Vol 15, No 2 (2018)

There are codes of ethics in psychology that explicitly refer to human rights. There are also psychologists interested in the protection and promotion of human rights who are calling for the explicit inclusion of references to human rights in all psychology ethics codes. Yet, references to human rights in ethics documents have rarely been the focus of attention in psychological ethics. This article represents the second part of a two-part article series focusing on critical issues associated with the inclusion of references to human rights in the ethical codes of psychologists, and recommendations about how psychological ethics and the human rights movement can work together in serving humanity. The first part of the article series examined issues pertaining to the interpretation of references to human rights in codes of ethics for psychologists, and the justifications for including these references in psychological ethics codes. The second part of the article series examines how the Universal Declaration of Ethical Principles for Psychologists can be used to extend or supplement codes of ethics in psychology, how ethical principles and human rights differ and complement each other, and how psychological ethics and the human rights movement can work together in serving humanity and improving the welfare of both persons and peoples.

Assertiveness of an individual is studied as an ability to protect their own rights with confidence and dignity, without violating the rights of others. The purpose of the empirical research is to establish the links between the personal assertiveness and psychological and socio-psychological characteristics, and to create a social psychological “portrait” of an assertive individual. 1271 people have been tested including 644 men aged 17-75 (M = 40) and 627 women aged 17-78 (M = 42), all of various professions, backgrounds, social positions and regions. It has been identified that assertiveness is interconnected with the psychological gender. The following factors attribute to the assertiveness in both males and females: a) high indicators of their masculinity; b) gender harmony (high common number of masculine and feminine characteristics); c) androgyny of the individual. In women, assertiveness correlates negatively with femininity; in men, these two characteristics are not linked together. It is shown that assertiveness is positively related to extraversion, communicative skills, self-efficiency, self-respect, constructive aggression; it is negatively related to neuroticism, anxiety, depression and dependent behaviour. The results in some cases are different from those received during foreign studies: in particular, it has been established that the biological gender impacts the links between assertiveness levels and other psychological characteristics of an individual. The characteristics revealed during this research, together with the ones from previous researches, allowed the author to create a “socio psychological portrait” of an assertive person.

Cinema, as one of the most influential mass media, plays an important role in the life of the modern society, being a very popular leisure activity. Movies have effects on the audience’s motivation, values, stereotypes, activities and mental representations of reality. The current study is devoted to the problem of the movie impact on the young audience. The various effects of the movies about senior people on the young viewers’ corresponding representations are discussed. The psychosemantic method was used to measure the emotional, regulative and cognitive personal traits of both perceived senior and young people. The measurement includes 25 scales designed particularly for eliciting the representations of senior people by the young audience. The viewers scaled seniors’ personal traits before, right after and two weeks later after watching the movie. Also they scaled themselves as being seniors in the future. Such variables as gender, attractiveness of the movie and the place of movies in leisure were taken into account. The film affected the representations of the seniors negatively. The representations of seniors by the young viewers became closer to the representations of themselves as seniors in the future. The gender differences right after the movie became more distinct and women revealed higher sensitivity. The representations became more negative after the movie, but that effect was not a long-term for the majority of the scales. The current issue demonstrated the importance of complex approach toward predicting the influence of the cinema.

Nowadays the “embodied cognition” approach is still gaining influence in cognitive psychology. The representatives of this paradigm stress the importance of understanding how the sensorimotor experience is organized during the interaction with the environment in solving cognitive problems. This article is dedicated to the discussion of the role of the sensorimotor component in the processing of linguistic information. The question is whether sensorimotor representations are an essential condition for processing language stimuli (as suggested by the “embodied cognition” approach) or they just facilitate the processing of linguistic information (the phenomenon of “cognitive enhancement”, reducing the time of its processing? To answer this question, we describe the key characteristics of several kinds for the approach associated with the embodied cognition of the processing of language stimuli. The following studies are analyzed: demonstrating congruent activity during information processing, the situational nature of the influence of the sensorimotor component on the processing of spatial concepts, the role of sensorimotor representations in the processing of linguistic metaphors. The general summary is formulated on the basis of the survey: the current research demonstrates the arguments in support of the facilitating role of sensorics and motor skills in the processing of language information.

The article considers the use of teaching methods in research methodology class for Master students doing the course in English. The author aims at defining the role and significance of the course in teaching Master students at Moscow State Institute of International Relations (University) and sets the following objectives: to identify conceptual barriers in perceiving research methodology, work out the algorithm of work aimed at building research skills of Master students; analyze the results of pilot teaching. The research methods used in working at the paper are as follows: questionnaire and analysis (in analyzing the results of pilot teaching and content analysis of the methodological part of several Master and PhD open access theses). The author uses activity and competence based approach in the combination with the didactic principles of visualization, systematization, consistency and accessibility. The paper analyzes the requirements of State Federal Education Standards in part of developing the research component of professionally relevant competences. The author identifies cognitive difficulties of perceiving theoretical and methodological material; builds the algorithm of work with conceptual apparatus offering a number of exercises aimed at forming research competence and creating simulation research discourse.