Publications

The literature on the consequences of academic inbreeding shows ambiguous results: some papers show that inbreeding positively influences research productivity measured by the quantity and quality of publications, while others demonstrate the opposite effect. There are contradictory results both in the studies of different countries and within countries. This variety of results makes it impossible to transfer the findings from one academic system to another, and in Russia this problem has been under-explored. This paper focuses on the relationship between inbreeding and publication activity among Russian faculty. The research was conducted using data from the ‘Monitoring of Educational Markets and Organizations’ survey. The results show that there is no significant effect of academic inbreeding on publication productivity: no substantial and robust differences in publication activity between inbreds and non-inbreds have been found. The paper finishes with a discussion of possible explanations inherent in the Russian academic system.

Employing a person-oriented approach to acculturation expectations held by Russian majority group members, we investigated the presence of groups of profiles and relationships between acculturation expectation profiles and intergroup attitudes. Applying latent profile analysis, we found three easy-to-interpret acculturation expectation profiles: biculturalism expectations, alternate-biculturalism expectations (with public—private domain differences in preference), and assimilation expectations. The subsequent comparative analysis showed that these profiles mainly differed in the extent of the desirability of maintenance of heritage culture, and adoption of the mainstream culture by immigrants only in private domains of life. The biculturalism expectation profile contained individuals who support the idea of a multicultural society. The alternate-biculturalism expectation profile contained individuals with slightly less emphasis on adoption of mainstream acculturation for immigrants, a distinction between preferences in the public and private domains of life, more focus on public domains, and less right-wing authoritarianism. The assimilation expectation profile contained individuals with a higher dangerous worldview and endorsement of discrimination, and lower support of a multicultural ideology, willingness to engage in intergroup contact, and desire of maintenance of heritage acculturation for immigrants. Our study demonstrated the value of a person-oriented approach in a population where subgroups differ in the domain dependence of their acculturation expectations.

This paper presents a cross-cultural study on the mediating role of implicit theories of innovativeness in the relationship between basic values and specific attitudes towards innovation. Modernized samples (399 Russians from Moscow and Novokuznetsk) and more traditional samples (194 Chechens and Ingushs from North Caucasus and 200 Tuvins from the Tuva Republic) within the Russian Federation answered Schwartz Value Survey (SVS) (Schwartz, 1992), measures of attitudes towards innovation (Lebedeva, Tatarko, 2009), and an Adjective Check List (Runco et al., 1993) adapted for measuring implicit theories of innovativeness in the current samples. Main findings include (1) a split in individual and social aspects of implicit theories of innovativeness, (2) different mediation of the effects of Openness to Change and Conservation values, and (3) differences in mediation models between the two samples. Implications of these findings for cross-cultural studies on innovativeness are discussed.

Background / introduction  The early eye tracking studies of Yarbus provided descriptive evidence that an observer’s task influences patterns of eye movements, leading to the tantalizing prospect that an observer’s intentions could be inferred from their saccade behavior. We investigate the predictive value of task and eye movement properties by creating a computational cognitive model of saccade selection based on instructed task and internal cognitive state using a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN).  Understanding how humans generate saccades under different conditions and cognitive sets links recent work on salience models of low level vision with higher level cognitive goals.  This model provides a Bayesian, cognitive approach to top down transitions in attentional set in pre-frontal areas along with vector based saccade generation from the superior colliculus.  Methods  Our approach is to begin with eye movement data that has previously been shown to differ across task.  We first present an analysis of the extent to which individual saccadic features are diagnostic of an observer’s task. Second, we use those features to infer an underlying cognitive state that potentially differs from the instructed task.  Finally, we demonstrate how changes of cognitive state over time can be incorporated into a generative model of eye movement vectors without resorting to an external decision homunculus.  Results  Internal cognitive state frees the model from the assumption that instructed task is the only factor influencing observers’ saccadic behavior.  While the inclusion of hidden temporal state does not improve the classification accuracy of the model, it does allow accurate prediction of saccadic sequence results observed in search paradigms.  Conclusions  Given the generative nature of this model, it is capable of saccadic simulation in real time. We demonstrated that the properties from its generated saccadic vectors closely match those of human observers given a particular task and cognitive state. Many current models of vision focus entirely on bottom up salience to produce estimates of spatial ‘areas of interest’ within a visual scene.  While a few recent models do add top-down knowledge and task information, we believe our contribution is important in three key ways.  First, we incorporate task as learned attentional sets that that are capable of self-transition given only information available to the visual system.  This matches influential theories of bias signals by Miller & Cohen (2001), and implements selection of state without simply shifting the decision to an external homunculus.  Second, our model is generative and capable of predicting sequence artifacts in saccade generation like those found in visual search.  Third, our model generates relative saccadic vector information as opposed to absolute spatial coordinates.  This matches more closely the internal saccadic representation as they are generated in the superior colliculus.   

The temporal dynamic characteristics of mood play an important role in various aspects of our lives including our psychological health and well-being. It is assumed that the individuals with high emotional intelligence (EI) are characterized by more positive and stable moods. However, most studies analyze how EI is related to emotional traits or momentary assessments of mood; there are almost no findings on EI relationships with mood dynamics. The present study fills this gap. Two research questions were asked. How mood dynamics characteristics are related to each other and to what extent are they independent? Which aspects of EI are related to particular characteristics of mood dynamics? Method. To collect data on mood dynamics, an experience sampling procedure was implemented. Twenty-six female participants reported their mood for two weeks, three times a day, using the EmoS-18 questionnaire. Their emotional intelligence was measured with the EmIn questionnaire. Mean mood scores calculated across all measurement points were regarded as static characteristics showing a mood background typical for the participant. Also, three dynamic characteristics of mood were calculated, namely variability, instability, and inertia. Results. Mood variability and instability were found to be very closely related to each other, measuring essentially the same construct. Inertia is relatively independent. EI was not related to mean mood scores which contradicts the results of other studies and can be explained by the use of the experience sampling procedure. EI was positively related to the inertia of a positive mood with high arousal and a negative mood with low arousal. In addition, a negative relationship between EI and the instability of tension was found. Most of the correlations were low. Further studies with higher statistical power are needed for more decisive conclusions. However, the results show that experience sampling provides new important insights on the role of EI in mood

A meta-analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between outgroup entitativity and prejudice. A quantitative analysis of 85 effect sizes from 33 independent samples showed a significant positive relationship between entitativity and prejudice (Fisher’s z = .414, 95% CI [.272, .557], p < .0001). Three possible moderators of the relationship between entitativity and prejudice were tested: conceptualization of the entitativity (essence-based entitativity scale, agency-based entitativity scale, common entitativity scale), the target of the prejudice, the measures of prejudice (attitudes, emotions, behavior towards outgroup). Results demonstrated that outgroup entitativity correlated with prejudice only when entitativity was conceptualized as an essence-based or common-based scale, and prejudice was measured as the attitude to the outgroup. The target of prejudice does not moderate the relationship between entitativity and prejudice.

It is intended in this study to present initial reliability and validity data for the Russian adaptation of the Multidimensional Inventory of Religious/Spiritual Well-being (MI-RSWB-R), as being related to personality factors and psychopathology. Therefore, the first version of the MI-RSWB-R was applied to a sample of 192 (147 females) nonclinical subjects, together with the NEO Five Factor Inventory and the Symptom- Check-List (SCL-90-R). The original six-factor structure of the scale could be replicated for the MI-RSWB-R, which also provides satisfying psychometric properties. In accordance with previous research the RSWB total score was linked to more favorable personality traits such as Extraversion (r = .45), Openness to Experience (r = .39), and Agreeableness (r = .38), which was paralleled by substantial negative correlations with increased psychopathology. Our findings support the reliability and structural validity of the MI-RSWB-R as a standardized instrument for addressing the spiritual dimension in Russian populations. Further research in clinical surroundings is now recommended.

The well-known modern dimensional models of affect include two or three dimensions. They are typically based on self-reports using English emotion terms. It remains unclear to what extent these models can be applied to different cultures and languages. The present study is aimed at finding the dimensions underlying the descriptions of emotional states in Russian and suggests a structural model of affect based on these findings. At the first stage, a comprehensive list of Russian nouns denoting emotional states was compiled. It comprised 330 words and was reduced to a list of 56 words. At the second stage, participants rated their emotional states using this list. The exploratory factor analysis yielded three dimensions that underlay participant descriptions of the emotional states – negative affect with low activation, positive affect with high activation, and tension. This model is compared to other structural models of affect and its special features are discussed. This model can be used for developing Russian-based measures for the assessment of mood.

Social norms have a critical role in everyday decision-making, as frequent interaction with others regulates our behavior.  Neuroimaging studies show that social-based and fairness-related decision-making activates an inconsistent set of areas, which sometimes includes the anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and others lateral prefrontal cortices.  Social-based decision-making is complex and variability in findings may be driven by socio-cognitive activities related to social norms.  To distinguish among social-cognitive activities related to social norms we identified thirty six eligible articles in the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) literature, which we separate into two categories (a) social norm representation, and (b) norm violations.  The majority of original articles (> 60%) used tasks related with fairness norms and decision-making, such as ultimatum game, dictator game or prisoner’s dilemma; the rest used tasks related to violation of moral norms, such as scenarios and sentences of moral depravity ratings etc. Using quantitative meta-analyses we report brain common and distinct brain areas that show concordance as a function of category.  Specifically, concordance in ventromedial prefrontal regions is distinct to social norm representation processing, whereas concordance in right insula, dorsolateral prefrontal and dorsal cingulate cortices is distinct to norm violation processing. We propose a neurocognitive model of social norms for healthy adults, which could help guide future research in social norm compliance and mechanisms of its enforcement. 

It has been presented that Western cultures (USA, Western Europe) are mostly characterized by competitive forms of social interaction, whereas Eastern cultures (Japan, China, Russia) are mostly characterized by cooperative forms. It has also been stated that thinking in Eastern countries is predominantly holistic and in Western countries analytic. Based on this, we hypothesized that subjects with analytic vs. holistic thinking styles show differences in decision making in different types of social interaction conditions. We investigated behavioural and brain-activity differences between subjects with analytic and holistic thinking during a choice reaction time (ChRT) task, wherein the subjects either cooperated, competed (in pairs), or performed the task without interaction with other participants. Healthy Russian subjects (N=78) were divided into two groups based on having analytic or holistic thinking as determined with an established questionnaire. We measured reaction times as well as event-related brain potentials. There were significant differences between the interaction conditions in task performance between subjects with analytic and holistic thinking. Both behavioral performance and physiological measures exhibited higher variance in holistic than in analytic subjects. Differences in amplitude and P300 latency suggest that decision making was easier for the holistic subjects in the cooperation condition, in contrast to analytic subjects for whom decision making based on these measures seemed to be easier in the competition condition. The P300 amplitude was higher in the individual condition as compared with the collective conditions. Overall, our results support the notion that the brains of analytic and holistic subjects work differently in different types of social interaction conditions.

            Although common stereotypes and the OED definition of freedom suggest that freedom and responsibility are incompatible, in three cross-cultural studies, we test the existential psychological premise that freedom and responsibility are actually complementary.  In all three studies, a) measures of dispositional freedom and dispositional responsibility were positively correlated; b) emphasizing freedom in an experimental context increased responsibility-taking after failure; and c) Responsibility-taking was slightly lower in Russia, a country typically ranked lower in world freedom indices.  In Studies 1 and 2 responsibility-taking was more strongly associated with competence and longitudinal goal-attainment in the Russian sample, suggesting that individual responsibility can compensate for freedom-limiting aspects of socio-cultural contexts.  In Study 3 the best predictor of felt free will (especially in the U.S.) was the lay theory belief that “freedom involves taking responsibility for one’s actions.” Supporting a control sensitivity explanation of the socio-cultural differences, a second Study 3 experiment found that Russians were inclined to take more responsibility than Americans, but only when it was requested (not demanded) by family/friends (but not by authorities or by strangers).

The study is aimed at investigating the connection between the friendliness of the home environment and the moral motives’ level. The friendliness of the home environment includes two aspects: the number of functions provided by home (functionality) and the congruence of these functions with inhabitants’ needs (relevance). The theoretical framework of the study was formed by research and ideas emphasizing the interplay between people and their environments. We hypothesized that the friendliness of the home environment and inhabitants’ moral motives would have a reciprocal relationship: the friendlier the home the higher the inhabitants’ moral motives’ level, and, vice versa, the higher the person’s moral motives’ level the more positive home image. The respondents were 550 students (25% male). The Home Environment Functionality Questionnaire, the Home Environment Relevance Questionnaire, and the Moral Motivation Model Scale were used. As expected, it was found that the friendliness of the home environment and the inhabitants’ moral motives are in reciprocal synergetic relationships. Relevance formed more nuanced correlation patterns with moral motives than functionality did. Functionality predicted moral motives poorly whereas moral motives predicted functionality strongly. Finally, relevance and moral motives were found to be in mutual relationships whereas the perceived functionality was predicted by moral motives only.

People often miss salient events that occur right in front of them. This phenomenon, known as change blindness, reveals the limits of visual awareness. Here, we investigate the role of implicit processing in change blindness using an approach that allows partial dissociation of covert and overt attention. Traditional gazecontingent paradigms adapt the display in real time according to current gaze position. We compare such a paradigm with a newly designed mouse-contingent paradigm where the visual display changes according to the real-time location of a user-controlled mouse cursor, effectively allowing comparison of change detection with mainly overt attention (gaze-contingent display; Experiment 2) and untethered overt and covert attention (mousecontingent display; Experiment 1). We investigate implicit indices of target detection during change blindness in eye movement and behavioral data, and test whether affective devaluation of unnoticed targets may contribute to change blindness. The results show that unnoticed targets are processed implicitly, but that the processing is shallower than if the target is consciously detected. Additionally, the partial untethering of covert attention with the mouse-contingent display changes the pattern of search and leads to faster detection of the changing target. Finally, although it remains possible that the deployment of covert attention is linked to implicit processing, the results fall short of establishing a direct connection.

This paper examines the role of the place of living (urban or rural society) and its social- cultural context in determining the parent- adolescent child value similarity. We interviewed representatives of two generations: parents and children from 90 families in Moscow and 62 families in Russian villages (n=304 people). Our findings indicated the influence of socio- cultural context (urban-rural) on the transmission of values. Conservation values were primarily transmitted from parents to children in the more traditional, rural context. Openness to change, Self-Enhancement and Self-Transcendence values were transmitted from parents to children mainly in the urban context. Perceived psychological closeness between parents and adolescents (as perceived by adolescents) affected the adoption of values by the adolescents in both urban and rural contexts. All values of adolescents were more similar to the values of peers than to their parents, in both urban and rural contexts.

Objective. Brain-computer interface (BCI) systems are known to be vulnerable to variabilities in background states of a user. Usually, no detailed information on these states is available even during the training stage. Thus there is a need in a method which is capable of taking background states into account in an unsupervised way. Approach. We propose a latent variable method that is based on a probabilistic model with a discrete latent variable. In order to estimate the model's parameters, we suggest to use the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm. The proposed method is aimed at assessing characteristics of background states without any corresponding data labeling. In the context of asynchronous motor imagery paradigm, we applied this method to the real data from twelve able-bodied subjects with open/closed eyes serving as background states. Main results. We found that the latent variable method improved classication of target states compared to the baseline method (in seven of twelve subjects). In addition, we found that our method was also capable of background states recognition (in six of twelve subjects). Signicance. Without any supervised information on background states, the latent variable method provides a way to improve classication in BCI by taking background states into account at the training stage and then by making decisions on target states weighted by posterior probabilities of background states at the prediction stage.

Understanding the determinants of syntactic choice in sentence production is a salient topic in psycholinguistics. Existing evidence suggests that syntactic choice results from an interplay between linguistic and non-linguistic factors, and a speaker’s attention to the elements of a described event represents one such factor. Whereas multimodal accounts of attention suggest a role for different modalities in this process, existing studies examining attention effects in syntactic choice are primarily based on visual cueing paradigms. Hence, it remains unclear whether attentional effects on syntactic choice are limited to the visual modality or are indeed more general. This issue is addressed by the current study. Native English participants viewed and described line drawings of simple transitive events while their attention was directed to the location of the agent or the patient of the depicted event by means of either an auditory (monaural beep) or a motor (unilateral key press) lateral cue. Our results show an effect of cue location, with participants producing more passive-voice descriptions in the patient-cued conditions. Crucially, this cue location effect emerged in the motor-cue but not (or substantially less so) in the auditory-cue condition, as confirmed by a reliable interaction between cue location (agent vs. patient) and cue type (auditory vs. motor). Our data suggest that attentional effects on the speaker’s syntactic choices are modality-specific and limited to the visual and motor, but not the auditory, domain.

The purpose is to investigate the influence of three components of the musical accompaniment of advertising (dynamic range (DR), volume, and tempo) on its psychological effectiveness. The psychological effectiveness of advertising is understood according to the AIDA model. The study involved 296 people aged 17–40 years. An intergroup experimental study was conducted. Respondents were shown the advertising, in which the parameters of musical accompaniment were varied: dynamic range of musical accompaniment, volume level, and tempo. To measure the level of psychological effectiveness of advertising, a questionnaire was elaborated. The data were analyzed using ANCOVA covariance analysis and Mann–Whitney U test. The results showed the following relationships: (1) there is an influence of DR on the overall effectiveness of advertising, attention and interest, as well as the desire to purchase advertised goods; (2) there were no influence of volume on attention, but the effect of volume on the emotions was observed, as well as the combined effect of volume and dynamic range; (3) the hypothesis about the influence of the music tempo on the effectiveness of the advertising effect was partially confirmed: the rate only exerts its influence together with other factors; (4) the assumed influence of the side variables (familiar musical composition and familiar advertising) on the indicators of the effectiveness of advertising turned out to be significant. Results can be used in the development of promotional products.

The study presented in this paper is focused on the development of theoretical models of the dialogic and non-dialogic nature of the personal relationship to the Other. Based on the philosophical and psychological research of the dialogue (M. M. Bakhtin, M. Buber, J. Sartre, E. Levinas, H. J. M. Hermans, T. Maranhao, M. Puchalska-Wasyl, F. Rivetti Ваrbo, T. Zittoun), the author emphasizes the involvement of the individual in various forms of activity that, due to personal efforts, acquire a dialogical character. The “personality’s attitudes toward significances” stand out among these forms, including the relation to another significant person. It is emphasized that the attitude of a person towards a significant Other can either gain or not a dialogical character under conditions that are to be discovered in fundamentally new research. This work involves the experience of studying dialogue in various sciences and takes into account psychological ideas and facts of relevance to individual dialogicity. The author develops an understanding of dialogue as a complete realization of the relation to the Other in the dimensions between-I-and-Other, I-in-Other, Other-in-I, and I-in-self-with-Other. The study is focused on the I of the personality as a subject in the relation to the Other; the role of reflection in the I-Other dialogue is justified; the conditions for the non-dialogical nature of the relationship, as an alternative way to the dialogue to implement it, are revealed. Non-dialogicity, which rarely happens to be the subject of psychological research, firstly can be defined as one of the possibilities for the formation of an attitude; secondly, as a regress of the dialogical attitude; thirdly, as a binary opposition present in the conscious plane, or “in the shade” of the dialogical dynamics of the attitude; fourthly, as a trend that conflicts with dialogicity in favour of the development of dialogue. Following the multilateral view on the genesis of dialogicity/non-dialogicity in the personality’s relation to the Other, a number of theoretical models have been developed: a model of the dialogic attitude to the significance; models the I in the context of a dialogical attitude; the existential model of regression in the dialogicity of the I-Other relation; a model of personal prerequisites of non-dialogicity in relation to the I-Other; a model of oppositions to dialogicity in the dimensions of the I-Other relation. It is assumed that the non-dialogical aspect in the relationship to the Other can become a subject of the problematization of self for the I in self-knowledge or in counselling, which leads to positive transformations of the relationship.

The Cognitive Flexibility Inventory (CFI) is a brief self-report measure of the type of cognitive flexibility necessary to successfully challenge and restructure maladaptive beliefs with more balanced and adaptive thinking; it is particularly popular for use with English speakers. The CFI has recently been translated into five languages (Chinese, Japanese, Iranian, Turkish and Russian), although estimates of reliability and validity of these translated versions are scarce. This study reports on the factor structure, internal consistency, reliability, and construct validity of the CFI. We adopted the CFI for a Russian-speaking population, using student sample of 445 first and second-year undergraduates (M = 18.59 years, SD = 1.19) and found that a two-factor model fitted the data well. However, the structure of the CFI was revised because of some modifications, which were made to the original English to match the Russian equivalents of items originally developed to assess the definite aspect of cognitive flexibility. The CFI-R showed good internal consistency and suitable 7-week test-retest reliability. The construct validity of the Russian version of the CFI was studied by computing correlations with other related measures of cognitive flexibility (Attributional Style Questionnaire), depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory), coping (Ways of Coping (Revised)) and rigidity (Tomsk Rigidity Questionnaire). Furthermore, to assess whether the construct validity were affected by psychopathology we examined results for nonclinical and clinical samples, using “known-groups” method. The clinical sample reported lower cognitive flexibility than did the nonclinical sample on the CFI-R’s total score and its subscales’ scores. Findings in the present study suggest that the psychometric properties of the Russian CFI are comparable to the English original, making it appropriate to research assessment of the type of cognitive flexibility in Russian speaking population.