Contemporary Psychology Research Articles

The Clinical Value, Principle, and Basic Practical Technique of Mindfulness Intervention.

SummaryMindfulness intervention is a psychotherapy based on the Buddhist practice of meditation, combining the theories and methodology of contemporary psychology. The empirical research in recent years has indicated that mindfulness intervention yields favorable results including reduction of depression relapse, alleviation of the symptoms of depression and anxiety, reduction of substance abuse, relief of pain, blood pressure management, enhancement of immunity, and improvement of sleep. Currently, mindfulness therapy has become the mainstream of psychotherapy in the realm of European and American psychotherapy. The fields of psychology and psychotherapy in China have also begun to introduce mindfulness intervention in recent years. However, there is a lack of relevant practice and research in the field of clinical mental health. This article will briefly introduce the concept of mindfulness, the basic mechanism of the intervention, and the basic skills and guidelines in clinical practice.

Transitivity of visual sameness

The way in which vision represents objects as being the same despite movement and qualitative changes has been extensively investigated in contemporary psychology. However, the formal properties of the visual sameness relation are still unclear, for example, whether it is an identity-like, equivalence relation. The paper concerns one aspect of this problem: the transitivity of visual sameness. Results obtained by using different experimental paradigms are analysed, in particular studies using streaming/bouncing stimuli, multiple object tracking experiments and investigations concerning object-specific preview benefit, and it is argued that the transitive interpretation of visual sameness is the most plausible given the current stage of knowledge. What is more, it is claimed that the way in which visual sameness is represented suggests that in some cases it should be characterized as a “primitive sameness”, similarly as in philosophical theories postulating “thisness”.

The Importance Role of Personality Trait

Personality is a dynamic organization of psychophysical systems within individual which determine specific behaviors and thoughts, such as being diligent and patient. Many contemporary psychologists believe that there are five basic dimensions of personality, known as the Big Five Theory. The five broad personality traits described by the theory are extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. The study aims to identify the five theories briefly. This qualitative study uses content analysis as the instrument for collecting data. All in all, personality can be defined as a dynamic and organized set of characteristics possess by a person that uniquely influence his or her cognitions, motivations, and behaviors in various situations.

ПСИХОЛОГІЧНА ЗРІЛІСТЬ ДИРИГЕНТА-ХОРМЕЙСТЕРА ЯК ВАЖЛИВА ЗАПОРУКА ЗБЕРЕЖЕННЯ ТРАДИЦІЙ УКРАЇНСЬКОГО ХОРОВОГО МИСТЕЦТВА

The article studies the traditions of development of Ukrainian choral art from ancient times to present days. The article focuses on psychological development of a conductor and choirmaster as the supervisor and head of a choir. The special attention is paid to singing education which started in the period of ruling of Volodymyr and Yaroslav, spread in the middle Ages and led to the foundation of a court choir formed of the best singers in Ukraine in the 15th century. Then the origination and development of polyphonic singing is studied, and also partsong, cantus and psalms. The article emphasizes the role of Mykola Diletskiy who initiated the first theoretical works on development of singing voice and whose traditions were followed by well-known composers such as M. Berezovskiy, A. Vedel, D. Bortnyanskiy in their choral concertos. The transition from classicism to romanticism in Ukraine is also studied in the article, which was reflected in the works of famous composers M. Verbytskiy, I. Lavrivskiy, N. Nishchynskiy and others, and in the works of the founder of Ukrainian classical music M. Lysenko in particular. Further development of Ukrainian choral art is studied, which leading Ukrainian musicians L. Dychko, V. Zubytskiy, V. Kaminskiy and others pay attention to.The article studies the psychological aspect of the work of a choral conductor, who directly realizes the ideas of well-known Ukrainian composers through the choir. The importance of constant and purposeful work of the conductor on psychological self-improvement is stressed, apart from purely professional skills and techniques. Based on the experience of contemporary psychologists and psychotherapists such as H. Erzhemskiy, N. Korykhalova, R. Dass, H. Braden and others the causes and possibilities of solving conflicts between the members of a choir are revealed; vision of these misunderstandings from the point of view of quantum psychology is regarded through works by R. Wilson, a philosopher and publicist, in particular. As an example of improving psychological climate within the choir the article studies the use of language-priming invented by British psychologists D. Bourland and A. Korzybskiy. Implementation of language-priming can be of great use for psychological health and balance of every person. Also the conclusion was made regarding the necessity of a modern creative artist who works with people and transmits to the audience the greatest works of Ukrainian choral music, who broadens their world outlook and remains in the constant spiritual search.

Where the Sun never Shines

Abstract In this paper, I elaborate on deliberations of “post-enlightened cognition” between cognitive neuroscience, psychology and artificial intelligence research. I show how the design of machine learning algorithms is entangled with research on creativity and pathology in cognitive neuroscience and psychology through an interest in “episodic memory” and various forms of “spontaneous thought”. The most prominent forms of spontaneous thought - mind wandering and day dreaming - appear when the demands of the environment abate and have for a long time been stigmatized as signs of distraction or regarded as potentially pathological. Recent research in cognitive neuroscience, however, conceptualizes spontaneous thought as serving the purpose of, e. g., creative problem solving and hence invokes older discussions around the links between creativity and pathology. I discuss how attendant attempts at differentiating creative cognition from its pathological forms in contemporary psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and AI puts traditional understandings of rationality into question.

The Problem of Reality in Psychology: Revisiting the Reality Concept in Oswald Külpe

In this work, I discuss the concept of reality developed by Oswald Kulpe and the tensions that he demonstrates in the context of current psychological research. The relevance of the author for the origin of psychology and how its approaches are current in contemporary psychology is discussed. Through the review of his work Contribution to the history of the concept of reality, I conclude that the notions of reality that govern contemporary research in psychology maintain old tensions on the epistemic basis of knowledge and our object of study. In this sense, I propose that returning to old reflections, as in the case of Kulpe and the concept of reality, constitutes a fundamental aspect to guide future research in our discipline.

Personality as a Social Process: where Peter Giordano Meets Boris Parygin.

In this paper I comment on the "Individual personality is best understood as process, not structure: A Confucian-inspired perspective" article by Peter Giordano (Culture & Psychology, 23(4), 502-518 (2017)), which addresses the question of how to comprehend a personality which is continuously changing and varying with changes in social contexts and situations. The issue which Giordano turns up I believe to be of great importance and topicality in the quickly changing globalizing contemporary world. Giordano's paper highlights an important problem in the development of contemporary personality psychology, but much remains to be clarified concerning his process-centric model. I introduce the theory of Boris Parygin, which can make a contribution to the discussion of personality as a process. Parygin's theory addresses the same issues that Giordano focuses on: human personality exists and develops in the context of social situation. Parygin's theoretical model of personality involves two personality schemas: a "static" one and a "dynamic" one. The "structure" and the "process" -centered approaches are joint here to complement each other. Personality life-span development, formation of personality structures, is considered as a process of interaction and dialectical confrontation with the social environment, in the course of which the personality, originally engendered by social factors, builds up its autonomy and realizes its unique individual spiritual potential.

Positive Education: an Inspiration for Improving the Quality of Education

Positive Psychology represents a relatively new trend in contemporary psychology, which brings interesting ideas and useful inspiration into the field of education and school practice. Evidence exists that higher levels of subjective well-being, optimism and positive emotions are closely related to academic success. A positive education movement builds on these findings and aims to practically apply the scientific knowledge of Positive Psychology into the educational process. The objective of this research study is to introduce the theoretical background and arguments for the establishment and development of positive education in the world and the Czech Republic. We present an overview of main positive education programs which focus on development of psychological resilience and character strengths and on increasing subjective well-being and life satisfaction among the individuals at all the levels of the educational process. We focus mainly on the description of those positive education programs, for which the effectiveness has been empirically verified. Finally, we briefly describe the situation in the Czech Republic, which opens a large space for the development and implementation of Positive Psychology methods to improve the quality of education.

Teaching to Prevent Unjust War

This essay describes an undergraduate course, “Christian Ethics of War and Peace,” taught for more than two decades at a Catholic university. I first situate the course within the debate between just war philosophers Michael Walzer and Jeff McMahan on the moral equivalency of soldiers and the right of conscientious objection to unjust war. The development of SCO (selective conscientious objection) in the Catholic tradition is traced from Augustine to John Paul II. The Sic et Non of Abelard is invoked as a precedent for the course pedagogy, in which students are asked to develop and articulate their own personal conscience in light of the long-standing tension between arguments for pacifism and for just war. Borrowing from contemporary cognitive psychology, this task is described as one of “reflective judgment” regarding an “ill-structured problem.” The major writing assignment is described and one student’s testimony on its challenge is offered.

Theoretical and methodological foundations of profiling as an interdisciplinary field of psychological knowledge

The article discusses one of the new applied areas in psychology, which is the non-instrumental diagnosis of lie, i.e.profiling. Currently, one of the new applied areas in psychology is profiling. Modern profiling includes knowledge, abilities, and skills (hereinafter, KAS), developed on the basis of the achievements of contemporary Psychological Science, a clear affiliation to a specific subject. The basis of integrative psychotechnology is a complex of knowledge in Psychological Sciences, where the object of general knowledge is the personality, his/her features, behavior, and general psychological laws of organizing purposeful activity. The authors come to the conclusion that profiling is an area of theoretical, methodological, integrated, scientifically grounded knowledge in related disciplines of Psychological Science.

"Id", "ego" i deficyt superego w obrazie psychologicznym bohaterów powieści "Zazdrość i medycyna" Michała Choromańskiego

Id, ego and superego deficit in a psychological image of the protagonists of ″Jealousy and Medicine″ by Michał Choromański Jealousy and Medicine – a novel by Michał Choromański, published in 1933, evidently breaks out of the convention of psychological realism thriving on the achievements of behavioural psychology, dominant in the interwar period. Choromański’s work is an innovatory experiment on composition and thought; the world shown in the novel resembles a psychotic maligna or oneiric vision. The whole novel prompts interdisciplinary research using psychoanalysis of Sigismund Freud, Charles Mauron’s psychocritical method, being a transformation of classical Freudian psychoanalysis (with Otto Rank’s modifications), contemporary psychology of a creative process and the methodologies of psychological research which are accepted and occasionally used by contemporary literary studies. Choromański’s novel is deemed the most discerning studium of jealousy in interwar literature.

Pleasant and unpleasant as main forms of perception of the soul in history of philosophy

In the given article it is considered fundamentalism of categories pleasant and unpleasant for human cognition. It is suggested hypothesis according to what they are the basis of any cognition of human and any organism at all. In this article it is considered the points of philosophers for whom the notion of pleasant and unpleasant were fundamental for understanding of telos way of leaving, world order etc. In this article it is considered the views of all known philosophers, who thought that pleasant and unpleasant are conciderable sides of alive organisms and of world perception. There are considered not only importance of pleasant and unpleasant as gnoseological categories but also as onthological and ethical. The author of the article makes own suggestions and conclusions of given material and besides makes own hypothesis of the roul of pleasant and unpleasant for understanding human soul as a phenomena. Pleasant and unpleasant appear to be main charachteristic and criteria for alive organism and we make a conclusion that concept of Epicurus may be considered in a new key that will give a benefit for modern science and will answer many questions of contemporary psychology and neuropsychology. We want not only suggest the concept of Epicurus and say that it is considerable part of history of philosophy. We suggest a new concept in postulation of what Epicurus and other proposed philosophers may help us. This concept is philosophy and science of pleasant and unpleasant. We assume that pleasant and unpleasant have a strong gnoseological role and moreover are the only categories of cognition. Our position also bases on Christianity and religion of that reason we cannot completely support the position of Epicurus because his ethics is mainly based on the belief that there is no life` after death, that soul is mortal and it has no opportunity to enter an immortal world after death. This position mostly made him to invent the ethics of pleasure because if there is not eternity for us and we die, we should find something allaying in our life not to think that one day we’ll die and everything will stop. We can not support this position and that side of his concept, of that reason we propose to fulfill his concept with Christian view.

Multidimensional Machiavellianism conceptualization

The different variants of manipulation of social behavior have always awakened the interest of psychiatrists, psychologists and sociologists. For the contemporary psychology, the term Machiavellianism refers to a facet of the interpersonal behavior defined by a person's tendency to manipulate the attitude of others to achieve their own interests. These are associated with a cynical view of the human nature in which the expectations and needs of people in the social environment are ignored in a selfish and egocentric way. From a particular personal perspective, Machiavellianism is considered to belong to a “black triad” of the personality together with narcissism and psychopathy, having evil effects on social life. Despite the pejorative meanings that can be attributed to the term Machiavellian, they can represent a way of deeper knowledge of human psychology. It integrates a variant of maladaptive functioning of personality in social life and has a genetic, neurobiological and clinical expression. We aim to comment on the legitimacy of considering Machiavellianism as one of the personality disorders using the diagnostic criteria related to them.

The Aesthetic Actualization of Gestalt Image in English Translation of Chinese Poems

As significant schools in contemporary cognitive science, gestalt psychology and cognitive linguistics provide the conceptual model and theoretical framework for the multidimensional research on cognitive translation study. Their major theoretical perspective makes them as the methodological principles of gestalt image study in cognitive translation which could be viewed from both mental and linguistic perspectives. The paper focuses on making a tentative and exploratory study of the aesthetic actualization of gestalt image in English translation of Chinese poems and thus aims to discover the conceptual mental experience of actualizing aesthetic quality of image-G through cognitive processing in English translation of Chinese poems.

Anorexia e bulimia nervosa: Percepção e atuação do psicólogo clínico de orientação psicanalítica

A Psicologia clínica contemporânea vem se deparando com o aumento na frequência de algumas patologias como a anorexia nervosa e a bulimia nervosa, as quais vêm comunicar um mal estar, despertando assim um impacto na sociedade atual. Isto traz a necessidade de melhor compreender como o psicólogo clínico de orientação psicanalítica percebe e trabalha com essas novas subjetividades. Com isso, pretende-se desvelar as percepções do psicólogo diante de sua prática com essas patologias, como entendem sua função nesses casos, bem como as formas de tratamento e rumos que devem ser tomados, no sentido de não só tratar bem como prevenir tais sintomas. Para tanto se utilizou a abordagem qualitativa e entrevistaram-se cinco psicólogos clínicos de orientação psicanalítica com tempo de formação entre 5 e 18 anos, que haviam atendido um ou mais casos de anorexia e/ou bulimia nervosa. Uma vez coletadas as informações, as entrevistas foram submetidas à análise de conteúdo. A partir da análise, verificaram-se os desdobramentos dos atendimentos, a função da Psicologia diante desses casos,características apresentadas, formas de tratamento, como também a concepção dos profissionais acerca os quadros.

The Influence of Indigenous Culture on Sport Psychology Practice: Challenges and Prospects

Given that contemporary cultural sport psychology has advocated for more inclusiveness involving intersecting cultural identities for applied work (research and practice), it is still surprising that information on indigenous practices across many societies remain untapped. This opinion paper highlights a range of issues that have been addressed within differing cultural contexts and offer ways in which indigenous practices could be integrated into existing professional frameworks across diverse societies that maintain respect for new set of culture-specific behavioral norms, beliefs and practices.

The effects of the leader–member exchange relationship on rater accountability: A conceptual approach

In contemporary organizational psychology research, the effect of the leader–membership exchange (LMX) relationship on rater accountability has received little attention. The current study seeks to...

Dewey and Lewin: A neglected relationship and its current relevance to psychology

In this paper, we explore the neglected relationship between Dewey and Lewin. Adopting a historical and theoretical perspective, we offer an interpretative framework for explaining why both scholars and their legacies may have been insufficiently recognized or misunderstood within psychology. Their relationship is discussed with particular reference to a common theoretical basis and conception of activity. The connections of their work with the Cultural Historical School and with Gramsci’s thinking are suggested. We hold that from this perspective, Dewey and Lewin can be seen to contribute to contemporary psychology—action research in particular—by furthering its “emancipatory social relevance.”

Military Ethics and the Situationist Critique

ABSTRACTMany contributors to military ethics from diverse locations and philosophical perspectives maintain that virtues are central to martial theory and practice. Yet several contemporary philosophers and psychologists have recently challenged the empirical adequacy of this perspective. Their challenge is known as the situationist critique, a version of which asserts that: (a) situational features rather than character traits such as virtues cause and explain human behavior, and (b) ethical theories and development programs are empirically inadequate to the extent that they incorporate virtues. In this paper, I assess the merit of this critique and consider some implications of my assessment for military practitioners and theorists.

Effects of Integrated Play Therapy on Relationship Satisfaction and Intimacy Within Couples Counseling

The importance of play and playfulness has been recognized from Greek philosophy to contemporary psychology, while play has been primarily limited to the population of children in the use of mental health therapy. Play in adult couples counseling has been recently brought to the attention of mental health clinicians, while no clinical studies have yet been done. This study explored the effects of integrated play therapy on relationship satisfaction and intimacy in couples counseling through a clinical case study.