Development of the Internet Psychology in Russia: An Overview

A brief description of prehistory, history and current state of the art in the development of the Internet psychology, or cyberpsychology in Russia is presented. Prehistory refers to a “non-meeting” stage: unsuccessful enthusiasts of computer networking in Russia (then the USSR) have not had recourse to social science researchers, including psychologists, who might have provided computer scientists with valuable “human factor” reasons to make the innovative appeal fully argumentative. The second period, named “culture psychology”, refers to the beginning of the appropriate studies which happened to start earlier than the public access to the Internet became available. The main theoretical platform of the culture psychology studies was the Vygotskian paradigm in psychology. The dominant characteristic of the third period was multitheoretical approach, and this phase got an ad hoc name “positive psychology” – simply due to the fact that a series of cyberpsychogical studies was performed within a positive psychology paradigm. The last enlisted period refers to the “current studies”: it includes both multi-theoretical works and diverse projects targeted on numerous Internet mediated activities such as interaction, cognition (e.g. learning), video game playing and various online entertainments.