractiveness. It expands the variety of stimulus images available for researchers and can be used in different studies of social perception.

The present work is devoted to the experimental investigation of peculiarities of the influence of perception of a moving object on the simultaneous distribution of attention to the surrounding area depending on whether the given object is the object of attention or not. Detection of the probe stimulus, which appeared unexpectedly ahead, behind, aside from a moving object, or in his absence, was the main task of the observers. One half of the observers were instructed to ignore motion, while another half of the observers were instructed to track it. The study shows that, regardless of the instruction, probe stimulus were detected more efficiently in the presence of motion. Furthermore, the detection of probe stimulus was carried out faster in the case when probe stimulus appeared behind a moving object. Neither formed aim of tracking an object, nor aim of ignoring it affected the distribution of attention, however, the subjects of the «tracking» group systematically demonstrated slow reactions – this fact allows us to make a conclusion about the presence of the essential orientation of attention on the motion of objects in this group of observers. Interpretation and analysis of the results was conducted within the framework of premotor theory of attention (Rizzolatti et al., 1987).