Book
Psychology in Russia: State of the Art
This volume was prepared to the XXIX International Congress of Psychology (Berlin, Germany). Theoretical and philosophical psychology; cognitive, social, political, ethnic, clinical psychology; psycho semantics; behavioral genetics; industrial psychology and problem-solving psychology; creativity psychology; psychophysiology and the history of psychology topics are represented in the number of modern Russian psychologists’ studies.
The results of the field research of intergroup attitudes in Southern Russia (N=723) demonstrated that the relationships of the valence and uncertainty of ethnic identity, perceived discrimination and level of religious identity with intergroup attitudes depend on a group status (majority – minority) and the type of settlement (dense-sparse). The perceived discrimination predicts the intolerance of intergroup attitudes among the majority group members whereas, the valence and uncertainty of ethnic identity – among the minorities members. The salience of ethnic identity and high level of religious identity predict intolerant attitudes among migrants with the dense way of settlement, the valence of identity and perceived discrimination predict intolerant attitudes among the migrants with the sparse type of settlement. The willingness to distinguish between people by religion provides the maintenance of their group boundaries and identity in multicultural regions of Russia. The growth of uncertainty of ethnic tolerance provides better adaptation of migrants in multicultural regions of Russia.
The systems genetic approach has been used for studying students` mental development. The ability development is considered in terms of intellectual operations acquistion. An aim of the study is to identify the components of the abilities which are consciously acquired by student in the learning process. The study desing is included the work to teach students the intellectual operations and use them at work with training materials, and the psychological testing of control and experimental student groups before and after training test to diagnose the level of intellectual development. The study was conducted with the teachers and students of primary and secondary school.
In the current study, we evaluate relations between parameters of the ideas exchange process and individual creativity. The following parameters of creativity were analyzed: productivity, flexibility, and originality. Effects of ideas sharing on parameters of creativity were assessed in an idea exposure paradigm. Stimulus ideas were subdivided into 4 semantic categories: with high level of novelty; with low level of originality; of aggressive content; "silly". The hypotheses were that the individual creativity is influenced by the semantic characteristics and the way of the exposure of stimulus ideas; that the originality of subject's ideas depends on the level of novelty of stimulus ideas. We analyzed obtained data using structural equation modeling (SEM). Experimental results showed the most intensive changes in creativity in groups, where ideas with high level of novelty, as well as "silly", "senseless" had been exposed. The results of the study could be applied to a practice of generation of novel ideas and their assessment, as well as to various procedures and stages for the stimulation of individual creativity.

The distractive effects on attentional task performance in different paradigms are analyzed in this paper. I demonstrate how distractors may negatively affect (interference effect), positively (redundancy effect) or neutrally (null effect). Distractor effects described in literature are classified in accordance with their hypothetical source. The general rule of the theory is also introduced. It contains the formal prediction of the particular distractor effect, based on entropy and redundancy measures from the mathematical theory of communication (Shannon, 1948). Single- vs dual-process frameworks are considered for hypothetical mechanisms which underpin the distractor effects. Distractor profiles (DPs) are also introduced for the formalization and simple visualization of experimental data concerning the distractor effects. Typical shapes of DPs and their interpretations are discussed with examples from three frequently cited experiments. Finally, the paper introduces hierarchical hypothesis that states the level-fashion modulating interrelations between distractor effects of different classes.
This article describes the expierence of studying factors influencing the social well-being of educational migrants as mesured by means of a psychological well-being scale (A. Perrudet-Badoux, G.A. Mendelsohn, J.Chiche, 1988) previously adapted for Russian by M.V. Sokolova. A statistical analysis of the scale's reliability is performed. Trends in dynamics of subjective well-being are indentified on the basis the correlations analysis between the condbtbions of adaptation and its success rate, and potential mechanisms for developing subjective well-being among student migrants living in student hostels are described. Particular attention is paid to commuting as a factor of adaptation.