Basic approaches to understanding personality in modern psychology

The concept of personality in modern psychology

Definition 1
Personality is a person in the totality of his acquired social qualities.

A person’s personal qualities do not include his physiological and genotypic properties, since they are not related to life in society and do not depend on it in any way.

Modern psychology “puts” into the concept of personality only those properties and qualities that depend primarily on a person’s individuality, his circle of communication and interaction, and the social sphere of existence.

Thus, a personality is an individual person who is taken in a certain system of his mental characteristics, socially conditioned and manifested in specific relationships with other members of society.

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The structure of a person’s personality includes:

• temperament,
• capabilities,
• strong-willed qualities,
• character,
• motivation,
• emotions,
• social attitudes.

Question No. 9. Personality structure and various approaches to its study in psychology.

Problems of studying personality structure

:

1. Implicit identification of the structure of personality with the structure of a physical object, for example, with the anatomical structure of an organism. This pushes towards the path of atomic analysis of the personality, during which the elements of the personality lose the properties of the whole. Example of LSV about H2O. Vivid examples of this approach are concepts in which the structure is mechanically assembled from a set of various factors, parameters, personality traits or blocks of temperament, motivation, past experience, character, etc.

2. Avoiding character issues. Meili: Divides mental qualities into 3 classes (temperament, ability, motivation), but identifies character with either temperament or motivation. Thomas also ignores temperament.

Strategies for studying the structure of personality:

1. Constitutional-anthropometric. The object of study is innate predispositions to respond, identified with temperament as the core of personality. Methodological procedures: “direct methods” of diagnosis (questionnaires, anthropometric measurements and measurement of other objective manifestations of the body). Search for correlation between subjective and objective variables. Identifying character types, character is equated to temperament. Kretschmer, Sheldon, Conrad.

2. “Factor” strategy. It got its name due to the use of factor analysis. Object of analysis: personality traits recorded in language, the choice of which is used to judge the personality structure. Personality structure as a set of traits. Cattell, Eysenck, Guildford. Factors that are the causes of human reactions that appear on the surface are identified. The position of “finishing” what is innate in the environment.

3. “Block” strategy.

Collecting the personality structure from “blocks” identified on the basis of observations in everyday life. Vertically, the degree of expression of biological or social as a criterion for identifying personality substructures.

On the lower floor are allocated (hereinafter - from bottom to top)

1) Individual properties - temperament, gender and age characteristics, pathology of organic characteristics, in which there is almost no social.

2) Block of mental processes - covers individual characteristics of perception, thinking, etc.

3) Block of past experience - memory, skills, knowledge.

4) Block of orientation - the personality’s attitude to the world, its moral traits (almost no biological ones).

Personality is a container of blocks. Structural and genetic connections remain unidentified, different substructures merge with each other.

4. Motivational-dynamic. Currently the presenter.

Motivation in the broad sense of the word refers to the motivations that cause the activity of the body and determine its direction. 3 classes of motivating factors:

1. Analysis of the question of why the body comes into a state of activity - needs, drives, instincts.

2. What is the activity of the body aimed at, why is a certain behavior chosen - motives.

3. How, in what way, the dynamics of behavior are regulated - manifestations of emotions, subjective experiences (aspirations, desires, etc.) and attitudes.

This strategy for studying the organization of personality arose in the mainstream of psychoanalysis. It includes: humanistic psychology (Maslow, Rogers), Allport’s personological theory of individual personality traits (dispositions), cognitive approaches to personality based on Lewin, etc.

Study methods: direct methods (questionnaires) and projective methods for diagnosing motivation (uncertainty of stimulation, no restrictions in the choice of answers, no division into correct and incorrect).

Characteristics:

– sees hierarchically organized levels of needs and motives;

– individual properties are considered primarily as hereditary dispositions, at the bottom of the hierarchy of personality organization;

– in any one dynamic formation of the personality the sacred properties of the personality as a whole are concentrated;

– covers such a real characteristic of the personality structure as its dynamism;

– personality orientation.

5. Behavioral-interactionist. Elements of personality organization are certain components of interaction between the organism and the environment, the individual and society. In behaviorism - reactions, skills; interactionist socio-psychological approaches – roles, social attitudes, actions. Individual properties on the periphery of interests. However, here too, explicitly or implicitly, there is the idea of ​​a hierarchy of personality structure, in which elementary behavioral acts, determined primarily by individual dispositions - organic needs, attitudes, etc., become the lower level.

+ See answers from Phlogiston.

Lectures:

Existential psychologists generally refuse to talk about personality structure. Some authors consider personality not a product, but a process (Allport, for example).

The oldest way to isolate personality structure: typology and classification. 1st typology: “Characters” of Theophrastus. The classification is empirical; the person himself chooses the basic basis of the typology. Anything can be taken as a basis: body type, zodiac signs, hierarchy of mental functions (Jung). Typology is just a way of packaging existing knowledge about people. The disadvantage of typologies is that there is only one basic basis.

2 ways to study personality structure:

1. Identification of substructures: Freud’s model I – It – Superego, block models of personality

2. Distinguishing between elements and units of structure analysis (LSV that when studying the structure of water, one must stop at the H2O stage, since this is a unit (the last degree of division at which the properties of the whole are preserved), and not divide to atoms, i.e. because these are already elements). Identification of traits as elements of personality. Allport: A trait is a predisposition to react in one way or another. Murray identified needs for determining the structure of personality, Kelly - constructs, Uznadze - attitudes. In ANL and Kelly, the elements form a hierarchy. Raising the question about the structure and connections between elements, rather than about the elements themselves. In the 60s - 70s. the idea of ​​different levels of personality structure appears: Yadov, Merlin, Frankl.

In the personality models of Asmolov and Bratus, 3 levels are distinguished:

1. Bratus: The highest level, personality in the narrow sense of the word. Asmolov: The content plan is personal meanings.

2. Bratus: personality in the broad sense of the word - character, abilities. Asmolov: the plane of expression is how the content manifests itself externally. Characteristics of style, means for expressing the goal.

3. Bratus: psychophysiological mechanisms. Asmolov does not attribute this to the individual, but considers them as prerequisites.

Personality research: stages, scientific approaches

The study of personality has always been and continues to be one of the most intriguing mysteries and most difficult problems.

In modern psychology, there are seven main approaches to the study of personality. Each approach has its own theory, its own ideas about the properties and structure of personality, and its own methods for measuring them. Therefore, we can offer a schematic definition: personality is a multidimensional and multi-level system of psychological characteristics that provide individual originality, temporary and situational stability of human behavior [2].

Since the late 1930s. In personality psychology, active differentiation of research areas began. As a result, by the second half of the 20th century. Several theories have emerged, the most famous of which are:

♦ behaviorist;

♦ psychoanalytic;

♦ Gestalt psychological;

♦ cognitive;

♦ humanistic.

Behaviorism (from English behavior

- behavior) was developed by American psychologists E.L. Thorndike (1874-1949), J. Watson (1874-1949), etc. Its development was greatly influenced by the work of Russian scientists I.P. Pavlova and V.M. Bekhterev on the nature of reflexes.

The basic pattern of behavior is described by behaviorists in the symbols “S—R: stimulus—response.” A stimulus is any effect on the body, a reaction is any response. The reaction can be simple (for example, withdrawing your hand from the fire) or complex. Complex reactions include all forms of human activity that contain some kind of action (eating, writing a text, playing, etc.). Human speech, both external (out loud) and internal (to oneself) was also classified as reactions.

Representatives of the theory were convinced that a person does not inherit personal characteristics. Personality is generated by environmental influences. By reacting to them, a person learns, i.e. acquires skills to behave in the environment. In other words, a person is considered by behaviorists as a blank sheet of paper, on which, with the help of a specially designed program of reinforcements and punishments, one can “draw” a personality with any properties. In his book Behaviorism, J. Watson wrote: “I guarantee that by choosing a child at random, I can make him into any specialist - a doctor, a lawyer, an artist, a merchant, even a beggar or a pickpocket - regardless of his ancestors.”

The scientist was confident that total control over a person’s behavior would allow him to develop a personality that would always be in demand from family and society. This approach to research and personality formation was not much different from the strategy of teaching animals in the form of harsh training. Subsequently, researchers who developed the ideas of behaviorism recognized that the formula “S-R: stimulus - response” cannot fully describe behavior and activity, not only of humans, but also of animals.

Between stimulus and response, modern behavioral psychologists believe, a person has an intermediate mechanism - cognitive processes: thinking, memory, imagination. These ideas formed the basis of neobehaviorism,

the main representatives of which are E. Tolman (1886-1959), K. Hall (1884-1953), B. Skinner (1904-1990), etc.

Psychology owes to behaviorism the presence of many clear facts and subtle experimental techniques. Thanks to this direction, it has become an objective science, using precise methods for identifying and measuring the phenomena being studied[1].

Psychoanalysis, like no other area of ​​development of personality theory, has gained great popularity outside of psychological science. Its founder was the Austrian doctor and psychologist Z. Freud (1856-1939).

Being a physician, 3. Freud drew attention to the fact that neurotic diseases of people are often caused by mental traumas they received in childhood. Appealing to childhood experience in the experiences of an adult was his most important discovery.

The scientist believed that only a small part of what actually happens in a person’s soul and characterizes him as a person is realized by him. A person is able to correctly understand and explain only a small part of his actions. The main part of his experience is outside the sphere of consciousness.

The personality structure, according to Freud, consists of three components, or levels: id (“it”), ego (“I”), superego (“super-ego”). The “it” level - the unconscious part of the psyche - is saturated with sexual energy ( libido), obeys the principle of pleasure, i.e. pleasure and happiness are the main goals in the life of every person (the first principle of behavior). The second principle is homeostasis - the tendency to maintain internal balance.

The level of "I" is represented by consciousness. As a rule, this is a person’s self-awareness, his perception and assessment of his own personality and behavior. Focuses on reality.

The superego is represented at both the conscious and subconscious levels. The “super-ego” is guided by ideal ideas—socially accepted moral norms and spiritual values.

Unconscious drives coming from the “it” are most often in a state of conflict with social and moral norms of behavior (“super-ego”). The conflict is resolved with the help of “I”, i.e. consciousness, which, acting in accordance with the principles of reality, seeks to reconcile both sides in such a way that the drives of the “it” are satisfied to the maximum extent without violating moral norms. It is this method that is called “psychoanalysis”. The idea that human behavior is determined not only by conscious, but also by unconscious motives, desires, and experiences has produced a genuine revolution in ideas about the human psyche and is now generally accepted [1].

The most important branch of psychoanalysis is neo-Freudianism,

whose representatives (E. Fromm, K. Jung, K. Horney, A. Adler, E. Erikson, etc.) denied the exclusive role of sexual factors in development, giving primary importance to social ones. The most striking of them is E. Fromm (1900-1980).

Fromm analyzed the types of social characters and came to the conclusion that a person can, and therefore must, oppose the external authority of power and public opinion with his own mind and will. In other words, the scientist saw salvation from authoritarianism in all its various forms in the independence and self-improvement of a person.

Another representative of neo-Freudianism, K. Jung (1875-1961), believed that in addition to the “personal unconscious” described by Freud, there is also a “collective unconscious” (part of the psyche), which is common to all people and is inherited. The collective unconscious exists in the form of special formations - archetypes. They appear in

myths and fairy tales, the common themes of which can be traced among different peoples.

One of Jung's most important discoveries is the identification of psychological types of people: extroverts (directed outward) and introverts (directed inward). This typology is being widely developed today within the framework of a special science - socionics.

Freud's follower A. Adler (1870-1937) considered the desire for superiority to be the central driving force of development. He tried to free Freud's theory from complete biologization. In his theory, called “individual psychology,” Adler argued that goals, not instincts, explain everyday human behavior. The main, in fact, innate goal of the individual is the desire for superiority and self-affirmation. If this does not happen, a person develops an “inferiority complex”, to overcome which he constantly looks for ways to compensate (through creativity, sports, etc.).

Karen Horney (1885-1952) believed that the driving motives of human behavior are manifested in the phenomenon of “basic anxiety” - a feeling of loneliness and helplessness. Basal anxiety is the result of an authoritarian, harsh, dismissive attitude of parents and educators towards the child. Fear and anxiety stimulate a person to search for ways to safety.

Erik Erikson (1902–1994) viewed human life as a search for one's own identity. The latter was understood by him as the individual’s subjective representation of himself (who am I? who and what do I want to become?). According to the psychologist, a person’s life is periodically interrupted by acutely experienced losses of the sense of one’s own identity. A strong sense of identity prepares an individual to overcome any difficulties in life, while a weak sense of identity destroys this ability[1].

Humanistic psychology emerged in the 1960s. in USA. This direction, as the main idea, proclaimed a new view of human development and is based on an optimistic approach to understanding his nature: faith in the creative capabilities and strengths of everyone, in his ability to consciously choose his own destiny and build his own life. Therefore, the name of the direction comes from the Latin word humanus

- humane.

Thus, the American psychologist K. Rogers (1902-1987) considered personality from the perspective of its changing self-image. An individual constantly compares himself with others in order to get an answer to the question “Who am I?” The positive nature of the response contributes to a person’s adaptation to the world around him, while a negative one causes internal conflicts, depression and, as a result, does not allow him to fully realize his potential.

Another American scientist A. Maslow (1908-1970) considered self-actualization to be the highest innate human need, emphasizing the role of the individual himself in building his personality. According to Maslow, every person is born with the need to do only good deeds.

It is also important to note two areas of research in personality psychology that were developed by domestic psychologists[1].

The activity approach considers personality, its formation and development from the perspective of practical activity as a special form of mental activity. A person’s inner wealth is determined by the variety of activities in which he is actually involved, and the personal meaning with which he fills them.

A personality is presented as a set of social characteristics (properties, qualities) acquired in objective activity while performing a useful social role, taking into account its position in society. Thus, the social environment in which a person lives, engaging in socially useful activities and entering into business and interpersonal relationships with other people through communication, is the source of the formation of his personality.

An in-depth study of the activity approach was carried out by S.L. Rubinstein and A.N. Leontyev. Scientists have proposed an interpretation of activity, according to which, by changing the external world, a person changes his own mental nature. This reveals the principle of the unity of consciousness (psyche) and activity [2].

The cultural-historical approach studies personality as a product of an individual’s assimilation of cultural values. Its author L.S. Vygotsky believed that it is the word-sign that is primary in relation to both practical action and thinking. The historical roots of these signs should be sought in joint work. First, command sounds appeared, emanating from another person and having a conditional signal character. Over time, a person learned to give such commands to himself and, with their help, control his behavior. In the process of further cultural development, sounds-signs were replaced by words-signs. The man took control of his own psyche.

Thus, in the activity approach, personality is studied through the prism of a person’s activity in the totality of activities in which he is included. The cultural-historical approach chose a sign, a word, a symbol, speech, and work as its basis [1].

Personality structure

Human personality is a complex mental system in a state of continuous development. The elements of the system form a stable structure. The term “structure” (from Latin struktura

- structure, relative position) is usually used when it is necessary to emphasize the integrity, indivisibility of an object, achieved through the interconnection of its elements. The identification of elements in a person’s personality is conditional. The concept of “structure” serves as a reminder that all selected elements are in unity.

Personality structure is considered by researchers in different ways. Most of them distinguish two components in personality:

♦ biological (endopsyche)

, identified with the neuropsychic organization of a person and including his anatomical and psychophysiological features;

♦ social (exopsyche)

, which determines a person’s attitude to the outside world in his social experience.

The natural and social in the structure of the personality form a unity and cannot be mechanically opposed to each other.

The most substantiated and developed personality structure is functional-dynamic

— suggested by K.K. Platonov. Based on the criterion of the relationship between the social and the biological, it identifies four substructures:

♦ personality orientation

(includes such characteristics as interests, inclinations, ideals, moral properties, worldview, beliefs; formed in the process of education);

♦ life experience

(includes characteristics such as knowledge, abilities, skills, habits; formed in the learning process);

♦ features of mental processes

(includes characteristics such as will, feelings, perception, thinking, sensations, emotions, memory; formed in the process of exercise);

♦ biopsychic properties,

combining temperament, gender and age characteristics of the individual. The activity of this substructure depends on the properties of the nervous system and is difficult to correct.

Superimposed on the above are two more substructures: character

and
abilities
[1].

Thus, many foreign and domestic scientists have been engaged in the study of personality in psychology. A number of them (A.N. Leontiev, A.V. Platonov, Z. Freud, G. Jung, W. James) left in their scientific heritage various approaches to the study of personality and definitions.

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