Problems of Psychology in the 21st Century

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Authors: Editorial Board

Cover page, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2014, PPC

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Authors: Tetiana Shyriaieva

In this edition of scientific journal Problems of Psychology in the 21st Century scientific research is viewed from the perspective of the complexity of its nature and difficulty of its realization. It is no surprise that nowadays psychology goes through the process of its intensive development that results in the appearance of numerous researches in this sphere. However, the question is how novel or scientifically approved the research should be or how much empirical data has it to contain to be claimed scientifically relevant or interesting. It is not simply the issue of cohesion or scientific grammar that is based on a clear understanding of an algorithm of the whole researching activity when the hypothesis is to be formulated. It is unquestioned as scientific research usually means theory, practice, research question and personal experience. It is even not about the structure of any qualitative research as it in most cases contains general overview and research question that is masterly organized in introduction, discussion of literature or the section of topic discourse. It rather means the necessity to dispute the methodological aspects of any scientific work that is a research design and methods that help gather data and analyse it, proving the trustworthiness of the study. However, methodology and set of scientific methods used in the research are to be viewed as two different notions.

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Authors: Galyna Gandzilevska, Tetiana Shyriaieva

After a period of continuous troubles that Ukraine has witnessed over a period of its history, the issue of national identity today appears to be more acute than ever before. It is explained by various reasons that are not under consideration in this research. However, the notion of national identity, its factors and modern perspectives are of a great scientific importance. Amid the principles of identity there is one that refers to the existential feeling of belonging and the desire to unite in factions with those who share similar interests. Besides, national identity is viewed as the factor that affects the preservation and development of the Ukrainian nation. The paper presents the research with aim to define the national identity and its integral parts that are essential for identity preservation. National identity is understood as a collective structure that illustrates how similar or different the elements of society are. Five factors of national identity that are considered in the paper are the collective identification that is realized in religious and cultural beliefs, common history and the feeling of belonging, active social life, which is illustrated by one’s participation in cultural activities, geographical belonging and national character that is a set of cultural believes followed by the representatives of a particular national group. The literary work of Lesia Bohuslavets, a Ukrainian immigrant who lives in Australia, is under consideration in this paper. She was defined as a writer under analysis as she is viewed as an example of those conscientious Ukrainians who feel responsible for cultural and national preservation. The literary work “My Australian kuma” of Lesia Bohuslavets was analysed by means of content analysis which is a statistic means of language evaluation. The result of content analysis proved that national character and active social life categories were marked with the highest variables. It means that exactly these factors are the most influential in the context of national identity preservation.

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Authors: Birutė Jakubkaitė, Rimantas A. Kočiūnas

Many theorists and practitioners believe that integration of theoretical knowledge, observation of proficient group counselor work, supervision of personal work with groups and personal experience as a group member help future group therapists to acquire skills necessary for group counseling. Personal experience can be acquired through participation in experiential groups. As it is little known of the personal experience of experiential group members, it is not sufficiently clear whether insights and opinions of these members are consistent with those emphasized in the literature about experiential groups in the training context. The aim of this research is to provide a structured description of experiences of experiential group participants in the training context: how trainees perceive experiential groups in the training context. To achieve this aim, a qualitative study strategy was employed which is particularly appropriate in cases when a research object has been little explored and results of available studies are controversial. The research was organized and carried out on the basis of the principles and requirements of thematic analysis. Students from one and the same Group Therapy training program of the Institute of Humanistic and Existential Psychology (Birštonas, Lithuania) were chosen for this research. In addition to theoretical lectures, program participants went through three experiential groups that were led by experienced group counselors. The work of the group was observed by two program supervisors. Participants of the research were 8 persons aged from 29 to 48. Semi-structured interviews were used to gather research data. The participants were asked to share their experiences, mostly focusing on experiential groups. The analysis of the gathered data crystallized around 5 themes: preliminary expectations; goals of the experiential group; weakness and unsafety of the experiential group; experiential group process continuity; and experiential group as a tool for giving meaning to knowledge and personal transformations. The analysis of research findings revealed that the purpose of experiential groups in training, which is attached most attention in professional literature, i.e. giving meaning to knowledge and facilitation of personal changes, represents only one component in the perceptions of this group. A relationship between the experiential group participants and the group which determines the perception of the group also encompasses preliminary expectations of the participants, their concerns about the goals of the group, realization of weakness and unsafety of the group, and experience of the group process continuity. The analysis of findings paid attention to the importance of identification and definition of group goals. The participants of the group had ambiguous and vague understanding of the group goals, where the group itself was perceived as lacking coherence and commonness. In addition, the analysis of research findings also revealed that differences among group participants impede the formation of the feeling of commonness. This should encourage both researchers and practitioners to pay attention to the selection of participants to experiential groups and programs.

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Authors: Ivana Poledňová, Zdenka Stránská, Hana Niedobová

The study was based on a theoretical presumption that social climate and relationships in the class can be in specific ways connected with students’ achievement motivation. Previous research in the area of student motivation was mostly based on self-reports and was therefore focused on explicit motives, i.e. personal goals which the respondents strived for. Self-report measures of motivation, however, can be affected by biases and misperceptions of one’s own self. Our study approached achievement motivation at its implicit, i.e. non-conscious level. It was conducted with students in five classes of a secondary school, N = 138, 107 female and 31 male, with an average age of 17 years. The respondents were administered a sociometric questionnaire and the projective Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) in McClelland´s adaptation using Heckhausen´s content-analytical clue for the measurement of achievement motivation. The hypothesized relation between social position in class and achievement motivation was only partly supported. Affiliation was unrelated to achievement motivation, even when analyzed for both achievement motives separately. We found a slight negative relationship between influence in the class and achievement motivation, especially with the motive to achieve success. These results, partly diverging from theoretical presumptions, can be explained in terms of specific features of the sample as well as a general methodological disparity in previous research, especially a lack of differentiation between implicit and explicit motives in the interpretation of the findings.

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Authors: Svеtlana Husakivska

The research results of modern youth’s values, considering Ukrainian and Belarusian students, as future specialists in pre-school institutions of the countries mentioned, are revealed in the article. These values prove to be important regulators of students’ behavior, self-determination, personal and professional development. Purposeful becoming of preschool age children’s educators seems to be especially up-to date. Students turn to be the role models of norms, rules and ideals for new generations. Well-known Schwartz’s “Value Inventory” technique is used to determine modern students’ values. Firstly, it gives the opportunity to identify values at the level of assurance and the actual behaviour of a personality. The experiment reveals that the values of kindness and following the traditions are of primary importance for all the respondents. Secondly, Ukrainian students seem to appreciate the values of independence, kindness and achievements; Belarusian – agreeableness, tradition and universalism. However, statistically significant differences between the samples are not confirmed. This, indeed, reveals the impact of the respondents’ nature in following similar East Slavic nations’ socio-cultural traditions, principles and norms, territorial proximity of Ukraine and Belarus, their spiritual kinship.

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Authors: Nina Yuditseva

The article presents a conceptual model explaining the genesis of person judgments about the others as mediated by motivation regulation. The model is drawn from knowledge theory which has been designed by Losskiy and Frank at the first half of the twentieth century and pertains to phenomenological branch of Non Marxism epistemology. They consider a person body as an external object implicitly existing along with the other objects in person’s cognition without awareness. Self –regulation of Big Two motives makes sensory and insensible mental person’s motives on the one hand and external to him on the other hand to be organized into representation’s structure. The self appears to be the structure of motives’ representation “I-not I” to the person. Self-structure is expected to define perspective-taking of another person and judgment regarding him. The present research checks whether participant’s judgments regarding himself and of the others are related to his motivation strategy. The strategy of innate Big Two motivation was revealed by Szondy test, the test of incomplete utterances was used for discovering of the judgments about itself and of the others. Correspondence analysis (Greenacre) confirms that unconscious taking perspective by the participant regarding himself and of the others is depended upon his motivation strategy. Taking the perspective "not I, the others" is conditioned by impersonal strategy; the perspective "I and the others" is related by self-determined strategy. The focus "I, not the others" relates to self-centered strategy while communicative one takes “not I, not the others" perspective. In addition the significant positive correlation was discovered between participant’s motivation strategy and judgment’s preference in the aggregate of all utterances about others, and also it was proved natural the absence of this in the aggregate of all utterances about itself. Participant’s motivation strategy by default provides two perspectives of utterance about others. However both impersonal and self-determined strategy significant correlates with only one judgment about the others respectively with “the estimate” and with adequate “about the others” while communicative and self-centered strategy correlates with expected two judgments. Impact of agential motives or another’s action/utterances on choice of judgment about the others is conditioned by person’s motivation strategy.