Vol 15, No 4 (2018)

The problem of social activity of the personality and groups becomes central in modern social, economic and political psychology. The innovative processes in the society, maintaining a dynamic balance in it, entirely depend on the release of the social activity of the individuals and groups, on its freedom and diversity, constructiveness and responsibility. The article presents a theoretical analysis of the problem of operationalization of the phenomena of social activity of the individual and groups, the synthesis of the disparate data on its foundations, motivators, mechanisms and social effects. The definition of social activity as a special case of initiative impact of social actors on the social environment, as the actions aimed at changing and transforming social objects as a result of which there is a change in the personality and the entire social situation, the problem of its operationalization is discussed. It is shown that social activity is the effect of socialization and development of the individual. The differences of social activity in different age periods and its importance for the individual and its sociopsychological status are singled out. The multi-component structure of the social activity, including the cognitive, emotionally-evaluative, motivational, and behavioral components are highlighted. The incentive mechanisms of social activity (motivation, satisfaction/dissatisfaction as an indicator of diachronic mismatch of personality and the social environment) are analyzed. The empirical research aimed at finding out the predictors and basis of the dominant types of social activity of the individual is outlined.

The article is devoted to psychosemantic research of interpersonal perception of bilinguals by people with different level of discursive abilities. The construct “discursive abilities” was introduced in the study of the formation of artificial bilingualism. Discursive abilities allow a person to effectively initiate, support, deploy and complete the communication process. The influence of discursive abilities on the structure of the semantic space has not previously been explored. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the modification of the semantic space of interpersonal perception of bilinguals and its dependence on the level of development of discursive abilities. The reconstruction of the semantic space of interpersonal perception of bilinguals on the two contrasting samples showed that the dimension and content of the semantic spaces of people with high and low level of discursive abilities are significantly different. For the sample with a high level of discursive abilities, four significant factors of semantic space were identified: enthusiasm, sympathy, friendliness, caution. The semantic sample space with a low level of discursive abilities turned out to be three-dimensional: enthusiasm, sympathy, openness to experience. To compare both spaces, the “pooled data method” was used. This allowed us to identify two areas of significant differences in the interpersonal perception of bilinguals in people with a low and high level of discursive abilities: the higher the level of discursive abilities, the more people tend to perceive bilinguals as more active and open in communication.

The problem of fashion as a social phenomenon was studied by the classics of philosophy, sociology, economic theory, starting from the XVIII century. In modern science, fashion is considered as an interdisciplinary phenomenon in the context of culture. There is a growing interest in the research of fashion, which is reflected in the increasing number of Ph.D. thesis in Philology, Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, and Art History, in Russian science in recent years. One of the current trends is the consideration of fashion in the context of communicative processes, i.e. “fashion communication”. At the same time, not enough attention is paid to the possibilities of fashion management, since many researchers understand fashion as a spontaneous phenomenon. This article presents the rationale for the consideration of the main subjects and tools for management of the fashion and fashion communication. The state, commercial structures, “living emblems of fashion”, ruling classes, spiritual leaders are considered as subjects of fashion management. In the long term perspective, the management tools of the fashion communication include, first of all, ideology, culture, politics, education; in the medium term - branding, image, marketing, advertising, etc.; in the short term, - both traditional media and cinema, as well as social networks and other network resources, whose role is rapidly increasing in recent years. It has been concluded that currently the potential of fashion communication management tools is not being used enough constructively.

This paper presents the results of studying the psychological aspects of attitudes to personal security of patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) and heart defects. The research involved 40 patients aged 45 to 81 years (47.5 % male, 52.5 % female): 20 patients with ischemic heart disease with stable angina and 20 patients with acquired heart defects. In the course of the research conducted with the help of the techniques based on subjective scaling, the attitudes to personal security, including the sources of threats, the consequences of the realization of threats and the assessment of efforts on the counteraction to these threats, posing in the author’s theoretical model as the components of the system of the attitudes to personal security, have been studied. The results show that in the patients with heart diseases, the assessments for a variety of threats, the consequences of their realization and the efforts on the counteraction to them are significantly higher, than in the patients with CAD. In general, the estimates for all the parameters in the group of the patients with CAD were closer to the estimates of healthy people, obtained in the previous studies. In the patients with heart defects, characterized by a greater duration and disease severity, the results of the indicators of the attitudes to personal security, in general, are higher and less differentiated. The conclusion is made that the attitudes to personal security as a part of the system of the psychological attitudes in general, can act as a diagnostic criterion and the indicator of the efficiency of the adaptation in cardiovascular diseases and also can be an independent target of the correctional work in a psychological consultation and psychotherapy of the patients with cardiovascular diseases. In the conclusion the recommendations for the experts who are engaged in the psychological help to the patients with cardiovascular diseases in diagnostic and correctional work with the attitudes to personal security are formulated.

Free recall of 499 Russian college students was measured using the Tarnow Unchunkable Test (Tarnow, 2014) consisting of sets of 3 and 4 double digit items. Most students can remember 3 items but not 4 items and when the 4th item is added the total recall decreases (Ershova & Tarnow, 2016a). Here we describe the interference that results when adding the fourth item. First, we find that interference affects the items differently, evidence that working memory does not consist of identical “slots”; primacy is found to be an important stabilizer. We model the four item experiment as a superposition of the three item result and a perfectly recalled 1st or 4th item and find that the 4th position is affected 2.5 times as much as is the 1st position. Second, contrary to the displacement/competition theory, recall correlations of the added item with the old items (apparently reported for the first time in a free recall experiment) are typically positive. Third these correlations decay exponentially with item-item presentation distance and are symmetric with respect to time reversal. Small negative recall correlations only appear for subjects with the smallest working memory capacities. Third, also contrary to displacement/competition theory, the fourth item is the least likely to be recalled, thus there is not much need for it to displace the other items. This creates a paradox: while displaying the N+1 item decreases the probability of recall of the N items, actually recalling the N+1 item is positively correlated with recalling the other N items: the N+1 item destroys some of the underlying memory system and then functions as a gauge of its own destruction.

To present Russian science at the international level scientists should possess certain specific skills. However, research works in an integrative nature of academic writing recognize the skills that are common for various research fields and specific for academic context. Some works are currently investigating methods to develop academic skills, while a few papers are devoted to the problem of assessing the outcomes. Traditionally the quality of an academic text is measured by the requirements to text organization, context and language proficiency. However, this model does not form a unity until a new idea is introduced into the process of teaching and assessment. The possible solution is to focus on the quality of students’ texts authenticity. Academic text authenticity indicates to what extent the initial norms of authentic academic writing - in organization, context and language use - are modified by students belonging to a different writing culture. The paper defines the category “authenticity” for academic texts and presents examples of assessing the text quality with a set of descriptors. The results could be implemented in professional language studies and in the postgraduate training of students aimed at publishing the results of their research work.