Cognitive Polyphasia as a Strategy for Pre-Adaptation to Social Changes

The article analyzes the mechanism of cognitive polyphasia, considered in the context of S. Mosсoviсi’s theory of social representations. In social thinking coexist often incompatible with each other cognitive attitudes that enter into dynamic relationships with each other. The work of cognitive polyphasia can be traced on the example of doublethink in the history of Soviet everyday life. Doublethink is considered a characteristic of not only individual, but also social, mass consciousness (G. Orwell), which makes it possible to distinguish between the concepts of ambivalence (S. Freud), double messages (G. Bateson), and cognitive dissonance (L. Festinger). Using examples from Soviet history and culture, the following proposition is proved: doublethink is the practice of constructing a subject of social cognition and behavior under conditions of authoritarianism and totalitarianism. The diaries of the writer Yu. M. Nagibin. But doublethink is also being reproduced in post-Soviet Russia, as can be clearly seen from the sociological discussion about the “Soviet Man” (Homo Soveticus). If the supporters of the scientific school of Yu. A. Levada and L. D. Gudkov believe that the implicit model of a person, constructed in Soviet everyday life, is quite stable and reproducible from Stalin’s time up to the present day, new studies of “millennials” conducted at the Higher School of Economics under V. V. Radaev reveal differences between the generational groups of Russians in a number of value characteristics related to both the way of life and the perception of the surrounding world. Competing interpretations of the problem of “Soviet Man” are combined, according to the author of the article, with the help of the psychological concept of cognitive polyphasia. Doublethink as a specific historical form of cognitive polyphasia has, first of all, a prognostic function: the spontaneous generation of vivid images in culture and art, which has an “unofficial” and even marginal status, as in the avantgarde of the 1920s and postmodernism of the 1990s, has a preadaptive potential to future social changes and crises.

Asmolov, A. G., Shekhter, E. D., Chernorizov, A. M. (2018). Preadaptation to uncertainty: unpredictable routes of evolution. Moscow, Akropol’ Publ. (In Russian)

Bakhtin, M. M. (2002). Collected works: in 7 vols. Vol. 6. Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics, 1963. Works of the 1960s–1970s. Moscow, Iazyki slavianskikh kul’tur Publ. (In Russian)

Belinskaia, E. P. (2018). Modern identity studies: from structural certainty to procedural incomplete- ness. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Psychology and Pedagogy, 8 (1), 6–15. https://doi. org/10.21638/11701/spbu16.2018.101 (In Russian)

Bovina, I. B. (2010). Social representations theory: history and the actual development. Sociological journal, 3, 5–20.

Burlakova, N. S. (2012). On new possibilities of cultural-historical analysis in clinical psychology. Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta. Ser. 14. Psikhologiia, 2, 49–56. (In Russian)

Burlakova, N. S., Oleshkevich, V. I. (2011). The psychological concept of E. Erickson’s identity in the mirror of the author’s personal history: the experience of studying the nature of clinical and psychological knowledge. Moscow, Maska Publ. (In Russian)

Emel’ianova, T. P. (2019). Collective memory about the events of Russian history: social psychological approach. Moscow, Institute of Psychology RAS Press. (In Russian)

Emel’ianova, T. P., Israelian, T. V. (2021). The phenomenon of cognitive polyphasia in social representations on the mentally ill. Vestnik RUDN. Ser.: Psikhologiia i pedagogika, 18, 346–362. https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-1683-2021-18-2-346-362 (In Russian)

Firsov, B. M. (2008). Diversity of thinking in the USSR 1940s–1960s: history, theory and practices. St Petersburg, European University in Saint Petersburg Press; Evropeiskii dom Publ. (In Russian)

Gudkov, L. D. (2016). A story about a soviet man. Vedomosti, December 28. URL: https://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2016/12/28/671519-povest-o-sovetskom (accessed: 14.02.2022). (In Russian)

Guseltseva, M. S. (2018). Metamodernism in psychology: new methodological strategies and changes of subjectivity. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Psychology, 8, 4, 327–340. https://doi.org/10.21638/11701/spbu16.2018.402 (In Russian)

Jovchelovitch, S., Priego-Hernandez, J. (2015). Cognitive polyphasia, knowledge encounters and public spheres. In: Sammut G., Andreouli E., Gaskell G., Valsiner J. (eds). The Cambridge Handbook of Social Representations (pp. 163–178), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Kharkhordin, O. (2002). Reveal and dissimulate: a genealogy of the Russian personality. St Petersburg, European University in Saint Petersburg Press. (In Russian)

Lebina, N. (2015). Soviet everyday life. Norms and anomalies. From war communism to grand style. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie Publ. (In Russian)

Leontiev, A. N. (2003). Study of development of the mind. Moscow, Smysl Publ. (In Russian)

Leontiev, A. N. (2005). Activity. Consciousness. Personality. Moscow, Smysl Publ.; Akademiia Publ. (In Russian)

Levada, Yu. A., ed. (1993). Soviet ordinary man: experience of social portrait of 90s. Moscow, Mir Publ.; Okean Publ. (In Russian)

Levi-Strauss, C. (2008). Structural Anthropology. Moscow, Akademicheskii proekt Publ. (In Russian)

Mandel’shtam, O. E. (1987). Word and culture. Moscow, Sovetskii pisatel’ Publ. (In Russian)

Markova, I. (2003). Dialogicality and social representations: the dynamics of mind. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Martsinkovskaya, T. D. (2016). Culture and subculture in the space of the psychological chronotope. Moscow, Smysl Publ. (In Russian)

Moscovici, S. (1976). La psychanalyse son image et son public. Paris, PUF. Nagibin, Yu. M. (1996). Diaries. St Petersburg, Knizhnyi sad Publ. (In Russian)

Orwell, G. (1989). “1984” and essays. Moscow, Progress Publ. (In Russian)

Oyster, C. (2004). Social psychology of groups. St Petersburg, Praim-Evroznak Publ. (In Russian)

Paperno, I. (2021). Stories of the soviet experience: memoirs, diaries, dreams. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie Publ. (In Russian)

Papernyi, V. (2000). Culture Two. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie Publ. (In Russian)

Petrovsky, A. V., Yaroshevsky, M. G. (1998). Fundamentals of theoretical psychology. Moscow, Infra-M Publ. (In Russian)

Radaev, V. V. (2020). The divide among the millennial generation: historical and empirical justifications (part two). Sotsiologicheskii zhurnal, 26, 4, 31–60. https://doi.org/10.19181/socjour.2020.26.4.7641 (In Russian)

Sokolova, E. E. (2021). Thirteen dialogues about psychology. Moscow, Smysl Publ. (In Russian)

Vygotsky, L. S. (2005). Psychology of human development. Moscow, Smysl Publ.; Eksmo Publ. (In Russian)

Yampolsky, M. (2015). Muratova: the experience of film anthropology. Moscow, Seans Publ. (In Russian)

Yaroshevskii, M. G. (2007). L. S. Vygotsky in search of new psychology. Moscow, LKI Publ. (In Russian)

Yurchak, A. (2014). Everything was forever, until it was no more: the last Soviet generation. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie Publ. (In Russian)