Socio-psychological characteristics of personality
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Posted on https://www.allbest.ru/
Lecture
Socio-psychological characteristics of personality
Questions
1. Specifics of personality issues in social psychology
2. Self-concept. as a set of ideas of an individual about himself
3. Principles of formation of the self-concept of personality
4. Stability of the self-concept and mechanisms of its maintenance
1. Specifics of personality issues in social psychology
Almost all social sciences address this subject of study: philosophy and sociology; ethics, pedagogy, genetics. And each of them has its own area of study.
The category “personality” occupies a special place in social psychology. For various reasons, in the domestic socio-psychological tradition it seemed to be excluded from the plane of consideration, and at best its discussion was of a secondary nature. In particular, in the classic university textbook G.M. Andreeva, the problem of personality begins to be discussed after the problems of the small group, and even then in the context of socialization and social regulation of behavior.
However, such an attitude to the problem under discussion was not generally accepted. In particular, B.D. Parygin (1971) identifies the category of “personality” as central to socio-psychological theory, as a kind of foundation of socio-psychological phenomenology.
For social psychology, it is important, at a minimum, to establish the difference between its approach to personality and two other “parent” disciplines: sociology and psychology. So, we must answer the question: “What are the specifics of personality research in social psychology?”
As for sociology, for it the individual acts as a product of social relations, as a subject of social life, as a member of a certain social community. The main problem of sociological analysis of personality is the problem of social typology of personality.
According to G.M. Andreeva, the difference from the sociological approach is not that for social psychology it is not important how socially typical traits are represented in a person, but that it reveals how these socially typical traits were formed. Why did they manifest themselves fully in some conditions, while in others some other social-typical traits arose despite her belonging to a certain social group? Here, to a greater extent than in sociological analysis, the emphasis is placed on the microenvironment of personality formation, although this does not mean a refusal to study the macroenvironment. Here, such regulators of individual behavior and activity are taken into account as the entire system of interpersonal relationships, within which their emotional regulation is also studied.
It is much more difficult to separate the problems of personality in general and social psychology. All branches of psychological science consider personality as initially given in a system of social connections and relationships, determined by social relations. But general psychology puts an end to this, and then the actual socio-psychological problems begin to be solved.
Social psychology uses the definition of personality given by general psychology, but finds out in which specific groups a person, on the one hand, assimilates social influences, and on the other, in which specific groups he realizes his social essence.
This approach differs from the general psychological approach not in that it studies the entire complex of issues of social determination of personality (in general psychology it does not). And the fact that social psychology examines the behavior and activity of a “socially determined personality” in specific real social groups, the individual contribution of each individual to the activities of the group, the reasons on which the magnitude of this contribution to the overall activity depends.
Based on such differences, Andreeva G.M. identifies the problems of personality in social psychology:
— identification of those patterns that govern the behavior and activity of an individual included in a certain social group;
-studying the specific life path of an individual, those cells of the microenvironment through which he passes the path of his development, i.e. socialization problem;
— studying the result of an individual’s active mastery of the entire system of social connections, i.e. problem of social attitude.
Western social psychology takes a slightly different position, focusing on the situational aspect of individual behavior. As S. Hampson notes, personality psychology and social psychology have long been viewed as opposing approaches to explaining behavior, the former focusing on the individual, the latter on the situation. In fact, this distinction is simplistic, and both fields of knowledge are closely intertwined in their efforts to understand social phenomena." Considering personality as socially constructed allows us to integrate it and social psychology. For example, the study of such issues as social cognition, social explanation (attribution), impression formation and management is traditionally socio-psychological, but not divorced from the individual, since it is she who supplies the necessary texture for this kind of research.
A simple reference to modern foreign textbooks on social psychology (for example, “Perspectives of Social Psychology,” 2001) shows a sharp change in the proportion of sections devoted to the individual and the group. The former make up almost three quarters. In one of the most interesting textbooks of recent years, “Social Psychology: Unraveling the Mystery” (D. Kenrick, S. Newberg, R. Chialdini, 1999), the core chapter is devoted to the analysis of the problem of personality in a situation, as evidenced by its subsections themselves: “The Mystery of the Ordinary and an unusual person"; "Motivational system"; "Representative system"; "Affective system"; "From personality to behavior." Next, problematic issues such as understanding oneself and others, presentation of the self are considered; persuasive influence, social influence; affiliation and friendship; love and romantic relationships; prosocial behavior; aggression; prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination; groups; global and social dilemmas. Thanks to this approach, we get an idea of social psychology as a field of knowledge that a person directly encounters in everyday life, in which this person has a place, which tries to explain what is happening to him in the world of the people around him.
Thus, in modern social psychology, the central category, a kind of core of the socio-psychological problems of personality, is the category of self. It is considered from various positions in interactionist, cognitivist, psychodynamic, existential-phenomenological and other traditions. Despite the discrepancies in the content of the self (ego, self-concept, etc.), there is agreement that it is a core formation that determines both the self- and worldview of the subject. This is quite clearly demonstrated in studies of social cognition, or social perception, which shows the dependence of self- and worldview on personality characteristics, which shapes the attitude towards individual aspects of what is perceived. In the field of social explanation, or attribution, although most often studied from the perspective of an observer, the dependence of certain grounds on the individual characteristics of the attributor is also shown. In the field of interpersonal communication, a huge amount of empirical material has been accumulated, showing that the process is determined by the personal characteristics of the interactants and the situational context. In the field of studying group processes, the active participation of the individual in them is also no less obvious: the individual not only obeys the normative regulators established in the group, “floats at the will of the waves,” but also takes an active part in their formation, as evidenced by various typologies of subordination to group influence .
2. Self-concept as a set of an individual’s ideas about himself
social psychological personality
Concept by R. Burns. The most comprehensive and most “convenient” from a socio-psychological point of view, the vision of the problem of the structural components of the “I” is presented in the concept of R. Burns (1986). He proposes to consider the self-concept as a set of attitudes aimed at oneself. According to the three-component structure of the social attitude, three components are also distinguished in the self-concept: 1) the image of “I” - the individual’s idea of himself; 2) self-esteem - an affective assessment of this idea, which has varying degrees of intensity depending on the level of acceptance of certain self-characteristics; 3) behavioral reaction - those actions that are caused by the image of “I” and self-esteem.
Each of these three attitudinal components can be represented, from the point of view of R. Burns, in at least three modalities: the real “I”, reflecting those attitudes that are associated with current abilities, roles, statuses (“I-at-most- business"); social “I”, reflecting those attitudes that are associated with a person’s opinion of how others see him (“I-through-the-Others’ eyes”); ideal “I”, reflecting attitudes that are associated with a person’s ideas about the desired “I” (“I-would-like-to-be”).
Cognitive aspect of self-concept. The cognitive structures of our “I” (or self-representation) reflect the main characteristics of our habitual self-perception. In essence, these are self-descriptions through one or another set of individual traits, any role, attribute or status characteristics, which, as R. Burns rightly notes, “can be listed ad infinitum.” Some are more important and more closely related to behavior than others; some are positive, some are negative; some are related to the individual’s current experience, others, on the contrary, are related to past experience. Some ideas about oneself are, as it were, the core of the self-concept, while others act as peripheral. Central ideas are usually more well developed and have a more intense impact on a person’s social behavior; they can be both positive and negative.
The affective aspect of self-concept. The cognitive component of the self-concept is not perceived neutrally by a person, but always awakens certain feelings and evaluations, the intensity of which can vary depending on the social context and the cognitive content itself. Traditionally, this component of our “I” is designated by the concept of “self-esteem,” but recently it increasingly coexists with such a concept as “self-attitude.” The cognitive and affective structures of the self-concept are closely interrelated. So, for example, if cultural differences give rise to different cognitive contents of the self, they can also give rise to differences in emotional attitudes towards ourselves.
For social and psychological studies of the “I,” the behavioral component of the self-concept is usually expressed by the concept of self-presentation.
In general, self-presentation as a behavioral component of the self-concept serves the purpose of testing and confirming its cognitive and affective structures. However, a number of studies note that the specific actions of a person, which may be caused by his self-representations and/or self-attitude, also depend on many factors. For example, there are two stable personal dispositions that mediate the behavioral expression of our “I”: the so-called high or low self-monitoring, as two opposite poles of variations in a person’s tendency to control his behavior and the impression he makes (M. Snyder).
Model of M. Rosenberg. Consideration of the self-concept as a system of a person’s ideas about himself, according to M. Rosenberg, involves isolating the following components.
The components of a self-concept are the parts, elements or units that make it up. Linguistically, they break down into nouns (boy, worker, father, etc.) and adjectives (smart, handsome, envious, etc.). The former answer the question “Who am I?”, the latter answer the question “What am I?” The total number of words people use to describe themselves and others is enormous. Actually, there are fewer psychological, personal terms, of course. However, the list of evaluative-positive personality traits alone, compiled by a group of Kyiv scientists, contains 582 items. But the components of self-descriptions are not combined with each other haphazardly, and they can only be studied in a certain order.
Structure. The category “structure” reflects the relationships between elements. Not all components are equal. Some are fundamental, others are peripheral. At the same time, it is extremely important to find out how characteristic this or that component is for a given individual, especially which of them is the most significant.
The dimensions reflect individual components or the “self-image” as a whole. Examples of dimensions are stability (stability or variability of an individual’s image of himself and his properties), self-confidence (feeling of the ability to achieve goals set for oneself), self-esteem (acceptance of oneself as an individual, recognition of one’s social and human value), crystallization (ease or difficulty changes in the individual's self-image).
Focuses of attention make it possible to identify the place occupied by the “self” or its individual properties in the consciousness of an individual: whether his attention is focused primarily on himself or on the external world, whether he is concerned about his internal qualities or the impression he makes on others, etc.
Foci of attention are associated with categories such as “self-awareness,” “self-directed attention,” and “self-focus.”
Areas of the self. The areas of self-concept include its broad layers or spheres, which include “bodily” and “social”; “internal” and “external”; “conscious” and “unconscious”; “authentic” and “unauthentic”; “ego” and “ego-extension”, etc. Of particular interest are the areas of authentic - inauthentic and ego-extension.
Authentic (genuine) is usually defined as what is perceived by a person as relating to his self. This is a kind of sincere agreement of a person with the fact that such features are present in the structure of his self-concept. Moreover, authenticity is not always associated with positive characteristics. A person may be aware of his insincerity, lack of commitment, lack of restraint, unpunctuality, etc. The situation is exactly the same with inauthenticity - perceived by a person as not characteristic of himself, but presented in accordance with situationally solved problems. An example of this is increased intelligence in the presence of a particularly significant person. By presenting this ideal Self, a person may realize that in real life and under other circumstances he does not always correspond to this ideal, and this awareness of his own inauthenticity can introduce elements of emotional tension into consciousness.
The area of ego-extension covers a circle of objects (animate and inanimate) that are involved in a person’s self and indirectly characterize it. These are parents, relatives, a university, an apartment, books, hobbies, pride and much, much more, which have a certain impact on the formation of a person and indirectly characterize his internal psychological characteristics.
Plans (or levels) of self-concept indicate the degree of its meaningfulness. A person views himself, like others, simultaneously from the point of view of the real, possible, imaginary, desired, due and depicted. Accordingly, the images of the present (real), possible, imaginary, desired, due and “imagined”, depicted by the “I” are distinguished: how a person sees himself at the moment; what kind of “I” seems possible to him; who he imagines himself to be; what he would like to become; what is the image of his ideal, proper “I”; what kind of “I” he “represents”, plays out for others. Each such image is a unique cognitive scheme that has its own frame of reference.
Planes can intersect with each other and come into conflict with each other. Of the most common conflicts of this kind is the conflict between the moral or ideal self and the real self.
A special role is played by the plane of performance or self-presentation - the image presented to others. It is constructed, as a rule, taking into account the peculiarities of self-reflection, identification with the addressee of the presentation, and is often inconsistent with the Real Self.
Motives, emotional impulses that prompt a person to act in the name of his ideas about himself are also diverse. The desire for a positive self-image is one of the main motives of human behavior. A person’s attitude towards himself is never indifferently neutral, disinterested, and the emotional tone, direction (whether they are positive or negative) and intensity, the strength of these feelings permeate all spheres of human life. The most persistent and perhaps the strongest motive of this kind is self-respect.
The second specific motive is the feeling of “constancy of the Self,” which encourages the individual to maintain and protect the stability of the once established “self-scheme,” even if it is not entirely satisfactory. It is stability that provides a kind of basis for predicting one’s behavior and orienting oneself in the future development of events.
Today, within the framework of various psychological traditions and schools, a huge amount of factual material has been accumulated, proving the dependence of the self-concept on a significant social environment.
Thus, by observing ourselves, observing how others treat us, and comparing ourselves with others, we begin to understand ourselves.
W. James believed that the central, global “I” is hardened like plaster by the age of thirty,” but we also have many different social “Selves” that we manifest in various social interactions.
Specific mechanisms that ensure the stability of the self-concept include the following.
Fantasy - using their images as substitutes for the achievements. A person achieves global goals in his dreams and is satisfied. An example of this kind is Manilovism.
C. Rogers proposed only two defense mechanisms that a person uses to minimize the awareness of inconsistency within the Self or between the Self and experience: perceptual distortion and denial.
Social and psychological parameters of personality analysis
Personal maturity
“Mature person”, “mature personality” - these phrases are widespread in everyday language no less, and perhaps even more, than in scientific language. Actually, scientific ideas themselves go back to everyday and philosophical ideas about the nature of man, the value of his existence. As A.V. Solovyov notes, “ideas about a mature personality are initially formed within the framework of the so-called implicit theory of personality, that is, in the normative canon of a person inherent in any culture” (101, p. 134). In fact, the initially mature personality is a pronounced carrier
social typical: the owner of the best human qualities, a full-fledged member of society, an object of respect, a role model. In modern psychology we can see a reflection of this point of view on personal maturity. Thus, for T. Shibutani, maturity and socialization act as synonyms: “... a person is considered mature not when he is fully formed biologically, but only after he is able to take responsibility and control his own actions. A person is socialized, therefore, when he is able to participate in concerted actions based on conventional norms” (131, p. 397).
In psychology, one can distinguish at least two diametrically opposed approaches to defining a mature personality: through the description of an “immature” personality and through the description of a mature one.
In the first case, the solution to the problem follows a well-trodden path: health is contrasted with illness and is described through the absence of painful symptoms, maturity is defined through the absence of signs of personal immaturity. At the same time, a certain parallel is drawn between immaturity and such manifestations of mental illness as psychopathy, neuroses, character accentuations: “Often, when faced with psychopathic manifestations, we involuntarily get the impression of something undeveloped, childish...” (28). An important point that follows from this approach to the analysis of a mature personality is the following: mental health is an important condition for the formation of a mature personality.
The second approach - describing the traits of a mature personality - is represented by very different points of view. For some authors, a mature personality is a unique, outstanding, and therefore isolated phenomenon. For others, it is a generally natural phenomenon, quite widely represented in society. For still others, this is an ideal achievable only through serious work on oneself.
I. P. Shkuratova, based on the personality theory of I. M. Paley and V. S. Magun, identifies three criteria for a mature personality:
□ acts not under the influence of momentary factors, but on the basis of its value system, which has developed over the years;
□ is able to perform actions even under the threat of punishment (for example, from the authorities) and the loss of many life benefits;
□ can contribute to the growth and personal development of others (104).
A.V. Solovyov defines a mature personality with the following parameters:
□ mental health is a necessary condition for personal development;
□ efficiency and optimality - the predominance of active forms of adaptation to the surrounding world, the choice of a specific form based on expediency;
□ harmony - an internal tendency to resist destabilizing external influences;
□ “full functioning” (A. Maslow’s term) - activity, creative realization of oneself in the world;
□ differentiation - the desire to accumulate diverse internal experience, knowledge, skills and ideas, which it draws from its own activities of communication and introspection;
□ integration - determining the meaning of life for oneself;
□ successful resolution of various types of internal conflicts that inevitably arise due to the excessive complexity of human social existence (101).
A special approach to understanding a mature personality is presented in humanistic psychological concepts, where it is presented as being in constant development. K. Rogers, in his early work “The New Man,” describes such a personality through the following characteristics:
□ open to the world - both internally and externally;
□ values communication as a means of presenting things as they are, and rejects hypocrisy, deceit and duplicity;
□ has a deep distrust of our current economy and technology;
□ does not feel very comfortable in a segmented world. She strives for a holistic life;
□ believes that the basic truth of existence is the ability to change, therefore it is constantly in development;
□ sympathizes with his neighbor, is always ready to provide help where it is really needed; does not trust professional assistants;
□ feels a direct connection with nature and is ready to protect it;
□ has antipathy towards hyper-structured, inflexible bureaucratic structures;
□ trusts his own experience and has a deep distrust of external authorities;
□ indifferent to material interest and rewards;
□ is in constant search, would like to find the meaning of life and goals that would be higher than the individual. Its heroes are spiritual people: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Teilhard de Chardin (7, p. 29).
There is a certain polemicism in the theses proposed by the author: it seems that the author really wants to separate his “new people” from all the others, to contrast their view of various current world problems: environmental, political, managerial, with the view of the majority.
Similar ideas about a mature personality were formulated back in the 60s. XX century A. Maslow: “Self-actualized individuals (more mature, more humane) already, by definition, act as people who have satisfied their basic needs, people whose lives are governed by higher motives. They can be called “metamotivated” (60, p. 23). Maslow gives an impressive list
Concept of personality
The problem of personality is one of the most pressing topics in modern psychology. This term is characterized by some features; it is worth noting that these do not include genetic or physiological aspects. In addition, the psychological and individual qualities of a person are not considered special features. Rather, they include deep-seated social features that indicate the direction of human life and reflect the nature of man as the author of his life. So, what is personality is a question many people ask, so we should consider the basic definitions.
Broadly understood, personality is a substance that internally distinguishes one person from another.
There are three different definitions that describe the concept of personality. 1. The concept is interpreted as a person’s individuality, which indicates his life experience, values, aspirations, abilities, spiritual development and temperament. If we consider this understanding in more detail, we can say that humans and animals have it, since each animal has its own individual characteristics and character. 2. With an intermediate understanding, the concept of personality is a subject of society, an individual who has a social and personal role. This definition of the concept of personality belongs to Adler and begins with social feeling. After all, finding and feeling great is not an easy task; if a person copes with it successfully, then it develops into something higher. That is, in this concept, such a person is a subject who interacts with other people at the level of habits. 3. Narrow understanding: personality is a subject of culture, a self. He is defined as a person who is the author of his life. That is, the child is not one, but may or may not become one. The definition of such a concept as a person can be anything. However, all definitions have a general meaning.
