Research & Expertise news at HSE University

A comparative cross-cultural study conducted by the HSE International Laboratory of Positive Psychology of Personality and Motivation has found that Russians tend to be as open with their friends as Americans, but unlike Americans, Russians prefer to hide their happiness when talking to strangers or government officials. These findings were published in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology in the paper Russians Inhibit the Expression of Happiness to Strangers: Testing a Display Rule Model.

Within its 'University Open to the City' project HSE holds many different lectures and discussions at various city venues, such as Moscow museums and Cultural Centre ZIL. Following the successful experience of HSE Open Talks lectures at HSE Day in September for the last three years, the university launched HSE Talks, a regular English-speaking series of public lectures, held at a coworking cafe. From February to April five speakers from the Faculty of Social Sciences gave their public talks, and The HSE Look talked to one of them, Assistant Professor Ekim Arbatli, to learn more about her impressions from participating in the project.

As part of the HSE April Conference, Olga Dragoy, Head of HSE Center for Language and Brain (Neurolinguistics Laboratory), presented some of the cutting-edge methods of preventing speech disorders in Russian-speaking patients with brain pathology, including the first Russian-language intraoperative naming test developed by the laboratory. All test materials and instructions are available for free and can be used in clinical practice.

Traditionally, postgraduate studies have been considered a school of teaching and research and a step towards an academic career. Today, however, many postgraduate students see their future outside academia and plan a corporate career instead. According to Ivan Gruzdev and Evgeniy Terentev, only 56% of postgraduate students plan a career within the academic environment.

According to HSE researchers, men with a high 2D:4D ratio (i.e. those whose index finger is longer than their ring finger) tend to be better educated. These findings are presented in the paper «2D: 4D and lifetime educational outcomes: Evidence from the Russian RLMS survey» in Personality and Individual Differences.

On April 12, Professor Hermann Dülmer of the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg delivered a special lecture at the Higher School of Economics entitled 'Modernization, Culture, and Moral Change in Europe: From Universalism to Contextualism' within the framework of the 7th LCSR International Workshop on Subjective Well-being and Growing Inequality. An expert in sociology and social psychology, he spoke with the HSE News Service about his research interests and his ongoing cooperation with HSE.

An important area being researched today is the relationship between universities and the government in the formation of socioeconomic policy, and this discussion was raised at the international seminar ‘Universities, Inclusive Development, and Social Innovation’ that took place as part of HSE’s XVIII April International Academic Conference.

According to Glasgow and HSE/Northumbria researchers, repetition of non-verbs as well as verbs can boost the effect of syntactic priming, i.e. the likelihood of people reproducing the structure of the utterance they have just heard.