Today, psychosemantics finds extensive application in ethnopsychology, studies of the perception of art (including paintings and feature films), and color perception (Yanshin, 2006). It is also employed in political psychology (Petrenko & Mitina, 2017), gender studies (Chebakova, 2010; Dambaeva, 2017), various clinical and psychological investigations, studies on the worldview of specific social and age groups, assessment of the effectiveness of commercial and social advertising (Gladkikh, 2017; Kyshtymova, 2014; Kshenina, 2006; Teplova, 2016; Gladkikh & Vainer, 2018), and numerous other domains. A new promising area of exploration lies in finding and analyzing the methodological junctions between psychosemantics of consciousness and quantum physics (Petrenko & Suprun, 2017).

The Psychosemantic methods are also in studying the perception of political and socio-cultural issues, as they enable the identification of underlying attitudes and stereotypes that may remain concealed or hard to detect due to social undesirability (Petrenko, Gladkikh & Mitina, 2016; Gaivoronskaya, 2018). Moreover, these methods find use in investigating altered states of consciousness. For instance, V. F. Petrenko, together with V. V. Kucherenko, compared semantic spaces during hypnotherapy to observe the dynamics of changes in individuals’ worldview (Petrenko et al., 2006). It is safe to say that there are few areas of psychology left where one cannot find examples of the use of psychosemantic tools. The results obtained strongly advocate for the popularization of the method of constructing subjective semantic spaces for studying social representations.

In linguistic dictionaries, “semantics” is defined as the meaning conveyed by a sign, be it a symbol, word, text, or utterance in the broadest sense. It is a branch of linguistics that examines the semantic significance of language units. Psychosemantics, on the other hand, is a field of psychology that investigates the structure, formation, and functioning of an individual or collective subject’s system of meanings.

At the core of psychosemantics lies the “Subjective Semantic Space,” which represents a person’s categorization structure as a mathematical field. The coordinate axes within this space correspond to the inherent grounds of categorization, as shown in Figure 1 (Petrenko, Kucherenko & Vyalba, 2006).

The semantic space serves as a research tool that allows identifying semantic relationships between objects and analyzing their structure. The construction of a semantic space involves three key steps (Petrenko, 1982):

1. In the first stage, semantic connections between objects are analyzed using such methods as associative experiments and subjective scaling. This step results in the construction of a similarity matrix that encapsulates the internal structure of the semantic space.

2. In the second stage, the similarity matrix is subjected to mathematical processing to uncover the underlying factors or clusters. This typically entails using various techniques such as factor analysis, multivariate scaling, and cluster analysis. It is important to note that mathematical processing does not generate new content but allows for the presentation of raw data in a concise and well-structured format.

3. In the third stage, the selected structures are interpreted by searching for semantic invariants that unite the objects grouped within a factor or cluster. Competent experts are involved, and reference objects are introduced to formulate hypotheses about the content of the factors.

The application of psychosemantics in cinema assumes a crucial role as it uncovers the genesis, structure, and functioning of individual and collective systems of meanings portrayed in cinematic images and reality. Each viewer, immersed in the events on the screen, identifies with specific characters, and different scenes evoke distinct emotions in each person. Cinemalogy highlights fundamental codes that foster free strategies and imagination to enhance humanistic values like personal worth, responsibility, cooperation, evolution, freedom, and spirituality (Strelkova, 2009; Yanovsky, 2010). Numerous studies have explored the psychosemantics of film art, including analyses of movies such as “Stalker,” “The Barber of Siberia,” “Rashomon,” and others (Petrenko et al., 2014).

To provide a clearer illustration of this approach, let us turn to V. F. Petrenko’s work, “Psychosemantic Analysis of the Feature Film The Barber of Siberia’” (Petrenko, 2005).

Experiment Procedure. After collectively watching the film, the respondents were asked to formulate bipolar constructs that contrast the characters (using G. Kelly’s Triadic Choice methods)[2].

Figure 2. Semantic space depicting the relationships between characters of the feature film ‘The Barber of Siberia’ by Factor 3 and Factor 4

The experiment involved 100 students from various universities in Moscow, both males and females. As a result, the respondents formulated 1,038 constructs, averaging about 10 constructs per person.

Objects of analysis (characters): Tolstoy, Jane 1 (upon her arrival in Russia), Jane 2 (after falling in love with Tolstoy), Radlov, Mokin, Tolstoy’s Mother, McCracken, Dunyasha, Alexander III, the Grand Duke, Polievskyy, Terrorist, Sergeant, and Andrew. Considering that the film takes place on the border between Russian and American mentalities, two additional virtual role positions were introduced to highlight this mental borderland: “Russian” and “American.”

Through factor analysis, the initial character oppositions were grouped into six factors, which were interpreted as artistic constructs according to the authors’ terminology:

• Factor 1 – “Passive obedience ↔ Inner independence and ability to act and fight”

• Factor 2 – “Inherent Dignity ↔ Unprincipled”

• Factor 3 – “Unbalanced Impulsiveness ↔ Common Sense”

• Factor 4 – “Proud Superiority ↔ Pleading Dependency”

• Factor 5 – “Openness to Diversity ↔ Inner Limitation”

• Factor 6 – “Devotion to the idea ↔ Immersion in everyday life”

These factors were used to construct the characters’ semantic spaces, as shown in Figure 2.

In Factor 3, Tolstoy emerges as the most prominent character, significantly differentiated from the others. Additionally, characters such as Tolstoy’s Mother, the Terrorist, and the Grand Duke exhibit traits that prevent them from asserting themselves and instead lead them to be immersed in an illusory world. Conversely, characters like Mokin, Dunyasha, Jane 1, Jane 2, and Andrew embody balanced practicality and common sense (Fig. 2).

On the other hand, Factor 4 highlights the most polar positions held by characters such as Dunyasha, Tolstoy’s Mother, McCracken, and the Terrorist, who possess lower social status. They contrast with characters like Alexander III, Radlov, Polievskyy, and the Grand Duke, who wield power and experience a sense of superiority over others.

By analyzing the semantic space, we gain valuable insights into the underlying meanings and interactions among the characters in “The Barber of Siberia,” shedding light on their roles and dynamics within the film. By identifying the main lines of opposition among the characters, the researchers formulated a system of constructs for the film. To gain a more precise understanding of how viewers perceive the personalities of the characters, an additional psychosemantic technique called “motive attribution” was employed (Petrenko, 2014).