The aim of the article is to introduce the concept of personality and character which is based on the activity theory approach by A.N.Leontiev. The introductory part of the work gives a short history of characterology whose analysis reveals apparent uncertainty in understanding the subject matters of character psychology and personality psychology. They are directly (character) or indirectly (personality) confined to a person’s psychic individuality. However, the specific content of this individuality appears to be so broad and various that characterology starts losing its clear contours while personality does not find any generally accepted definition. In the framework of the developed concept, personality is regarded as a structure of life meanings while character is seen as an instrumental level which accepts life meanings for performance and implements them in human actions. Nonidentity of the two studied formations is shown: they are different in terms of content, function in human psychics, units of structure, general construction and genesis. Some examples are given based on the data of ethnic psychology. They show how a sense formation which is the same for different nations is realized through unequal characterological techniques. On the other hand, a few sense formations can be expressed by a single action or stereotype. In conclusion problems of correlation between personality and character and the source of their generation are discussed.

The paper is devoted to the analysis of spiritual determination of character development in adolescence. On the basis of the experimental research of spiritual sphere and the degree of a character harmony of today’s students, the author allocates the psychological laws of influencing the spiritual orientation for the process of character developments in adolescents. The experimental research has shown that spiritual orientation and character harmony are mutually influenced. However, the spiritual potential does not always positively correlate with character harmony as because the process of character harmonization does not appear linear, but cyclic with of rise and fall periods. The fall periods are accompanied by expressed disharmony of character and promotes social psychological personality maladjustment. Conditioned by steady spiritual orientation, spiritual self-development promotes character harmonization through overcoming personal spiritual crises. Continuous moral struggle against imperfection conditioned, the personality faces gradual character harmonization according to the spiritual ideal.

Spiritually and creative activity promotes activation of psychological mechanisms of character harmonization in adolescents. The basic directions of optimization of the education system is creating psychological conditions of spirituality and moral improvement, saturation of teaching and educational programs by spiritual and creative contents.

The impact of 3 personality traits (according to K. Leonhard’s typology, ostentation, hyperactivity and dysthymia) on intonation parameters (mean ∆F0 , tone span, speech rate, duration of speech and mean duration of syllable) was investigated. Intonation is considered by the authors as a formal dynamic aspect of speech that the individual uses in solving diverse communicative tasks. The authors suggested that the intonation as a means of communication will be most in demand in that person, who has a lot of social contacts, which is common for individuals with such personality traits as ostentation and hyperactivity. At the same time, individuals who possess opposite personality traits such as dysthymia will use intonation in a special way, because of inherent shyness, pessimism, and eventually asociality.

The sample records were produced by 30 male and female participants. 60 recordings of natural monologue on proposed topics were obtained in situations of presence and absence of conversation partner. For the manifestation of each feature there should be certain conditions, which speech activity implements. It turned out that ostentation affects speech rate, hyperactivity affects tone span, dysthymia affects speech rate and duration of speech. The joint effects of these personality traits were also ellicited. Most explicitly, these effects appeared to reveal in certain conditions. For ostentation that was the presence of conversation partner, while for dysthymia – its absence. Sufficient condition for hyperactivity is a speech task.