Personality and society. Relationships between the individual and society

Along with the concept personality we also use terms such as person, individual And individuality. All these concepts have specifics, but they are all interconnected. The most general, integrative concept is the concept Human - a being that embodies the highest stage of life development, a product of social and labor processes, an indissoluble unity of the natural and the social. But carrying within himself a social-clan essence, each person is a single natural being, an individual.

Individual- this is a specific person as a representative of the family homo sapiens, the bearer of the prerequisites (inclinations) of human development.

Individuality– the unique originality of a particular person, his natural and socially acquired properties.

In concept personality a system of socially significant human qualities comes to the fore. In a person’s connections with society, his social essence is formed and manifested.

Each society creates its own standard of personality. The sociology of society determines psychological types of this society.

Personality has a multi-level organization. The highest and leading level of the psychological organization of the individual - its need-motivational sphere - is personality orientation, her attitude towards society, individuals, herself and her labor responsibilities. For a person, not only his position is important, but also his ability to realize his relationships. This depends on the level of development of a person’s activity capabilities, his abilities, knowledge and skills, his emotional-volitional and intellectual qualities.

A person is not born with ready-made abilities, character, etc. These properties are formed during life, but on a certain natural basis. Hereditary basis human body(genotype) determines its anatomical and physiological characteristics, basic qualities nervous system, dynamics of nervous processes. The biological organization of man, his nature, contains the possibilities of his mental development. But a human being becomes human only through mastering the experience of previous generations, enshrined in knowledge, traditions, and objects of material and spiritual culture. The natural aspects of a person should not be opposed to his social essence. Human nature itself is a product not only of biological evolution, but also a product of history. The biological in a person cannot be understood as the presence of some kind of “animal” side in him. All natural biological inclinations of a person are human, not animal inclinations. But the formation of a person as an individual occurs only in specific social conditions.

What at first glance appears to be “natural” qualities of a person (for example, character traits) are in fact the consolidation in the individual of social requirements for his behavior.

Personality development is associated with constant expansion its capabilities, the elevation of its needs. The level of personality development is determined by the relationships characteristic of it. At a low level of development, personality relationships are determined mainly by utilitarian, “dealing” interests. High level characterized by the predominance of socially significant values ​​and its spirituality.

By regulating his life activity in society, each individual solves complex life problems. The same difficulties and conflicts are overcome by different people differently. To understand a personality means to understand what life tasks and in what way it solves, what initial principles of behavior it is armed with.

Being included in certain social relations and conditioned by them, the individual is not a passive participant in these relations. Individual life activity is largely autonomous.

A personality trait is also its isolation. Awareness of one's isolation allows an individual to be free from arbitrary transient social institutions, the dictates of power, and not to lose self-control in conditions of social destabilization and totalitarian repression. Personal autonomy is associated with its highest mental quality – spirituality. Spirituality is the highest manifestation of a person’s essence, his inner commitment to human, moral duty, subordination to the highest meaning of existence. The spirituality of a person is expressed in his superconsciousness, the need for a persistent rejection of everything base, selfless devotion to sublime ideals, isolation from unworthy motives, momentary prestige and pseudo-social activity. But the more primitive a society is, the stronger its tendency towards universal egalitarianism, the more people there are who blindly obey the required standards. A person who speaks in ready-made slogans stops caring about his personal self-construction.

Personality qualities are determined by the range of its practical relations, its inclusion in various spheres of social life. A creative personality goes beyond the immediate social environment and forms itself on a broader social basis. The individual may reveal the promise of society. She can personify the future society, get ahead of it current state. Isolation of a personality means its independence from the narrow confines of a closed group and is an indicator of personality development.

Personal development - the formation of a system of its social positive qualities– requires certain social prerequisites, social demand, neutralization of factors leading to alienation of the individual.

In the formation of an individual as a personality, processes are essential personal identification(the formation of an individual’s identification with other people and human society in general) and personalization(an individual’s awareness of the need for a certain representation of his personality in the life activities of other people, personal self-realization in a given social community).

A person interacts with other people based on "I-concepts" personal reflection - your ideas about yourself, your capabilities, your significance. Personal reflection may correspond to the real self, but it may not correspond to it. Overestimated and underestimated levels of personal aspirations can give rise to various intrapersonal conflicts.

Life path personality lies in a specific historical social space. The uniqueness of the production of material conditions, the sphere of consumption, social relations determines a person’s lifestyle, the sustainable uniqueness of his behavior and, ultimately, his personality type.

Each personality forms its own life strategy– a stable system of generalized ways of transforming current life situations in accordance with the hierarchy of one’s value orientations. Life strategy is the general direction of personal life affirmation. A socially valuable strategy is highly moral self-realization of the individual, the development of a spiritual-ethnic and spiritual-ethical lifestyle. At the same time, the life activity of the individual becomes internally determined, and not situationally determined. The individual begins to live with his own socially meaningful life prospects.

In the absence of a life strategy, an individual submits only to current meanings and tasks, his life is not realized with the necessary completeness, the motivation of his life activity decreases, and his spiritual and intellectual needs are narrowed.

All significant deformations of a person are associated with her self-reflection, defects in her self-awareness, shifts in her meaning formation, and with personal depreciation of objectively significant spheres of life.

The most important indicator the state of a person is the level of her mental self-regulation, the mediation of her behavior by socially formed standards.

Personality is characterized by a complex of stable properties - sensitivity to external influences, a stable system of motivation, attitudes, interests, the ability to interact with the environment, moral principles of self-regulation of behavior. All these personality traits are an integration of genetic, hereditary and socio-cultural factors.

The first social condition for the formation of society is the individual. The concept of “personality” in social sciences is one of the basic ones. Although there are many other terms (“person”, “individual”, “individuality”), they are not interchangeable. Their semantic features are clearly distinguishable in the social sciences.

Human (Homo sapiens) is a generic concept denoting the highest stage of development of living organisms on Earth. He went through a long evolution (anthroposociogenesis), during which not only his appearance, but also needs, abilities, activities, basic human qualities were formed: intelligence, memory, emotions, feelings, will, without which a person’s spiritual life would be impossible.

By nature, man is biosocial creature. This means that, as a living organism, it is included in the natural connection of phenomena and is subject to biological (biophysical, biochemical, physiological) laws. In the process of long evolution, his brain and nervous system were formed, which determined the rapid development of intelligence. The structure of the hand and larynx contributed to the emergence of articulate speech and helped in the labor process. Long-term dependence on parents made it possible to master the necessary amount of social information: social norms, activity skills, knowledge, experience. A person has an inherited biological program; he is endowed with instincts and reflexes that help him adapt to the environment. But life in society led to the fact that its social component began to dominate. Like all living things, man came out of natural environment, but was the furthest away from his cradle.

IN last years geneticists have published a number of sensational discoveries that help shed light on human origins. Having deciphered the human genome, scientists were amazed at its similarity with the genes of other living beings: it is 90% identical to the genes of a mouse, and differs from a chimpanzee by only 1%. Moreover, the loss of several important genes (of those that chimpanzees have) reduced human immune defense against bacterial and viral infections, but at the same time removed the restriction on brain development.

Modern animal psychology has established the fact that highly developed animals have the rudiments of intelligence. It has been established that monkeys and dolphins can carry out simple mental operations and solve intellectual problems that require the involvement of memory mechanisms and concentration. Although animals can use some objects and even tools thanks mainly to the mechanism of imitation, they are not able to create new tools and means to satisfy their needs. The main thing that distinguishes the most ordinary person from the most highly developed animal - the human ability to create.

Unlike animals, a person’s orientation in the world around him is determined not by instincts, but by consciously chosen goals and values. A child inherits a supply of genetic information through the structure of the body, the structure of the brain, the nervous system, and inclinations. But his natural inclinations develop and are realized only in society. An animal simply adapts to the surrounding world or dies, but a person is capable of changing not only the environment, but also himself: He acquired these characteristics in society, and the social “component” predominates in him.

It is this that is of greatest interest to the social sciences and is designated by the concept of “personality.”

Personality is a stable system of socially significant traits that characterize an individual as a member of a particular society.

People are born a person, but they become a person. However, anyone who believes that a person is necessarily a positive or outstanding person is mistaken. This opinion is widespread in everyday life, but from a scientific point of view it is incorrect. The term “personality” is not yet applicable to a newborn child, although every newborn child already contains some prerequisites for personality - natural inclinations. The main condition and decisive mechanism for the formation of a person is his mastery of the world of things and social relations, in which the activities of previous generations of people are embodied. Personality begins from the moment a person becomes aware of himself and with the beginning of a conscious correlation of his actions with accepted standards, and the formation of personality continues throughout life along with the development of society and culture. Therefore, we can talk about both an outstanding personality who embodied bright universal and individual characteristics, and about the personality of a criminal, alcoholic, terrorist or homeless person. The only obstacle to being an individual for an adult is irreversible organic brain damage.

Individual- is an individual person, a single representative of the human race, a bearer of both biological and social qualities. More than five billion people live on Earth, and each of them combines not only the typical, common in society social traits, but also unique, inimitable. We all differ in skin color or eye shape, height or build, fingerprints, gait, as well as character traits, value systems - our inner world. This originality, the way we differ from other people, is called individuality.

Each person is simultaneously a person, an individual and an individual.

For example, L. N. Tolstoy in the image of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky showed the typical features of a Russian man from high society- educated, possessing secular manners, patriot, nobleman. These qualities characterize him as an individual.

In addition, Prince Andrei has a bright personality, which allows us to distinguish him from other characters and remember him. His character was formed under the influence of both social conditions and personal life circumstances, accompanied by thoughts, experiences, and individual lessons learned. We remember him as an honest, noble man. He perceived the French invasion as a personal tragedy, and was brave and courageous in the fight against the invaders. Having passed through severe tests, did not become bitter, retained good human qualities in his heart - longing for small homeland, tender feelings for the woman you love.

Typical social characteristics And individual qualities the hero allows us to conclude that he is a mature personality with an active social position.

Thus, a person appears before us in the unity of natural and social, individual and typical characteristics.

A.V. and V.A. The Petrovskys highlight three components of personality structure:

intra-individual (intra-individual) subsystem – a systemic organization of its individuality, represented in the structure of a person’s temperament, character, and abilities;

interindividual (interindividual) a subsystem of the personality structure located in “space” outside the individual’s organic body. Not the individual himself, but the processes of interpersonal interaction, which include at least two individuals (and in fact a community, a group), can be considered as manifestations of the personality of each of the participants in this interaction;

meta-individual (supra-individual) substructure - “investments” in other people that the subject, voluntarily or involuntarily, makes through his activities; continuation of oneself in another, not only at the moment of the subject’s influence on other individuals, but also beyond the immediate momentary actual interaction. In this case, the personality is not only taken beyond the organic body of the individual, but also moves beyond the boundaries of his existing “here and now” connections with other individuals.

Personalization – the process and result of imprinting the subject in other people, its ideal representation and continuation in them.

Personality formation

In the process of personal development, culture acts as a system of objective meanings (concepts, norms, patterns), and society and the surrounding people act as carriers of these patterns. Personal development is impossible without the inclusion of a person in the system of social relations, where the following occurs:

assimilation of social experience;

production own meanings, goals, values.

The formed personality is characterized by:

ability to behave indirectly, which presupposes the presence of a hierarchy in a person’s motives, that is, his ability to overcome immediate impulses for the sake of socially significant motives set by society. The formation of these qualities is attributed to preschool age;

the ability to consciously guide one’s own behavior on the basis of conscious motives, goals and principles, which presupposes the presence of self-awareness. The development of this ability begins in adolescence and is a complex internal activities assessing one’s own motives and actions, correlating individual situations and acts of behavior with the broader context of life. Situations of conflict of motives and critical life situations play a special role in this process. The result of this process is the comprehension of life goals, the formation of a value system.

Personality as a system of activity regulation

Personality is a specific human system of mental regulators of its activity.

Personal subsystems of activity regulation

Along with the concept personality we also use terms such as person, individual And individuality. All these concepts have specifics, but they are all interconnected. The most general, integrative concept is the concept Human - a being that embodies the highest stage of life development, a product of social and labor processes, an indissoluble unity of the natural and the social. But carrying within himself a social-clan essence, each person is a single natural being, an individual.

Individual– this is a specific person as a representative of the genus homo sapiens, the bearer of the prerequisites (inclinations) of human development.

Individuality– the unique originality of a particular person, natural and socially acquired properties.

In concept personality a system of socially significant human qualities comes to the fore. In the connections of a person with society, the social essence is formed and manifested.

Each society creates its own standard of personality. The sociology of a society determines the psychological types of a given society.

Personality has a multi-level organization. The highest and leading level of the psychological organization of the individual - its need-motivational sphere - is personality orientation, her attitude towards society, individuals, herself and her work responsibilities. For a person, not only his position is important, but also his ability to realize his relationships. This depends on the level of development of a person’s activity capabilities, abilities, knowledge and skills, emotional-volitional and intellectual qualities.

A person is not born with ready-made abilities, character, etc. These properties are formed during life, but on a certain natural basis. The hereditary basis of the human body (genotype) determines the anatomical and physiological characteristics, the basic qualities of the nervous system, and the dynamics of nervous processes. The biological organization of man, nature, contains the possibilities for mental development. But a human being becomes human only through mastering the experience of previous generations, enshrined in knowledge, traditions, and objects of material and spiritual culture. The natural aspects of man should not be opposed to the social essence. Human nature itself is a product not only of biological evolution, but also a product of history. The biological in a person cannot be understood as the presence of some kind of “animal” side in him. All natural biological inclinations of a person are human, not animal inclinations. But the formation of a person as an individual occurs only in specific social conditions.

The concept of personality A person is a representative of a specific biological species. The concept indicates the qualitative difference between people and animals (men and women, old people and children, blacks and whites. Differences between people are not socially determined). An individual is a single representative of the human race, possessing psychophysiological characteristics (temperament, character, specificity of memory, feelings, abilities, inclinations). Personal qualities are socially conditioned; they are formed, developed and realized only in joint activities and communication with other people, in interactions with social institutions, organizations, culture.

Personality is an integral system of social qualities of an individual, acquired and developed by him in the process of interaction with other people. Social qualities of a person are revealed only in interaction with other people, in certain social circumstances, in specific actions, deeds, i.e. in the activities and products of this activities.

The most significant social qualities of an individual: Self-awareness – the individual’s identification of himself from environment, awareness of oneself as “I”, opposed to others and inextricably linked with them. Self-esteem is an individual’s assessment of himself, his capabilities, abilities, and place among other people. Activity is the ability of an individual to independently and intensively perform socially significant actions. Interests are the motivating mechanism of cognition and activity of an individual.

Direction is a set of stable motives that orient the activity of an individual; aspiration to achieve a certain goal. Beliefs are ideas and principles that determine an individual’s attitude to reality. Attitudes – an individual’s readiness for active work in a certain area social activities. Value orientations– life goals that are significant for the individual and the main means of achieving them. Identity is the result of self-identification with other people, a social community, or another ideal.

Social qualities in their totality form a complex social structure of the individual, in which each component is connected with all other components and is in constant interaction. Features of personality as a system: integrity, openness, dynamism, self-knowledge, self-regulation, self-development

Socialization is a multifaceted process of an individual’s assimilation of social experience, a certain system of knowledge, values, patterns of behavior inherent in a certain social group and society as a whole, allowing him to function as an active subject of social relations.

Directed forms of socialization - a specially developed system of means of influencing an individual in order to shape him in accordance with the ideals and values ​​dominant in society; undirected – spontaneous formation of certain social qualities as a result of an individual’s presence in the immediate social environment. These forms of socialization can be consistent, harmonious, or contradictory. In case of contradiction, a conflict situation may arise, complicating the socialization process.

Socialization Process Exist different approaches to the classification of stages of socialization. According to J. Mead, socialization includes 3 stages associated with taking on the roles of other people: imitation; gaming; collective game. Z. Freud also analyzes the stages of socialization in childhood and identifies 4 stages, each of which is associated with certain parts of the body: oral, anal, phallic and the phase of puberty. E. Erikson identified 8 stages of socialization, which are based on a specific crisis. The transition from one stage to another is carried out by overcoming or resolving the crisis.

A number of authors unjustifiably consider the process of socialization as occurring only in childhood and adolescence. IN early years the foundation is created spiritual development personality, but only upon entering adult life, participating in a variety of social connections, the individual actively forms his commitments, understands specifically how and why to live. In the course of the socialization of adults, clarification, revision and even rejection of those attitudes and ideas that were formulated in previous years resocialization. Desocialization is the loss of social experience by an individual, which affects his life activity and the possibility of self-realization in the social environment.

Agents of socialization are individuals, groups and social institutions that influence the individual in the process of socialization: family peer group education labor collective facilities mass media other social institutions

Personality structure Based on the basis of activity, 6 subsystems can be distinguished in the personality structure: a system of general orientation (directs human behavior in time and space); motivation system (stimulates behavior); system of goal setting and volitional decision (provides stable personality orientations corresponding to decisions); technological system(provides orientation implementation by necessary means and means of activity); behavioral system (the entire potential of the subject in the behavioral sphere); reflexive system (regulates and controls all stages of activity).

According to 3. Freud, personality consists of 3 main systems: Id - it (innate states and instincts of a person), ego - I (the executive organ of the personality - a mediator between instincts and environmental conditions; mind, reason), superego - superego (values, morality, spirituality, self-control). Personality, functioning as a single whole, includes the id as a biological component, the ego as a psychological component and the superego as a social component.

The sociological study of personality structure is associated with representatives of role and behavioral concepts. In the role concept of personality (C. Cooley, J. Mead, R. Linton), the structure of personality is considered from the point of view of the structure of the human self. According to the theory of the “mirror self” by C. Cooley, personality consists of 3 elements: ideas about how others perceive us People; ideas about how they react to our behavior; ideas about how we respond to other people's perceived reactions.

J. Mead characterizes a personality as an I, consisting of 2 parts: I - I-myself (the individual’s reaction to the influence of other people and society as a whole) Me - I-me or I-other (a person’s awareness of himself from the point of view of others significant to him of people). On this basis, the image of a generalized other is built, thanks to which the person is able to relate himself and his actions to other people.

In Russian sociology, it is customary to consider the structure of personality on the basis of social relations or as a derivative of the social structure of society. In an objective sense social structure- a network of stable interactions of an individual with other subjects, which presuppose: the presence of statuses occupied by the participants in the interaction relative to each other and the entire system as a whole, regulatory requirements and expectations corresponding to these statuses and positions, determined by the status and regulatory requirements socially approved patterns of behavior (roles).

The role theory of personality is the result of a synthesis of sociology and other social sciences (cultural anthropology and social psychology). C. Cooley, J. Mead and R. Linton laid down its theoretical premises and formulated its main provisions. The concepts of “social status” and “social role” were first introduced into scientific circulation in the 30s. XX century American cultural anthropologist R. Linton. Social status is a person’s position in society or a group, endowed with certain rights and responsibilities and connected through them with other positions.

Each person occupies several social positions because he participates in many groups and organizations. The position of an individual may be determined by socio-economic status, political opportunities, gender, origin, marital status. A status set is the entire set of statuses of an individual.

In a status set, not all positions are equal. Integral (main) status is the status with which others identify an individual; one that determines the main content of its activities.

Types of social statuses 1. Prescribed (ascriptive) – a position occupied by an individual due to inherited characteristics; is given to an individual from birth, regardless of his desires and activities. They can be divided into: innate and attributed (the value is not constant, but biologically determined, independent of the will of a person) 2. Achievable - acquired by an individual in the course of life thanks to efforts, desires, activities (or lack thereof). 3. Mixed - has features of both types; acquired in the course of life, but thanks to the efforts, will, and activities of other people.

Social role is a model of behavior in accordance with which a person who has a certain social status. A person performs many roles related to his social status. A role set is a set of roles characteristic of an individual in certain situations.

Types of social roles represented role – expectations of individuals and social groups subject-oriented role behavior; subjectively perceived role - expectations that an individual - the subject of role behavior - ascribes to himself; the role played is the real embodiment of the behavior of an individual with a certain status

J. Moreno distinguished: psychosomatic roles, psychodramatic roles, social roles. T. Shibutani identified: conventional roles, interpersonal roles. According to I. Hoffman, there are roles: stage and backstage.

The difference between status and role is as follows: status determines an individual’s place in social system, and the role expresses functional purpose one status or another; the concept of “status” emphasizes the relatively stable (“static”) position of the individual, while the role characterizes the dynamic aspect of status associated with its implementation in specific conditions of place and time.

To characterize the relationship between statuses and roles, scientists have introduced a number of concepts: “status inconsistency” and “status crystallization” - different measures of consistency between different personality statuses (J. Lenski), “role distance” - the distance of an individual from the role he performs. social role(I. Goffman); “role tension” - facts of discrepancy between the internal attitudes of the individual (readiness to act in a certain way) and the requirements imposed by the social environment for the fulfillment of roles. “role conflict” is a situation in which a person is faced with the conflicting demands of two or more incompatible roles (R. Merton); “rituals of passage”, etc.

Rituals of transition are special procedures and practices for transition from one status to another. A. Gennep considered rituals as a means of easing the difficulties of mastering a new status and set of roles. In the structure of the ritual, he distinguished 3 stages: preliminal (separation), liminal (transition) postliminal (reunion). These procedures have retained their significance to this day.

Personality typologies In psychology, the most famous typologies are E. Spranger, K. Horney, K. Jung and E. Fromm. E. Spranger is the author of the book “Types of People,” which describes 6 personality types with different types of activity: - theoretical - economic - aesthetic - social - political - religious. Among domestic authors, one can highlight the typological model of personality of K. A. Abulkhanova. , which is based on differences in the level of activity, the nature of claims, as well as the characteristics of self-regulation.

Among the representatives of social and cultural anthropology, the most famous typological models of personality are R. Linton, A. Kardiner, M. Mead. R. Linton (1893-1953) - author of the concepts of basic and status personality. Basic personality is a special type of integration of an individual into the cultural environment based on the experience of socialization of members of a given community. This personality type is passed down from generation to generation through culture. Status personality is a set of standardized roles assigned to a certain status, characteristic of the majority of individuals in a given society with a given status. Common Elements status personalities of a particular society - the basic type of personality.

According to A. Kardiner, changes in social organization inevitably lead to a radical restructuring of the basic personality type. Subsequently, the concept of basic personality was revised. For the purpose of empirical substantiation of basic characteristics, the concept of “modal personality” was introduced. Its authors are considered to be F. Boas and K. Dubois. Modal personality is the most frequently occurring personality type in a given culture, rather than a basic structure shared by members of a given society.

R. Merton developed his own typology of individual behavior depending on the attitude towards goals and means: 1) conformist - a loyal member of society who accepts approved cultural goals and means; 2) an innovator - a member of a community who achieves his goals through non-institutional means; 3) ritualist - a person who absolutizes means and ignores the goals for which the activity is carried out, 4) isolated type - a person who deviates from both cultural goals and institutional means; 5) rebel - a person who has deviated from the goals and means accepted in society and opposed them to other values ​​and norms.

R. Dahrendorf, considering personality as a product of cultural development, identified 4 types: a working person (a person who creates socially useful goods) a consuming person (a person formed by mass consumption) a universal person (a person capable of doing different types activities) a totalitarian person (a person dependent on a totalitarian state).