Everyday psychology
Psychological knowledge and its types
The first chapter characterizes the sphere of psychological knowledge as a whole, showing its specificity in everyday, scientific, practical psychology, as well as the features of psychological knowledge contained in works of art and in various types of irrational psychology.
World of psychological knowledge
Psychology is knowledge about the psyche as the inner world of people, about the psychological reasons that explain their behavior. Mental phenomena are understood as facts of internal subjective experience. These facts include various manifestations of a person’s mental (mental) life:
- cognitive mental processes (sensations, perception, representation, imagination, thinking, speech, memorization, preservation, reproduction);
- emotional phenomena (anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise, anxiety, stress, sympathy, antipathy, love, friendship, hatred);
- Various aspects of activity regulation (needs and motivation, attention);
- mental states (inspiration, stress, fatigue, adaptation);
- mental properties of a person (temperament, character, abilities, self-awareness, a person’s ideas about himself, his self-esteem and self-respect, level of aspirations, a number of other personal characteristics);
- mental phenomena characterizing human interpersonal relationships (interpersonal perception, sympathy, antipathy, compatibility, conflicts, friendship, love, suggestibility, leadership, psychological climate).
Mental phenomena can be conscious or unconscious. Psychological knowledge as knowledge about the human mental world can have different sources. The five basic types of psychological knowledge differ in methods of obtaining, features of construction, methods of expression and justification, as well as criteria of truth:
- everyday psychology,
- scientific psychology,
- practical psychology,
- art,
- irrational psychology.
Everyday psychology
Psychological knowledge accumulated and used by a person in everyday life is called “everyday psychology”. Οʜᴎ are usually specific and formed in a person during his life as a result of observations, introspection and reflection.
The reliability of everyday psychology is tested on personal experience and the experience of people with whom a person is in direct contact. This knowledge is passed on from mouth to mouth, written down, reflecting centuries of everyday experience. Rich psychological experience has been accumulated in fairy tales. Many everyday observations are collected by writers and reflected in works of art or in the genre of moral aphorisms. The everyday observations of outstanding people, due to their wisdom and ability to generalize, are also of great value.
The main criterion for the truth of knowledge of everyday psychology is its plausibility and obvious usefulness in everyday life situations.
The features of this knowledge are specificity and practicality. Everyday psychological knowledge is characterized by fragmentation. Such knowledge is intuitive.
Οʜᴎ are characterized by accessibility of presentation and clarity. Knowledge of this type reveals the inaccuracy of the concepts used. Knowledge of everyday psychology is characterized by reliance on life experience and common sense.
Everyday psychology - concept and types. Classification and features of the category “Everyday Psychology” 2017, 2018.
Were there no personal problems? Were. But this was in the nature of folk wisdom and observations. Before scientific psychology there was everyday psychology.
Everyday psychology - facts obtained through personal observations. This is a subjective understanding of the psychological patterns and characteristics of the world. In another way, everyday psychology is called wisdom.
Sources of everyday psychology:
- everyday and interaction;
- joint ;
- people who meet along the path of life.
Examples of everyday psychology: rituals, traditions, folk tales, sayings, proverbs, legends, beliefs and other folk art. Many public pages on the social network VKontakte or websites on the Internet are the result of everyday psychology. That is, this is someone’s personal experience, everyday observations, the story of the life or success of this particular person. Nowadays it is fashionable to understand psychology and talk about self-improvement.
Everyday psychology has an arsenal of tools. For example, art. Through paintings, music, books we get to know other people. Each viewer develops his own subjective idea of the author and his life. No terms or theories - only everyday psychology and personal. But the main method of everyday psychology is “trial and error.”
Everyday psychology is personal experience and ways of living that suit one person. This is exactly the case when we say “I do this, but it’s not a fact that it will suit you.”
Thanks to everyday psychology, a person knows how to communicate with his own parents, friends, sisters and brothers. However, without certain scientific knowledge, a person does not know how to behave with a new acquaintance. For example, children who are accustomed to manipulating their parents with the help of tears are at a loss when this technique does not work on another adult.
Good everyday psychologists are drivers, security guards, bartenders. They communicate with a large number of people every day, listen to their problems and draw appropriate conclusions.
What is scientific psychology
Scientific psychology is material obtained through experimentation and research. Psychology in scientific terms and theories.
Sources of scientific psychology:
- books, scientific articles and other publications;
- experiments;
- teachers and mentors passing on theoretical experience (university studies in psychology).
The basis of scientific psychology is everyday psychology. Only after noticing something in practice do scientists decide to find a scientific explanation and determine the scale of the process.
Scientific psychology provides general guidelines for interaction. For example, it is known that all people are infected by emotions; Every person’s brain reacts by increasing their mood to a forced smile. And each individual’s bright, cold shades make one feel melancholy, etc. This means that you can safely use these techniques in everyday life.
Differences between everyday and scientific psychology
The scientific type analyzes the similarities and differences between the two types of psychology. But among the studies it is impossible to find a single list of differences. However, general points can be highlighted:
- Object of study. Scientific psychology studies mental processes, everyday psychology studies a specific person or condition. For example, everyday psychology says that all people are different, and scientific psychology explains this by the characteristics of the mental system (temperament).
- Generalization. Everyday psychology describes specific people and specific conditions. Often it is abstract and figurative in nature or represented. Scientific psychology generalizes, classifies, systematizes.
- A way to gain knowledge. Everyday psychology uses only unorganized observation and introspection. Scientific psychology uses a lot of tools: specially organized observation, experiment, tests, surveys, diagnostics and more.
- Method of knowledge transfer. Everyday psychology is transmitted mainly orally, for example, from grandmothers to grandchildren. Or through folk art. Scientific psychology is transmitted through specialized literature, textbooks, and universities.
- Facts, arguments, awareness. Everyday psychology does not provide point-by-point explanations. The person simply says that he suddenly realized something or simply knows that it works. Scientific psychology will explain why this works: what hormones are turned on, what lobes of the brain are involved, what mental property is used.
- Language. Scientific psychology operates with terms and concepts. Everyday psychology explains something “in its own words,” in a simple way.
Similarities between scientific and everyday psychology
The similarity between scientific and everyday psychology is that they help people understand each other. The result of combining two areas of psychology is practical psychology.
What does the unification of scientific and everyday psychology look like:
- The study of the influence of a group on an individual and individuals on a group (psychology of management and leadership).
- Determining the features of interaction between two groups or two people.
- The study of human uniqueness, behavioral characteristics (personality psychology).
Practical psychology begins with everyday observation and ends with scientific study. And at the third stage, on the contrary, the put forward theoretical hypothesis is tested on special cases in everyday life, the breadth of its application is noted.
Everyday and scientific psychology are important to each other. These are mutually complementary types. Everyday psychology is everyone’s personal experience. Scientific psychology is the generalized experience of the entire society. But is it really possible to draw general conclusions about the laws of society without knowing the psyche of each individual? And it is also impossible to understand systematic knowledge without experiencing it personally in practice. Can a teacher only follow the material written in the textbook, ignoring the environmental conditions and characteristics of the very children with whom he interacts? So, in essence, we are talking about theoretical and practical psychology.
Any science has as its basis some everyday, empirical experience of people. For example, physics relies on the knowledge we acquire in everyday life about the movement and fall of bodies, about friction and energy, about light, sound, heat and much more. Mathematics also comes from ideas about numbers, shapes, quantitative relationships, which begin to form already in preschool age.
But the situation is different with psychology. Each of us has a stock of everyday psychological knowledge. There are even outstanding everyday psychologists. These are, of course, great writers, as well as some (though not all) representatives of professions that involve constant communication with people: teachers, doctors, clergy, etc. But, I repeat, an ordinary person also has certain psychological knowledge. This can be judged by the fact that each person, to some extent, can understand another, influence his behavior, predict his actions, take into account his individual characteristics, help him, etc.
Let's think about the question: how does everyday psychological knowledge differ from scientific knowledge? I will tell you five such differences.
First: everyday psychological knowledge, concrete; they are confined to specific situations, specific people, specific tasks. They say that waiters and taxi drivers are also good psychologists.
But in what sense, to solve what problems? As we know, they are often quite pragmatic. The child also solves specific pragmatic problems by behaving in one way with his mother, in another with his father, and again in a completely different way with his grandmother. In each specific case, he knows exactly how to behave in order to achieve the desired goal. But we can hardly expect from him the same insight in relation to other people's grandmothers or mothers. So, everyday psychological knowledge is characterized by specificity, limitation of tasks, situations and persons to which it applies.
Scientific psychology, like any science, strives for generalizations. To do this, she uses scientific concepts. Concept development is one of the most important functions of science. Scientific concepts reflect the most essential properties of objects and phenomena, general connections and relationships. Scientific concepts are clearly defined, correlated with each other, and linked into laws.
For example, in physics, thanks to the introduction of the concept of force, I. Newton was able to describe, using the three laws of mechanics, thousands of different specific cases of motion and mechanical interaction of bodies. The same thing happens in psychology. You can describe a person for a very long time, listing in everyday terms his qualities, character traits, actions, relationships with other people.
Scientific psychology seeks and finds such generalizing concepts that not only economize descriptions, but also allow us to see behind the conglomerate of particulars the general trends and patterns of personality development and its individual characteristics. One feature of scientific psychological concepts should be noted: they often coincide with everyday ones in their external form, that is, simply put, they are expressed in the same words. However, the internal content and meanings of these words are usually different. Everyday terms are usually more vague and ambiguous.
Once high school students were asked to answer in writing the question: what is personality? The answers varied widely, with one student responding: “That's something to check on paperwork.” I will not talk now about how the concept of “personality” is defined in scientific psychology - this is a complex issue, and we will specifically deal with it later, in one of the last lectures. I will only say that this definition is very different from the one proposed by the mentioned schoolboy.
Second difference everyday psychological knowledge is that it is intuitive in nature. This is due to the special way they are obtained: they are acquired through practical trials and adjustments. This method is especially clearly visible in children. I have already mentioned their good psychological intuition. How is it achieved? Through daily and even hourly tests to which they subject adults and which the latter are not always aware of. And during these tests, children discover who can be “twisted into ropes” and who cannot.
Often teachers and trainers find effective ways of education, training, and training by following the same path: experimenting and vigilantly noticing the slightest positive results, i.e., in a certain sense, “going by touch.” They often turn to psychologists with a request to explain the psychological meaning of the techniques they have found.
In contrast, scientific psychological knowledge is rational and fully conscious. The usual way is to put forward verbally formulated hypotheses and test the logically following consequences from them.
Third difference consists in the methods of knowledge transfer and even in the very possibility of its transfer. In the field of practical psychology, this possibility is very limited. This directly follows from the two previous features of everyday psychological experience - its concrete and intuitive nature.
The profound psychologist F. M. Dostoevsky expressed his intuition in the works he wrote, we read them all - did we become equally insightful psychologists after that?
Is life experience passed on from the older generation to the younger? As a rule, with great difficulty and to a very small extent. The eternal problem of “fathers and children” is precisely that children cannot and do not even want to adopt the experience of their fathers. Each new generation, each young person has to “pick up the chops” themselves to gain this experience.
At the same time, in science, knowledge is accumulated and transmitted with greater, so to speak, efficiency. Someone long ago compared representatives of science to pygmies who stand on the shoulders of giants - outstanding scientists of the past. They may be much smaller in stature, but they see further than giants because they stand on their shoulders. The accumulation and transmission of scientific knowledge is possible due to the fact that this knowledge is crystallized in concepts and laws. They are recorded in scientific literature and transmitted using verbal means, that is, speech and language, which is what we, in fact, began to do today.
Quadruple difference consists of methods for obtaining knowledge in the fields of everyday and scientific psychology. In everyday psychology, we are forced to limit ourselves to observations and reflections. In scientific psychology, experiment is added to these methods. The essence of the experimental method is that the researcher does not wait for a combination of circumstances as a result of which the phenomenon of interest to him arises, but causes this phenomenon himself, creating the appropriate conditions.
Then he purposefully varies these conditions in order to identify the patterns to which this phenomenon obeys. With the introduction of the experimental method into psychology (the opening of the first experimental laboratory at the end of the last century), psychology, as I have already said, took shape into an independent science.
Finally, fifth difference, and at the same time, the advantage of scientific psychology is that it has extensive, varied and sometimes unique factual material, inaccessible in its entirety to any bearer of everyday psychology. This material is accumulated and comprehended, including in special branches of psychological science, such as developmental psychology, educational psychology, patho- and neuropsychology, occupational psychology and engineering psychology, social psychology, zoopsychology, etc.
In these areas, dealing with various stages and levels of mental development of animals and humans, with mental defects and diseases, with unusual working conditions - conditions of stress, information overload or, conversely, monotony and information hunger, etc. - the psychologist does not only expands the range of its research tasks, but also encounters new unexpected phenomena. After all, examining the operation of a mechanism under conditions of development, breakdown or functional overload from different angles highlights its structure and organization.
Let me give you a short example. You, of course, know that in Zagorsk we have a special boarding school for deaf-blind children. These are children who have no hearing, no vision, no vision and, of course, initially no speech. The main “channel” through which they can come into contact with the outside world is touch.
And through this extremely narrow channel, under conditions of special training, they begin to understand the world, people and themselves! This process, especially at the beginning, goes very slowly, it unfolds in time and in many details can be seen as if through a “temporal lens” (a term used to describe this phenomenon by famous Soviet scientists A.I. Meshcheryakov and E.V. Ilyenkov).
It is obvious that in the case of the development of a normal healthy child, much passes too quickly, spontaneously and unnoticed. Thus, assistance to children in the conditions of a cruel experiment that nature has placed on them, assistance organized by psychologists together with defectologists, simultaneously turns into the most important means of understanding general psychological patterns - the development of perception, thinking, and personality.
So, to summarize, we can say that the development of special branches of psychology is a Method (method with a capital M) of general psychology. Of course, everyday psychology lacks such a method.
Now that we have become convinced of a number of advantages of scientific psychology over everyday psychology, it is appropriate to pose the question: what position should scientific psychologists take in relation to the bearers of everyday psychology? Suppose you graduated from university and became educated psychologists. Imagine yourself in this state. Now imagine next to you some sage, not necessarily living today, some ancient Greek philosopher, for example.
This sage is the bearer of centuries-old thoughts of people about the fate of humanity, about the nature of man, his problems, his happiness. You are the bearer of scientific experience, which is qualitatively different, as we have just seen. So what position should you take in relation to the knowledge and experience of the sage? This question is not an idle one, it will inevitably sooner or later arise before each of you: how should these two types of experience relate in your head, in your soul, in your activity?
I would like to warn you about one erroneous position, which, however, is often taken by psychologists with extensive scientific experience. “The problems of human life,” they say, “no, I don’t deal with them. I am engaged in scientific psychology. I understand neurons, reflexes, mental processes, and not the “pangs of creativity.”
Does this position have some basis? Now we can already answer this question: yes, it does. These some reasons are that the mentioned scientific psychologist was forced in the process of his education to take a step into the world of abstract general concepts; he was forced, together with scientific psychology, to, figuratively speaking, drive life in vitro * to “tear apart” mental life “into parts” .
But these necessary actions impressed him too much. He forgot the purpose for which these necessary steps were taken, what path was supposed to follow. He forgot or did not give himself the trouble to realize that the great scientists - his predecessors - introduced new concepts and theories, highlighting the essential aspects of real life, intending to then return to its analysis with new means.
The history of science, including psychology, knows many examples of how a scientist saw the big and vital in the small and abstract. When I.V. Pavlov first recorded the conditioned reflex secretion of saliva in a dog, he declared that through these drops we would eventually penetrate into the torments of human consciousness. The outstanding Soviet psychologist L. S. Vygotsky saw in “curious” actions such as tying a knot for memory as ways for a person to master his behavior.
You won’t read anywhere about how to see small facts as reflections of general principles and how to move from general principles to real life problems. You can develop these abilities by absorbing the best examples contained in the scientific literature. Only constant attention to such transitions and constant practice in them can form in you a feeling of the “beat of life” in scientific pursuits. Well, for this, of course, it is absolutely necessary to have everyday psychological knowledge, perhaps more extensive and profound.
Respect and attention to everyday experience, knowledge of it will warn you against another danger. The fact is that, as you know, in science it is impossible to answer one question without ten new ones arising. But there are different types of new questions: “bad” and right. And it is not just words. In science, there were and still are, of course, entire areas that have reached a dead end. However, before they finally ceased to exist, they worked idle for some time, answering “bad” questions that gave rise to dozens of other bad questions.
The development of science resembles moving through a complex labyrinth with many dead-end passages. To choose the right path, you need to have, as they often say, good intuition, and it arises only with close contact with life. Ultimately, my idea is simple: a scientific psychologist must at the same time be a good everyday psychologist. Otherwise, he will not only be of little use to science, but also will not find himself in his profession; simply put, he will be unhappy. I would really like to save you from this fate.
One professor said that if his students learned one or two basic ideas throughout the course, he would consider his task accomplished. My wish is less modest: I would like you to grasp one idea in this one lecture. This idea is as follows: the relationship between scientific and everyday psychology is similar to the relationship between Antaeus and the Earth; the first, touching the second, draws its strength from it.
So, scientific psychology, firstly, is based on everyday psychological experience; secondly, it extracts its tasks from it; finally, thirdly, at the last stage it is checked.
excerpts from the book by Gippenreiter Yu.B. "Introduction to General Psychology"
Source:
Everyday psychology
Any science has as its basis some everyday, empirical experience of people. For example, physics is based on the knowledge we acquire in everyday life about the movement and fall of bodies, about
http://www.modo-novum.ru/psiholog/znanie5.htm
Everyday psychology
Everyday human life is permeated with many psychological connections and relationships that create the basis for the emergence of the so-called everyday psychology.
The basis of everyday psychology is joint activity, communication and real relationships between people. The source of everyday psychology is always those people with whom we come into direct contact.
Everyday psychology permeates all types of art. For many people, works of art, literary and musical works, and theatrical performances are an important, and sometimes the main way of understanding the inner world of a person.
Differences between everyday and scientific psychology.
Psychological works highlight a number of differences between scientific and everyday psychology. Let's list the main ones.
1. Differences in the object of scientific and everyday psychology, i.e. differences in who and what becomes the source of psychological knowledge. The object of everyday psychology is specific people with whom we come into direct contact in everyday life.
The object of scientific psychology has changed historically and includes diverse manifestations of the human psyche.
2. Differences in the level of generalization of knowledge. Knowledge of everyday psychology is confined to specific people and specific situations; it is little generalized and situational; often expressed figuratively and metaphorically. The knowledge of scientific psychology is generalized; it records facts and patterns of behavior, communication, interaction of people and their inner life. They are expressed in concepts that reflect the essential and permanent properties of the human psyche.
3. Differences in ways of acquiring knowledge. Everyday knowledge of human psychology is acquired through direct observation of other people and self-observation. Scientific psychology uses a whole arsenal of methods to obtain new knowledge: targeted observation, experiment, tests, etc. The material obtained in scientific psychology is generalized, systematized, and presented in logically consistent concepts and theories.
4. Differences in ways and means of transmitting knowledge of everyday and scientific psychology. In everyday psychology, the transfer of knowledge is carried out by broadcasting from one person to another, often from older to younger. Scientific and psychological knowledge has been verified and organized in scientific theories and described in scientific works. There are socially developed and fixed ways and forms of replenishment, preservation, reproduction and transfer of scientific and psychological knowledge: research institutes, educational institutions, scientific literature, etc.
A comparison of the capabilities of everyday and scientific psychology shows the significant advantages of the latter for the human science professions. But at the same time, a dismissive attitude towards everyday psychology is unacceptable. The generalized and scientifically expressed experience of the joint life of people acquires its significance only when it is “passed” through internal experience, when it has become personal property.
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Everyday psychology
5.3. Everyday and scientific psychology about man
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Petukhov V
SUBJECT AND TASKS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE AND PRACTICE
Petukhov V.V., Stolin V.V. Psychology. Method. decree. M.: Moscow State University Publishing House, 1989. pp. 5-11, 18-21.
Basic terms: scientific psychology, everyday psychology, human psychology, psyche, consciousness, method of introspection, behavior, objective method, activity, unity of consciousness and activity, branches of psychology, psychotherapy.
When characterizing any science, it is necessary to explain its theoretical foundations, the subject of study, show research capabilities, and practical applications of the results obtained. Let's begin our acquaintance with psychological knowledge by analyzing the term “psychology” itself. This term, derived from the Greek words psyche - soul, psyche and logos - knowledge, comprehension, study, has several meanings.
So, in its first, literal meaning, psychology is knowledge about the psyche, a science that studies it. The psyche is a property of highly organized living matter, a subjective reflection of the objective world, necessary for a person (or animal) to be active in it and control their behavior. The area of psychology is wide and diverse: this includes the reflection by the simplest animals of those individual properties of the environment that are significant for the search for vital substances, and the conscious representation of the complex connections of the natural and social world in which a person lives and acts. Consciousness is usually called the highest form of the psyche, necessary for organizing the social and individual life of people, for their joint work activity.
In the second, most common meaning, the word “psychology” also refers to mental, “spiritual” life itself, thereby highlighting a special reality. If the properties of the psyche, consciousness, mental processes usually characterize a person in general, then the features of psychology - a specific individual. Psychology manifests itself as a set of typical ways of behavior, communication, knowledge of the world around a person (or groups of people), beliefs and preferences, character traits. Thus, emphasizing the differences between people of a particular age, profession, and gender, they speak, for example, about the psychology of a schoolchild, student, worker and scientist, female psychology, etc.
It is clear that the general task of psychology is the study of both the psyche of the subject and his psychology.
Having distinguished psychology as a special reality and as knowledge about it, we note that the concept of “psychologist” - the owner of this knowledge - is also ambiguous. Of course, first of all, a psychologist is a representative of science, a professional researcher of the laws of the psyche and consciousness, the characteristics of psychology and human behavior. But not all psychological knowledge is necessarily scientific. So, in everyday life, a psychologist is a person who “understands the soul”, who understands people, their actions, and experiences. In this sense, virtually every person is a psychologist, regardless of profession, although more often this is what true experts in human relations are called - prominent thinkers, writers, teachers.
So, there are two different areas of psychological knowledge - scientific and everyday, everyday psychology. If scientific psychology arose relatively recently, everyday psychological knowledge has always been included in various types of human practice. In order to provide a general description of psychology as a special scientific discipline, it is convenient to compare it with everyday psychology and show their differences and relationships.
This topic addresses the following main issues:
1. Comparative characteristics of everyday and scientific psychological knowledge.
2. Specific features of psychology as a natural and human science.
3. Branches of psychology and its applied tasks.
4. Forms of cooperation between scientific and everyday psychology in real life and activities.
Comparison of everyday and scientific psychology: general characteristics of psychology as a science
The fundamental condition for human existence is a certain conscious understanding of the world around him and his place in it. The study of such ideas associated with certain properties of the psyche, ways of human behavior, is necessary for the correct organization of the life of any society, although in everyday practice it is not an independent, special task. It is no coincidence that in ancient teachings about man his knowledge was combined with the development of cultural norms of public and personal life. Knowledge of specific psychological patterns allowed people to understand each other and control their own behavior.
The history of culture - philosophical, moral and ethical texts, artistic creativity - contains many wonderful examples of a detailed description of individual psychological characteristics, their subtle understanding and analysis.
Possible examples. 1. The empirical description of human individuality in the work of one of the thinkers of Ancient Greece, Theophrastus “Characters” (L., 1974), has become a classic for European culture: in the totality of people’s everyday actions, their typical psychological portraits are determined, which are based on special character traits and communication with other people.
2. A collection of everyday psychological observations in the Eastern classics - “Tzazuan” (literally “mixture”, “notes about various things”, see Tzazuan. Sayings of Chinese writers of the 9th-19th centuries. 2nd ed. M., 1975): laconic and witty Typical situations that cause various emotional states are highlighted.
The interest in ancient descriptions of individual characters is still understandable today, because their owners are well recognizable in everyday life, despite the change in historical eras and living conditions. It is significant that everyday knowledge about character (and temperament) was generalized in the form of a fairly strict system, the classification in the creation of which was “collaborated” - through the centuries - by representatives of a wide variety of specialties.
A typical example. The classification of temperaments, proposed in ancient Rome by the physician Hippocrates, includes the following types: cheerful and sociable sanguine, thoughtful, slow phlegmatic, brave, hot-tempered choleric, sad melancholic. Initially, it was based not on psychological characteristics, but on the predominance in the human body of one of four fluids: blood (sangva), mucus (phlegm), bile and black bile (chole and melanchole). Subsequently, types received a psychological interpretation thanks, in particular, to the works of Kant and Stendhal, a philosopher and fiction writer who, in different ways and using different empirical examples, defined these convenient forms of describing individuals. It is interesting that in our century this classification has received new justifications in the works of physiologists and psychologists (I.P. Pavlov, G. Eysenck).
Psychological knowledge is included in many areas of human practice - pedagogy, medicine, artistic creativity. Yet these areas are rightly considered “outside” or “pre-scientific.” The emergence of psychology as a special scientific discipline is associated with the formation of its own conceptual apparatus and methodological procedures.
The main difference between scientific psychology and everyday psychology is that for the latter the field of research activity is almost endless, but with the advent of a scientific discipline there is a sharp narrowing, a limitation recorded in a special language. A scientific psychologist loses (not always irretrievably) entire layers of everyday experience for study, but the introduced restrictions create new advantages. Thus, for Wundt, an accurate substantive definition of an object that is difficult to study is associated with the ability to operationally, with the help of simple methodological procedures in a special experimental situation, isolate its elements, reproduce them under given conditions, measure (and, therefore, use quantitative methods for processing the data obtained), identify the connections of these elements and, ultimately, establish the patterns to which they obey.
Other significant differences between scientific and everyday psychology are also associated with the limitation of the subject and the emergence of special methods for its study: 1) where and in what way psychological knowledge is acquired; 2) in what forms they are stored and 3) due to what they are transmitted and reproduced.
The results of experiments also differ: scientists often have to abandon their own everyday ideas, “not believing their eyes.”
It should be noted that in the first scientific descriptions of psychic phenomena, researchers drew on their personal experience. However, the main value of these descriptions lies not only in their insight and detail, but in the fact that they turned out to be successful generalized schemes for posing research problems.
A typical example. One of the first “psychology textbooks,” written by Wundt’s student, the American psychologist and philosopher W. James (1842-1910), widely presents material from everyday (including the author’s) psychological experience, as well as general models of its scientific understanding, which are still relevant today .
2. The vast experience of everyday psychology is preserved and exists in accordance with the types of practice from which it received and which it discovers. It can be organized in traditions and rituals, folk wisdom, aphorisms, but the foundations of such systematizations remain specific and situational. If situational conclusions contradict one another (for example, there is hardly a proverb to which it is impossible to match another with the opposite meaning), then this does not bother everyday wisdom; it does not need to strive for uniformity.
Scientific psychology systematizes knowledge in the form of logical, consistent propositions, axioms and hypotheses. Knowledge is accumulated in a directed manner, serves as the basis for expanding and deepening the found patterns, and this happens precisely due to the presence of a special subject language.
The precise definition of the subject of scientific psychology should not be understood as a limitation of its research capabilities. For example, scientific psychology actively interferes with everyday experience, rightly claiming a new mastery of social factual material. It is natural, therefore, that there are constant demands to accurately use the existing conceptual apparatus (and only it), this protects experience from “clogging” with everyday associations.
A typical example. The scientific rigor of the outstanding Russian physiologist and psychologist I.P. Pavlov, who forbade his employees to tell experimental animals: the dog “thought, remembered, felt,” is natural. A correct study of animal behavior involves interpreting the results only in terms of a scientific theory, in this case, the reflex theory of higher nervous activity developed in the Pavlovian school.
3. Ordinary psychological knowledge is seemingly easily accessible. The advice of experienced people, the refined aphorisms of thinkers contain clots of everyday experience. However, it is not easy to use this experience: everyday knowledge does not record the real conditions in which it was obtained, and these conditions are decisive when trying to use what is known by another person in a new situation. That is why the mistakes of fathers are so often repeated by their children. One’s own experience, commensurate with one’s capabilities and specific conditions, has to be experienced and accumulated anew.
The experience of scientific psychology is a different matter. Although it is not as extensive as everyday life, it contains information about the conditions necessary and sufficient to reproduce certain phenomena. The acquired knowledge is organized in scientific theories and is transmitted through the assimilation of generalized, logically related provisions, which serve as the basis for putting forward new hypotheses. Thanks to the development of the experimental approach, scientific experience contains facts that are inaccessible to everyday psychology.
Branches of psychology, forms of cooperation between scientific and everyday psychology
The connection between scientific psychology and practice is characterized by the accuracy of setting applied problems and methods for solving them. As a rule, such problems were generated by difficulties arising in non-psychological areas, and their elimination was beyond the competence of the relevant specialists. Let us also note that applied branches could appear independently (including in time) from the development of general psychological science.
Branches of psychology can be distinguished according to several criteria. Firstly, according to the areas of activity (in particular, professional), the needs of which are served, i.e., according to what a person does: labor psychology, engineering, pedagogy, etc. Secondly, according to that. who exactly performs this activity is its subject and at the same time the object of psychological analysis: a person of a certain age (child and developmental psychology, groups of people (social psychology), a representative of a particular nationality (ethnopsychology), a psychiatrist’s patient (pathopsychology), etc. d. Finally, branches of psychology can be defined by specific scientific problems: the problem of the connection between mental disorders and brain lesions (neuropsychology), mental and physiological processes (psychophysiology).
In the actual work of a psychologist, scientific fields interact widely. For example, an industrial psychologist has knowledge of both engineering psychology (or labor psychology) and social psychology. The psychological side of school work simultaneously belongs to the areas of developmental and educational psychology. The development of practical applications of neuropsychology - first of all, the problems of rehabilitation of patients with brain lesions of one or another professional activity - requires knowledge of occupational psychology.
It is clear that a practicing psychologist is simply an everyday psychologist. Of course, he does not always have ready-made models for solving problems and must study and inventively use everyday experience, and yet for him this experience is conceptualized, and problems are quite clearly divided into solvable and unsolvable. It should be emphasized that the relative autonomy of applied branches from their general psychological foundations makes it possible to establish their own practical connections with other sciences - sociology, biology, physiology, medicine.
Various forms of cooperation between scientific and everyday psychology, a typical example of which is a psychotherapeutic session. The therapist cannot create and convey to the patient new ways of mastering his effective past and resolving internal conflicts. The patient constructs these methods only himself, but the therapist helps, provokes their discovery and is present with him, like a doctor at the birth of a child. He clarifies the conditions of the discovery and tries to explain its patterns. The results of such cooperation are, on the one hand, the full life of a healthy person, and on the other, the development of the central section of psychological science - the study of personality.
Successful cases of self-therapy, independent comprehension and overcoming severe mental illnesses are possible, when scientific and everyday psychologists seem to be combined in one person.
Typical example. M.M. Zoshchenko in “The Tale of Reason” conducts a psychological analysis of the sources of his own personal crisis. He examines in detail the variants of the hidden content of affectogenic symbols, dreams and states (the outstretched hand of a beggar, the roar of a tiger, aversion to food, etc.), then gradually determines (not “remembers”, namely, defines) the trauma suffered in early childhood, and, thanks to its conscious development, self-healing is achieved. The techniques he discovered and practiced on himself enrich the psychotherapy staff.
Often, various therapeutic techniques are based on everyday empirical rules for controlling behavior and only then are expressed in theoretical concepts.
The influence of scientific concepts and concepts on people’s everyday ideas about their mental life is interesting. The means of such representation were, in particular, some concepts of psychoanalysis (affective “complex”, “archetype”, “internal censorship”, etc.), terms proposed to describe the emotional sphere (“stress”) of the personality’s defense mechanisms (“compensation”, “replacement”, “rationalization”, “replacement”). Once in colloquial speech, these terms acquire contents that are not always related to their original meaning, but they turn out to be effective means of understanding and even discovering (constructing) a person’s own individual means.
It should be noted that a scientific psychologist sometimes professionally must become an everyday psychologist; preparation for working with some methods of personality diagnostics, learning to correctly and fully interpret the results takes about two to three years. The practice of conducting psychological experiments is sometimes a delicate art, requiring skill and intuition.
Finally, there are also psychological tests where the line between scientific and everyday psychology is difficult to establish. Thus, business communication guidelines provide specific practical advice on adequate social behavior and interaction with other people that make contacts successful. On the one hand, these are a kind of “textbooks” of everyday psychology, on the other hand, a systematic list of results that provides material for scientific research.
Thus, the position of psychological science is determined by its two divergent traditions. The first of them is the desire to become a natural science discipline, the second is to take the place of everyday psychology. Both of these goals are incomprehensible, but each of them gives rise to its own specific tasks.
On the one hand, in comparison with everyday psychology, scientific psychology is a special discipline that has a conceptual and methodological apparatus for studying human mental life, the laws of its organization and development. The accuracy and regularity of recording the experience gained, the possibility of strict verification and directed reproduction bring it closer to the natural sciences.
On the other hand, psychological science has features associated with the specifics of the object of study - its ability to internally reflect its states. A person’s everyday ideas about himself, being the means and results of solving real life problems, can be stable and exist regardless of their scientific explanations. The humanitarian aspect of psychology lies not only in the study, but also in the practice of creating these ideas as ways to overcome conflict situations, comprehend and productively develop life experience.
Scientific and everyday psychology, while maintaining fundamental differences, enter into necessary mutual connections. Psychological science, the development of which can, following L.S. Rubinstein, be represented in the form of a pyramid, is strong in its foundation. Everyday understanding of diverse psychological reality does not disappear with the advent of special science, and, on the contrary, is a constant source of its vital activity. At the same time, scientific achievements are actively penetrating everyday life, offering new, effective means of memorizing its laws, education and personal development.
Scientific psychology as a whole is an attempt to recognize, regularly comprehend, reproduce and improve the existing and constantly developing experience of the mental life of modern man.
First: everyday psychological knowledge, concrete; they are dedicated to specific situations, specific people, specific tasks. So, everyday psychological knowledge is characterized by specificity, limitation of tasks, situations and persons to which it applies. Scientific psychology, like any science, strives for generalizations. To do this, she uses scientific concepts. Concept development is one of the most important functions of science. Scientific concepts reflect the most essential properties of objects and phenomena, general connections and relationships. Scientific concepts are clearly defined, correlated with each other, and linked into laws.
The second difference between everyday psychological knowledge is that it is intuitive in nature. This is due to the special way they are obtained: they are acquired through practical trials and adjustments. In contrast, scientific psychological knowledge is rational and fully conscious. The usual way is to put forward verbally formulated hypotheses and test the logically following consequences from them.
The third difference lies in the methods of transferring knowledge and even the very possibility of transferring it.. In the field of practical psychology, this possibility is very limited. This directly follows from the two previous features of everyday psychological experience - its concrete and intuitive nature.
At the same time, in science, knowledge is accumulated and transmitted with greater, so to speak, efficiency. The accumulation and transmission of scientific knowledge is possible due to the fact that this knowledge is crystallized in concepts and laws. They are recorded in scientific literature and transmitted using verbal means, that is, speech and language, which is what we, in fact, began to do today.
The fourfold difference lies in the methods of obtaining knowledge in the fields of everyday and scientific psychology. In everyday psychology, we are forced to limit ourselves to observations and reflections. In scientific psychology, experiment is added to these methods.
The essence of the experimental method is that the researcher does not wait for a combination of circumstances as a result of which the phenomenon of interest to him arises, but causes this phenomenon himself, creating the appropriate conditions. Then he purposefully varies these conditions in order to identify the patterns to which this phenomenon obeys. With the introduction of the experimental method into psychology (the opening of the first experimental laboratory at the end of the last century), psychology, as I have already said, took shape into an independent science.
Finally, the fifth difference, and at the same time advantage, of scientific psychology is that it has extensive, varied and sometimes unique factual material, inaccessible in its entirety to any bearer of everyday psychology. This material is accumulated and comprehended, including in special branches of psychological science, such as developmental psychology, educational psychology, patho- and neuropsychology, labor psychology and engineering psychology, social psychology, zoopsychology, etc. In these areas, dealing with various stages and levels of mental development of animals and humans, with mental defects and diseases, with unusual working conditions - conditions of stress, information overload or, conversely, monotony and information hunger, etc. - the psychologist not only expands the range of his research tasks, but and encounters new and unexpected phenomena. After all, examining the operation of a mechanism under conditions of development, breakdown or functional overload from different angles highlights its structure and organization.
Human consciousness.
The psyche as a reflection of reality in the human brain is characterized by different levels.
The highest level of the psyche characteristic of a person forms consciousness. Consciousness is the highest, integrating form of the psyche, the result of the socio-historical conditions for the formation of a person in work, with constant communication (using language) with other people.
What is the structure of consciousness, its most important psychological characteristics?
Its first characteristic is given in its very name: consciousness. Human consciousness includes a body of knowledge about the world around us. K. Marx wrote: “The way in which consciousness exists and in which something exists for it is knowledge.” The structure of consciousness thus includes the most important cognitive processes with the help of which a person constantly enriches his knowledge. These processes may include sensations and perceptions, memory, imagination and thinking. With the help of sensations and perceptions, with the direct reflection of stimuli affecting the brain, a sensory picture of the world as it appears to a person at the moment is formed in the mind.
Memory allows you to renew images of the past in the mind, imagination allows you to build figurative models of what is an object of needs, but is absent at the present time. Thinking ensures problem solving through the use of generalized knowledge. A disturbance, a disorder, not to mention the complete collapse of any of these mental cognitive processes, inevitably becomes a disorder of consciousness.
The second characteristic of consciousness is the clear distinction enshrined in it between subject and object, i.e., what belongs to a person’s “I” and his “not-I.” Man, who for the first time in the history of the organic world stood out from it and contrasted himself with his surroundings, continues to retain this opposition and difference in his consciousness. He is the only one among living beings who is able to carry out self-knowledge, that is, to turn mental activity to the study of himself. A person makes a conscious self-assessment of his actions and himself as a whole. The separation of “I” from “not-I” is the path that every person goes through in childhood, carried out in the process of forming a person’s self-awareness.
The third characteristic of consciousness is ensuring the goal-setting activity of a person. The functions of consciousness include the formation of goals of activity, while its motives are formed and weighed, volitional decisions are made, the progress of actions is taken into account and the necessary adjustments are made to it, etc. K. Marx emphasized that “a person not only changes the form of what given by nature; in what is given by nature, he at the same time realizes his conscious goal, which, like a law, determines the method and nature of his actions and to which he must subordinate his will.” Any violation as a result of illness or for some other reason in the ability to carry out goal-setting activities, its coordination and direction is considered as a violation of consciousness.
Finally, the fourth characteristic of consciousness is the inclusion of a certain attitude in its composition. “My relationship to my environment is my consciousness,” wrote K. Marx. The world of feelings inevitably enters a person’s consciousness, where complex objective and, above all, social relations in which a person is included are reflected. Emotional assessments of interpersonal relationships are represented in the human mind. And here, as in many other cases, pathology helps to better understand the essence of normal consciousness. In some mental illnesses, a violation of consciousness is characterized precisely by a disorder in the sphere of feelings and relationships: the patient hates his mother, whom he previously loved dearly, speaks with anger about loved ones, etc.
The lowest level of the psyche forms the unconscious. The unconscious is a set of mental processes, acts and states caused by influences, the influence of which a person does not give himself credit for. Remaining mental (hence it is clear that the concept of the psyche is broader than the concept of “consciousness”, “social”), the unconscious is a form of reflection of reality in which the completeness of orientation in time and place of action is lost, and speech regulation of behavior is disrupted. In the unconscious, unlike consciousness, purposeful control by a person of the actions he performs is impossible, and evaluation of their results is also impossible.
The area of the unconscious includes mental phenomena that occur during sleep (dreams); responses that are caused by imperceptible, but actually affecting stimuli (“subsensory” or “subceptive” reactions); movements that were conscious in the past, but through repetition have become automated and therefore no longer conscious; some impulses to activity in which there is no consciousness of the goal, etc. Unconscious phenomena also include some pathological phenomena that arise in the psyche of a sick person: delusions, hallucinations, etc. It would be wrong on the grounds that the unconscious is the opposite consciousness, equating it with the animal psyche. The unconscious is as specifically a human mental manifestation as consciousness; it is determined by the social conditions of human existence, acting as a partial, insufficiently adequate reflection of the world in the human brain.
Types of attention.
The manifestation of attention is associated with both sensory and intellectual processes, as well as with practical actions and with the goals and objectives of the activity. In this regard, the following types of attention are distinguished: sensory, intellectual, motor, intentional and unintentional attention.
Sensory attention occurs when objects act on the senses. It provides a clear reflection of objects and their properties in the sensations and perceptions of a person. Thanks to sensory attention, the images of objects that appear in the mind are clear and distinct. Sensory attention can be visual, auditory, olfactory, etc. Basically, a person exhibits visual and auditory attention. Visual attention is the best studied in psychology because it is easy to detect and record.
Motor attention is directed to movements and actions performed by a person. It makes it possible to more clearly and clearly understand the techniques and methods used in practical activities. Motor attention regulates and controls movements and actions aimed at an object, especially in cases where they must be particularly clear and precise. Intellectual attention is aimed at more efficient functioning of such cognitive processes as: memory, imagination and thinking. Thanks to this attention, a person remembers and reproduces information better, creates clearer images of the imagination, and thinks clearly and productively. Since this attention is internal in nature and is little accessible for research, it is the least studied in psychology.
Intentional (voluntary) attention occurs when the subject has a goal or task to be attentive to some external object or to an internal mental action. It is mainly aimed at regulating external sensory and motor actions and internal cognitive processes. Intentional attention can become voluntary when the subject needs to show volitional effort in order to direct and focus attention on an object that needs to be cognized or with which to act.
If the direction and concentration of attention are associated with a conscious goal, we are talking about voluntary attention. N. F. Dobrynin identified another type of attention - post-voluntary attention (this is attention that naturally accompanies the activity of the individual; it arises if the individual is absorbed in the activity; it is associated with the existing system of associations). This may occur when the goal of paying attention remains, but volitional efforts disappear. Such attention begins to appear when activities that require volitional efforts become exciting and are carried out without much difficulty.
If direction and concentration are involuntary, we are talking about involuntary attention. According to K.K. Platonov, one of the forms of involuntary attention is an attitude (a state of readiness or predisposition of an individual to act in a certain way). Unintentional (involuntary) attention arises by itself without any purpose on the part of the person. It is caused by properties and qualities of objects and phenomena of the external world that are significant for a person. One of these properties is the novelty of the object. Involuntary attention is also attracted by all strong stimuli: bright light, loud sound, strong smell, etc. Sometimes not very noticeable stimuli can attract attention if they correspond to the needs, interests and attitudes of the individual.
Theories of emotions.
James–Lange theory
This theory identifies emotions with somatic (bodily) changes that accompany the perception of stimuli. In other words, it is argued that emotion is the perception of these somatic changes. We feel scared because we tremble, we feel sad because we cry. Although the James-Lange theory was subject to serious criticism (if fear and sadness do not force us to tremble and cry, then what?), it still remained relevant. Thus, psychotherapists use “desensitization therapy,” keeping the patient in a relaxed state when he returns to his scary thoughts. Fear is clearly reduced if the body is completely relaxed, whereas severe anxiety activates the internal (visceral) organs.
Cannon–Bard theory
Dissatisfied with the James-Lange theory, physiologist W. Cannon proposed his own “neural” theory of emotions. Criticizing the James-Lange theory, Cannon noted, first of all, the fact that changes in internal organs occur not before, but after the occurrence of emotional experiences. In addition, emotions do not disappear when cortical or other neural connections with internal organs are interrupted; visceral changes that accompany emotions can also occur in non-emotional states; finally, the internal organs are relatively insensitive. The Cannon-Bard theory traces the connection between emotions and the function of the hypothalamus, which activates the autonomic nervous system. Recognizing that emotions are accompanied by visceral changes, Cannon rejected their feedback from bodily sensations, which is the essence of the James-Lange theory. Moreover, this theory associates each emotion with a specific physiological signal, but Cannon found that the same visceral reactions occur regardless of the specific emotional experience. For example, anger and fear are characterized by the same visceral reactions. However, Cannon also failed to explain the qualitative specificity of emotional states.
Attributional theory of emotions
To artificially induce a certain emotional state in animals, Cannon injected them with adrenaline, and physiologist G. Maranon did the same with people. What his subjects experienced was what Maranon called “cold emotion”—“like an emotion.” Subjects said: “I felt as if I was afraid” or “I felt as if great happiness awaited me.” Under conditions where emotional states were artificially induced, they were not experienced as real. Because Maranon did not provide his subjects with a suitable basis for emotional sensations, genuine emotional reactions to adrenaline did not arise. In other words, the subjects needed something to which they could attribute their feelings.
Cognitive theory of emotion
Adrenaline causes many of the same physiological changes that accompany emotions. In experiments with the administration of adrenaline, it was shown that, against the background of the same physiological effect of the drug on all subjects, the emotional effect was ambiguous and depended on the specifics of the cognitive processes of the subjects, i.e. on how they interpreted their condition. The subjects, who were informed in advance about the administration of adrenaline and the nature of its action, did not succumb to emotional influence; those who thought that they were receiving a vitamin preparation with some kind of side effect behaved in the same way as the special “decoy ducks” included in the experiment as a control group. As a result, subjects who were near those ducks who showed euphoric behavior behaved in the same way, while those who were near those who expressed indignation also became aggressive. Therefore, what we feel (or think we feel) has a lot to do with, firstly, our understanding of what we are doing and the situation we are in, and secondly, with how others behave yourself in the same situation. For this reason, people sometimes get drunk from a soft drink if they mistake it for an alcoholic drink, especially in a drunk company.
Family education is a general name for the processes of influence on children by parents and other family members in order to achieve the desired results.
Social, family and school education are carried out in inextricable unity.
The determining role of the family is due to its profound influence on the entire complex of physical and spiritual life of the person growing in it. For a child, the family is both a living environment and an educational environment. Family and child are a mirror image of each other.
In the family, those qualities are formed that cannot be formed anywhere else except in the family. In addition, the family carries out the socialization of the individual and is a concentrated expression of her efforts in physical, moral and labor education. Members of society emerge from the family: such is the family, such is the society.
The most important social function of the family is raising a citizen, a patriot, a future family man, and a law-abiding member of society. The family has a significant influence on the choice of future profession.
physical– is based on a healthy lifestyle and includes proper organization of the daily routine, playing sports, hardening the body, etc.;
moral– the core of relationships that shape personality. Education of enduring moral values - love, respect, kindness, decency, honesty, justice, conscience, dignity, duty;
intellectual– involves the interested participation of parents in enriching children with knowledge, developing the needs for their acquisition and constant updating;
aesthetic– designed to develop the talents and gifts of children or simply give them an idea of the beauty that exists in life;
labor- lays the foundation for their future righteous life. A person who is not accustomed to work has one path - the search for an “easy” life.