Report on the topic: “Religious psychological tools”: mental representations of heaven and hell among Orthodox believers

On January 24, the next seminar of the Center for Sociocultural Research of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, “Culture Matters,” took place. As part of this seminar, Alexey  Dvoinin, Ph.D. in psychology, associate professor of the Department of Psychology at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, gave a report on the topic “Religious psychological tools”: mental representations of heaven and hell among Orthodox believers.”

The report said that from the perspective of the cultural-historical approach in psychology, religion can be considered as a special system of sign-symbolic means with the help of which a person masters life processes and behavior. Religious images/concepts of heaven and hell are one of these psychological tools (“tools”). Also during the presentation, the content of mental representations of hell and heaven among Orthodox believers and formal differences in these representations among different people were considered.