1.1. The subject and structure of social psychology

1.1.1. The subject of social psychology

Modern ideas about the subject of social psychology are extremely differentiated, that is, they differ from each other, which is typical for most borderline, related branches of science, to which social psychology belongs. She studies the following:

Psychological processes, states and properties of an individual, which manifest themselves as a result of his inclusion in relations with other people, in various social groups (family, educational and labor groups, etc.) and in general in the system of social relations (economic, political, managerial , legal, etc.). The most frequently studied manifestations of personality in groups are: sociability, aggressiveness, compatibility with other people, conflict potential, etc.

The phenomenon of interaction between people, in particular, the phenomenon of communication, for example: marital, parent-child, pedagogical, managerial, psychotherapeutic and many other types of it. Interaction can be not only interpersonal, but also between an individual and a group, as well as intergroup.

Psychological processes, states and properties of various social groups as integral formations that differ from each other and are not reducible to any individual. Social psychologists are most interested in studying the socio-psychological climate of the group and conflict relations (group states), leadership and group actions (group processes), cohesion, harmony and conflict (group properties), etc.

Mass mental phenomena such as: crowd behavior, panic, rumors, fashion, mass enthusiasm, jubilation, apathy, fears, etc.

Combining various approaches to understanding the subject of social psychology, we can give the following definition:

Social psychology studies psychological phenomena (processes, states, and properties) that characterize an individual and a group as subjects of social interaction.

1.1.2. The main objects of research in social psychology

Depending on one or another understanding of the subject of social psychology, the main objects of its study are distinguished, that is, the carriers of socio-psychological phenomena. These include: a person in a group (system of relations), interaction in the "personality - personality" system (parent - child, leader - performer, doctor - patient, psychologist - client, etc.), small group (family, school class , a labor brigade, a military crew, a group of friends, etc.), interaction in the "personality - group" system (leader - followers, leader - work team, commander - platoon, novice - school class, etc.), interaction in the group-group system (competition of teams, group negotiations, intergroup conflicts, etc.), a large social group (ethnos, party, social movement, social strata, territorial, confessional groups, etc.). The most complete objects of social psychology, including those that have not yet been sufficiently studied, can be represented in the form of the following diagram (Fig. I).

Interaction

Interaction

Rice. I. Objects of research in social psychology.

1.1.3. Structure of modern social psychology

1.2. History of Russian social psychology

The traditional view was that the origins of social psychology go back to Western science. Historical and psychological studies have shown that social psychology in our country has an original history. The emergence and development of Western and domestic psychology took place, as it were, in parallel.

Domestic social psychology arose at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The path of its formation has a number of stages: the birth of social psychology in the social and natural sciences, sprout from parental disciplines (sociology and psychology) and transformation into an independent science, the emergence and development of experimental social psychology.

The history of social psychology in our country has four periods:

I - 60s of the XIX century. - beginning of the 20th century,

II - the 20s - the first half of the 30s of the XX century;

III - the second half of the 30s - the first half of the 50s;

IV - the second half of the 50s - the second half of the 70s of the XX century.

The first period (the 60s of the 19th century - the beginning of the 20th century)

During this period, the development of Russian social psychology was determined by the peculiarities of the socio-historical development of society, the state and specifics of the development of social and natural sciences, the peculiarities of the development of general psychology, the specifics of scientific traditions, culture, and the mentality of society.

The process of self-determination of psychology in the system of sciences about nature, society, and man had a great influence on the development of social psychology. There was a sharp struggle for the status of psychology, the problem of its subject, research methods was discussed. There was a cardinal question of who and how to develop psychology. The problem of social determination of the psyche was of great importance. There was a clash of intraspectionist and behavioral trends in psychology.

The development of socio-psychological ideas took place mainly within applied psychological disciplines. Attention was drawn to the psychological characteristics of people, manifested in their interaction, joint activities and communication.

The main empirical source of social psychology was outside psychology. Knowledge about the behavior of an individual in a group, group processes was accumulated in military and legal practice, in medicine, in the study of national characteristics of command, in the study of beliefs and customs. These studies in related fields of knowledge, in different areas of practice, were distinguished by the richness of the socio-psychological questions posed, the originality of the decisions made, the uniqueness of the socio-psychological material collected by research, observations, and experiments (E. A. Budilova, 1983).

Social and psychological ideas during this period were successfully developed by representatives of the social sciences, primarily sociologists. For the history of social psychology, the psychological school in sociology is of great interest (P. L. Lavrov (1865), N. I. Kareev (1919), M. M. Kovalevsky; (1910), N. K. Mikhailovsky (1906)). The most developed socio-psychological concept is contained in the works of N. K. Mikhailovsky. In his opinion, the socio-psychological factor plays a decisive role in the course of the historical process. The laws that operate in social life must be sought in social psychology. Mikhailovsky developed the psychology of mass social movements, one of the varieties of which are revolutionary movements.

The active forces of social development are the heroes and the crowd. Complex psychological processes arise when they interact. The crowd in the concept of N.K. Mikhailovsky acts as an independent socio-psychological phenomenon. The leader controls the crowd. It is put forward by a specific crowd at certain moments of the historical process. It accumulates disparate feelings, instincts, and thoughts that function in the crowd. The relationship between the hero and the crowd is determined by the nature of a given historical moment, a given system, the personal properties of the hero, and the mental moods of the crowd. Public sentiment is a factor that must necessarily be taken into account by the hero in order for the masses to follow him. The function of the hero is to control the mood of the crowd, to be able to use it to achieve their goals. He must use the general orientation of the activity of the crowd, due to the consciousness of common needs. Socio-psychological issues were especially clearly manifested in the scientific ideas of N. K. Mikhailovsky about the psychological characteristics of the leader, the hero, about the psychology of the crowd, about the mechanisms of interaction between people in the crowd. Investigating the problem of communication between the hero and the crowd, interpersonal communication of people in the crowd, he singles out suggestion, imitation, infection, opposition as communication mechanisms. The main one is the imitation of people in the crowd. The basis of imitation is hypnotism. In the crowd, automatic imitation, "moral or mental infection" is often carried out.

The final conclusion of N. K. Mikhailovsky is that the psychological factors in the development of society are imitation, public mood and social behavior.

Socio-psychological problems in jurisprudence are represented by the theory of L. I. Petrazhitsky. He is one of the founders of the subjective school in jurisprudence. L. I. Petrazhitsky believed that psychology is a fundamental science, which should become the basis of the social sciences. According to L. I. Petrazhitsky, only mental phenomena really exist, and socio-historical formations are their projections, emotional fantasies. The development of law, morality, ethics, aesthetics is a product of the people's psyche. As a jurist, he was interested in the question of the motives of human actions, of social norms of behavior. The true motive of human behavior is emotions (L. I. Petrazhitsky, 1908).

V. M. Bekhterev occupies a special place in the pre-revolutionary history of the development of Russian social psychology. He began his studies in social psychology at the end of the 19th century. In 1908, the text of his speech at the solemn assembly of the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy was published. This speech was devoted to the role of suggestion in public life. Socio-psychological is his work "Personality and the conditions of its development" (1905). The special socio-psychological work "The Subject and Tasks of Social Psychology as an Objective Science" (1911) contains a detailed exposition of his views on the essence of socio-psychological phenomena, on the subject of social psychology, and the methods of this branch of knowledge. After 10 years, V. M. Bekhterev publishes his fundamental work "Collective reflexology" (1921), which can be considered as the first Russian textbook on social psychology. This work was a logical development of his general psychological theory, which constituted a specific Russian direction in psychological science - reflexology (V. M. Bekhterev, 1917). The principles of the reflexological explanation of the essence of individual psychology were extended to the understanding of collective psychology. There has been a lively discussion around this concept. A number of supporters and followers defended and developed it, others sharply criticized it. These discussions, which began after the publication of Bekhterev's main works, subsequently became the center of theoretical life in the 1920s and 1930s. The main merit of Bekhterev is that he owns the development of a system of socio-psychological knowledge. His "collective reflexology" is a synthetic work on social psychology in Russia at that time. Bekhterev owns a detailed definition of the subject of social psychology. Such a subject is the study of the psychological activity of assemblies and gatherings made up of a mass of individuals who manifest their neuropsychic activity as a whole. Thanks to the communication of people at a rally or in a government meeting, a general mood, conciliar mental creativity and collective actions of many people connected with each other by one or another condition are manifested everywhere (V. M. Bekhterev, 1911). V. M. Bekhterev highlights the system-forming features of the team: common interests and tasks that encourage the team to unity of action. The organic inclusion of the individual in the community, in the activity led V. M. Bekhterev to the understanding of the collective as a collective personality. As socio-psychological phenomena, V. M. Bekhterev singles out interaction, relationships, communication, collective hereditary reflexes, collective mood, collective concentration and observation, collective creativity, coordinated collective actions. The factors that unite people in a team are: the mechanisms of mutual suggestion, mutual imitation, mutual induction. A special place as a unifying factor belongs to the language. Important is the position of V. M. Bekhterev that the team as an integral unity is a developing entity.

V. M. Bekhterev considered the question of the methods of this new branch of science. Like the objective reflexological method in individual psychology, in collective psychology the objective method can and must also be applied. The works of V. M. Bekhterev contain a description of a large amount of empirical material obtained through the use of objective observation, questionnaires, and surveys. Bekhterev's inclusion of the experiment in socio-psychological methods is unique. An experiment set up by V. M. Bekhterev together with M. V. Lange showed how socio-psychological phenomena - communication, joint activity - influence the formation of processes of perception, ideas, memory. The work of M. V. Lange and V. M. Bekhterev (1925) laid the foundation for experimental social psychology in Russia. These studies served as the source of a special direction in Russian psychology - the study of the role of communication in the formation of mental processes.

Second period (20s - first half of the 30s of the XX century)

After the October Revolution of 1917, especially after the end of the civil war, during the recovery period, interest in social psychology sharply increased in our country. The need to comprehend the revolutionary transformations in society, the revival of intellectual activity, the acute ideological struggle, the need to solve a number of urgent practical problems (organization of work to restore the national economy, the fight against homelessness, the elimination of illiteracy, the restoration of cultural institutions, etc.) were the reasons for the deployment of socio-psychological research holding heated discussions. The period of the 1920s and 1930s was fruitful for social psychology in Russia. Its characteristic feature was the search for its own path in the development of world socio-psychological thought. This search was carried out in two ways:

in discussions with the main schools of foreign social psychology;

by mastering Marxist ideas and applying them to understanding the essence of socio-psychological phenomena.

a critical attitude towards foreign social psychologists and domestic scientists who have adopted a number of their main ideas (it should be pointed out to the positions of V. A. Artemov),

the tendency to combine Marxism with a number of trends in foreign psychology. This "unifying" trend was coming from both natural science-oriented scientists and social scientists (philosophers, jurists). L. N. Voitolovsky (1925), M. A. Reisner (1925), A. B. Zalkind (1927), Yu. V. Frankfurt (1927), K. N. Kornilov (1924), G. I. Chelpanov (1924).

The construction of a Marxist social psychology was based on a solid materialist tradition in Russian philosophy. The works of N. I. Bukharin and G. V. Plekhanov occupied a special place in the period of the 1920s and 1930s. The latter has a special place. Plekhanov's works, published before the revolution, entered the arsenal of psychological science (GV Plekhanov, 1957). These works were in demand by social psychologists and were used by them for a Marxist understanding of socio-psychological phenomena.

The development of Marxism in the 1920s and 1930s was carried out jointly in social and general psychology. This was natural and was explained by the fact that representatives of these sciences discussed a number of cardinal methodological problems: the relationship between social psychology and individual psychology; correlation of social psychology and sociology; the nature of the collective as the main object of social psychology.

When considering the question of the relationship between individual and social psychology, there were two points of view. A number of authors argued that if the essence of man, according to Marxism, is the totality of all social relations, then the whole psychology that studies people is social psychology. There should not be any social psychology along with the general one. The opposite view was represented by the views of those who argued that only social psychology should exist. “There is a unified social psychology,” V. A. Artemov argued, “decaying into the social psychology of the individual and the social psychology of the collective” (V. A. Artemov. 1927). During the discussions, these extreme points of view were overcome. The prevailing views became that there should be an equal interaction between social and individual psychology.

The question of the relationship between individual and social psychology has been transformed into the question of the relationship between experimental and social psychology. A special place in discussions on the question of the restructuring of psychology on the basis of Marxism was occupied by G. I. Chelpanov (G. I. Chelpanov, 1924). He argued the need for an independent existence of social psychology along with individual, experimental psychology. Social psychology studies socially determined mental phenomena. It is closely related to ideology. Its connection with Marxism is organic, natural. For this connection to be productive, G. I. Chelpanov considered it necessary to comprehend the scientific content of Marxism itself in a different way, to free it from its vulgar materialist interpretation. A positive attitude towards the inclusion of social psychology in the system reformed under the new ideological conditions was also manifested in the fact that he proposed to include the organization of research on social psychology in the plan of research activities and, for the first time in our country, raised the question of organizing the Institute of Social Psychology. In relation to Marxism, the point of view of G. I. Chelpanov is as follows. Specially Marxist social psychology is a social psychology that studies the genesis of ideological forms according to a special Marxist method, which consists in studying the origin of these forms depending on changes in the social economy (G. I. Chelpanov, 1924). Sharply arguing with representatives of the authoritative psychological trend - reflexology, G. I. Chelpanov argued that the task of the reform of psychology should not be the organization of dog lovers, but the organization of work on the study of social psychology (G. I. Chelpanov, 1926). K. N. Kornilov (1924) and P. P. Blonsky (1920) also spoke on the question of the reform of science.

One of the main trends in social psychology in the 1920s and 1930s was the study of the problem of collectives. The question of the nature of collectives was discussed. Three points of view were expressed. From the standpoint of the first, the collective is nothing more than a mechanical aggregate, a simple sum of the individuals that make it up. Representatives of the second argued that the behavior of the individual is fatally predetermined by common tasks and the structure of the team. The middle position between these extreme positions was occupied by representatives of the third point of view, according to which individual behavior in a team changes, at the same time, an independent creative character of behavior is inherent in the team as a whole. Many social psychologists participated in the detailed development of the theory of collectives, their classification, the study of different collectives, problems of their development (B. V. Belyaev (1921), L. Byzov (1924), L. N. Voitolovsky (1924), A. S. Zatuzhny (1930), M. A. Reisner (1925), G. A. Fortunatov (1925) and others.

In the scientific and organizational development of social psychology in Russia, the First All-Union Congress for the Study of Human Behavior, held in 1930, was of great importance. Personality problems and problems of social psychology and collective behavior were singled out as one of the three priority areas of discussion. These problems were discussed both in methodological terms, in connection with the ongoing discussion about Marxism in psychology, and in a concrete form. The social transformations that took place in post-revolutionary Russia in ideology, in industrial production, in agriculture, in national politics, in military affairs, according to the congress participants, caused new socio-psychological phenomena that should have attracted the attention of social psychologists. The main socio-psychological phenomenon was collectivism, which manifests itself in different ways in different conditions, in different associations. Theoretical, methodological, specific tasks for the study of the collective were reflected in a special resolution of the congress. The beginning of the 1930s was the peak of the development of socio-psychological research in applied fields, especially in pedology and psychotechnics.

The third period (the second half of the 30s - the second half of the 50s of the XX century)

In the second half of the 1930s, the situation changed dramatically. The isolation of domestic science from Western psychology began. Translations of works by Western authors have ceased to be published. Within the country, ideological control over science increased. The atmosphere of decreeing and administration thickened. This fettered creative initiative, gave rise to fear to explore socially sensitive issues. The number of studies on social psychology has drastically decreased, and books on this discipline have almost ceased to be published. There was a break in the development of Russian social psychology. In addition to the general political situation, the reasons for this break were as follows:

Theoretical substantiation of the uselessness of social psychology. In psychology, the point of view is widely spread that, since all mental phenomena are socially determined, there is no need to single out specifically socio-psychological phenomena and the science that studies them.

The ideological orientation of Western social psychology, differences in the understanding of social phenomena, psychologization in sociology caused a sharp critical assessment of the Marxists. This assessment was often transferred to social psychology, which led to the fact that social psychology in the Soviet Union fell into the category of pseudoscience.

One of the reasons for the break in the history of social psychology was the practical lack of demand for research results. No one needed to study the opinions, moods of people, the psychological atmosphere in society, moreover, they were extremely dangerous.

The ideological pressure on science was reflected in the Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of 1936 “On Pedological Perversions in the System of People's Commissariat of Education”. This decree closed not only pedology, but rebounded on psychotechnics and social psychology. The period of interruption, which began in the second half of the 1930s, continued until the second half of the 1950s. But even at that time there was no complete absence of socio-psychological research. The development of the theory and methodology of general psychology created the theoretical foundation of social psychology (B. G. Ananiev, L. S. Vygotsky, A. N. Leontiev, S. L. Rubinshtein, etc.). In this regard, ideas about the socio-historical determination of mental phenomena, the development of the principle of the unity of consciousness and activity and the principle of development.

The main source and scope of social psychology during this period were pedagogical research and pedagogical practice. The central theme of this period was the psychology of the collective. The views of A. S. Makarenko were defining the face of social psychology. He entered the history of social psychology primarily as a researcher of the collective and the education of the individual in the collective (A. S. Makarenko, 1956). A.S. Makarenko owns one of the definitions of the collective, which was the starting point for the development of socio-psychological problems in the following decades. The team, according to A. S. Makarenko, is a purposeful complex of individuals who are organized and have governing bodies. This is a contact set based on the socialist principle of association. The collective is a social organism. The main features of the team are: the presence of common goals that serve the benefit of society; joint activities aimed at achieving these goals; certain structure; the presence in it of bodies coordinating the activities of the collective and representing its interests. The collective is a part of society, organically connected with other collectives. Makarenko gave a new classification of teams. He singled out two types: 1) the primary team: its members are in constant friendly, everyday and ideological association (detachment, school class, family); 2) secondary collective - a wider association. In it, goals and relationships flow from a deeper social synthesis, from the tasks of the national economy, from the socialist principles of life (school, enterprise). The goals themselves differ in terms of their implementation. Near, medium and long-range targets were identified. Makarenko belongs to the development of the question of the stages of development of the team. In its development, the collective, according to A. S. Makarenko, goes from the dictatorial demand of the organizer to the free demand of each individual about himself against the background of the requirements of the collective. The psychology of personality is central to Makarenko's collective psychology. Criticizing functionalism, which decomposed the personality into impersonal functions, negatively evaluating the biogenetic and sociogenetic concepts of the personality that prevailed then, the individualistic orientation of general psychology, A. S. Makarenko raised the question of the need for a holistic study of the personality. The main theoretical and practical task is the study of the individual, in a team.

The main problems in the study of personality were the relationship of the individual in the team, the definition of promising lines in its development, the formation of character. In this regard, the purpose of educating a person is the formation of the projected qualities of the personality, the lines of its development. For a full-fledged study of personality, it is necessary to study; well-being of a person in a team; the nature of collective connections and reactions: discipline, readiness for action and inhibition; ability of tact and orientation; adherence to principles; emotional and perspective aspiration. The study of the motivational sphere of personality is essential. The main thing in this area is needs. A morally justified need, according to A. S. Makarenko, is the need of a collective, that is, a person connected with the collective by a single goal of movement, unity of struggle, a living and undoubted sense of his duty to society. Need we have a sister of duty, duty, ability; this is a manifestation of the interest not of a consumer of public goods, but of a figure in a socialist society, a creator of common goods, - A.S. Makarenko.

In the study of personality, A. S. Makarenko demanded to overcome contemplation, the use of active methods of education. Makarenko drew up a scheme for studying personality, which was reflected in the work “Methods for organizing the educational process”. The core idea of ​​the socio-psychological concept of A. S. Makarenko is the unity of the team and the individual. This determined the basis of his practical requirement: the education of the individual in the team through the team, for the team.

The views of A. S. Makarenko were developed by many researchers and practitioners, covered in numerous publications. Of the psychological works, the most consistent teaching about the collective of A. S. Makarenko is presented in the works of A. L. Shnirman.

Local socio-psychological research in various branches of science and practice (pedagogical, military, medical, industrial) in the 1940s and 1950s maintained a certain continuity in the history of Russian social psychology. At the end of the 1950s, its final stage began,

Fourth period (second half of the 50s - first half of the 70s of the XX century)

During this period, a special social and intellectual situation developed in our country. The "warming" of the general atmosphere, the weakening of administration in science, the decline in ideological control, a certain democratization in all spheres of life led to the revival of the creative activity of scientists. For social psychology, it was important that interest in a person increased, the tasks of forming a comprehensively developed personality, its active life position, arose. The situation in the social sciences has changed. Concrete sociological research began to be intensively carried out. Changes in psychological science were an important circumstance. Psychology in the 50s defended its right to independent existence in heated discussions with physiologists. In general psychology, social psychology has received reliable support. The period of revival of social psychology in our country began. With a certain reason, this period can be called a recovery period. Social psychology was formed as an independent science. The criteria for this independence were: awareness by representatives of this science of the level of its development, the state of its research, a description of the place of this science in the system of other sciences; definition of the subject and objects of its research; allocation and definition of the main categories and concepts; formulation of laws and patterns; institutionalization of science; training of specialists. Formal criteria include publication of special works, articles, organization of discussions at congresses, conferences, symposiums. All these criteria were met by the state of social psychology in our country. Formally, the beginning of the renaissance period is associated with a discussion on social psychology. This discussion began with the publication of an article by A. G. Kovalev "On Social Psychology" in the Bulletin of Leningrad State University, 1959. No. 12. Discussions continued in the journals "Psychology Issues" and "Philosophical Issues", at the II Congress of Psychologists of the USSR, at the plenary session and at the first organized within the framework of the All-Union Congresses of the section on social psychology. A permanent seminar on social psychology worked at the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

In 1968, the book "Problems of Social Psychology" was published, ed. V. N. Kolbanovsky and B. F. Porshnev, which attracted the attention of scientists. In a synthesized form, self-reflection of social psychologists about the essence of socio-psychological phenomena, the subject, tasks of social psychology, the definition of the main directions of its further development were reflected in textbooks and teaching aids, the main of which were published in the 60s - the first half of the 70s (G M. Andreeva, 1980; A. G. Kovalev, 1972; E. S. Kuzmin, 1967; B. D. Parygin, 1967, 1971). In a sense, the final work of the recovery period is the book Methodological Problems of Social Psychology (1975). It appeared as the result of "collective thinking" of social psychologists, which was carried out at a permanent seminar on social psychology at the Institute of Psychology. The book reflects the main problems of social psychology: personality, activity, communication, social relations, social norms, value orientations, large social groups, regulation of behavior. This book is presented in its entirety by authors who were among the country's leading social psychologists of that period.

The final stage in the history of domestic social psychology was marked by the development of its main problems. In the field of methodology of social psychology, the concepts of G. M. Andreeva (1980), B. D. Parygin (1971), E. V. Shorokhova (1975) were fruitful. K. K. Platonov (1975), A. V. Petrovsky (1982), L. I. Umansky (1980) made a great contribution to the study of collective problems. Studies of the social psychology of personality are associated with the names of L. I. Bozhovich (1968), K. K. Platonov (!965), V. A. Yadov (1975). The works of L. P. Bueva (1978), E. S. Kuzmin (1967) are devoted to the study of the problems of activity. The study of the social psychology of communication was carried out by A. A. Bodalev (1965), L. P. Bueva (1978), A. A. Leontiev (1975), B. F. Lomov (1975), B. D. Parygin (1971).

In the 1970s, the organizational formation of social psychology was completed. It was institutionalized as an independent science. In 1962, the country's first laboratory of social psychology was organized at Leningrad State University; in 1968 - the first department of social psychology at the same university; in 1972 - a similar department at Moscow State University. In 1966, with the introduction of scientific degrees in psychology, social psychology acquired the status of a qualifying scientific discipline. The systematic training of specialists in social psychology began. Groups are organized in scientific institutions, and in 1972 the Institute of Psychology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR created the country's first sector of social psychology. Articles, monographs, collections are published. Problems of social psychology are discussed at congresses, conferences, symposiums, meetings.

1.3. On the history of the emergence of foreign social psychology

The authoritative American psychologist S. Sarason (1982) formulated the following very important idea: “Society already has its place, its structure and its mission - it is already going somewhere. A psychology that avoids the question of where we are going and where we should go is a very misguided psychology. If psychology is not concerned with the question of its mission, it is doomed to be rather led, rather than leading. We are talking about the role of psychological science in society and in its development, and the above words should be attributed primarily to social psychology, since the problems of man in society form the basis of its subject. Therefore, the history of social psychology should be considered not simply as a chronological sequence of the emergence and change of certain teachings and ideas, but in the context of the connections of these teachings and ideas with the history of society itself. This approach makes it possible to understand the very process of the development of ideas both from the point of view of objective socio-historical requests to science, and from the standpoint of the internal logic of science itself.

Social psychology can be considered, on the one hand, the most ancient field of knowledge, and on the other hand, an ultra-modern scientific discipline. Indeed, as soon as people began to unite in some more or less stable primitive communities (families, clans, tribes, etc.), there was a need for mutual understanding, for the ability to build and regulate relations within communities and between them. Consequently, social psychology began from this moment in human history, first in the form of primitive everyday ideas, and then in the form of detailed judgments and concepts that were included in the teachings of ancient thinkers about man, society and the state.

At the same time, there is every reason to consider social psychology as an ultra-modern science. This is explained by the undeniable and rapidly growing influence of social psychology in society, which in turn is associated with a deepening awareness of the role of the "human factor" in all spheres of modern life. The growth of this influence reflects the tendency of social psychology to become from a “led” science, that is, only reflecting the demands of society, explaining, and often justifying the status quo, a “leading” science, focused on the humanistic progressive development and improvement of society.

Following the logic of considering the history of social psychology from the standpoint of the development of ideas, three main stages in the evolution of this science can be distinguished. The criterion for their differences lies in the predominance of certain methodological principles at each stage, and their connection with historical and chronological milestones is rather relative. According to this criterion, E. Hollander (1971) singled out the stages of social philosophy, social empiricism and social analysis. The first is characterized primarily by a speculative, speculative method of constructing theories, which, although based on life observations, does not include the collection of systematized information and relies only on the subjective "rational" judgments and impressions of the creator of the theory. The stage of social empiricism takes a step forward in that in order to substantiate certain theoretical considerations, not just rational conclusions are used, but a set of empirical data collected on some basis and even somehow processed, at least in a simplified way, statistically. Social analysis means a modern approach, which includes the establishment of not only external links between phenomena, but also the identification of causal interdependencies, the disclosure of patterns, the verification and re-verification of the data obtained and the construction of a theory taking into account all the requirements of modern science.

In chronological space, these three stages can be conditionally distributed as follows: the methodology of social philosophy was predominant from ancient times to the 19th century; The 19th century was the heyday of social empiricism and laid the foundations for the stage of social analysis, which from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day constitutes the methodological basis of a truly scientific social psychology. The conditionality of this chronological distribution is determined by the fact that even today all three of these methodological approaches have a place in social psychology. At the same time, one cannot unambiguously approach their assessment from the standpoint of what is “better” or “worse”. A deep purely theoretical thought can give rise to a new direction of research, the sum of "raw" empirical data can become an impetus for the development of an original method of analysis and some kind of discovery. In other words, not the methods themselves, but the creative potential of human thought is the basis of scientific progress. When this potential is absent, and the methodology and methods are applied thoughtlessly, mechanically, then the scientific result may turn out to be the same for both the 10th century and ours, the computer age.

Within the framework of these stages in the development of social psychology, we will get acquainted with the individual, most scientifically significant periods and events in the history of this science.

Stage of social philosophy. For ancient times, as well as for the thinkers of the Middle Ages, it was common to strive to build global theories that included judgments about a person and his soul, about society and its social and political structure, and about the universe as a whole. At the same time, it is noteworthy that many thinkers, developing the theory of society and the state, took as a basis their ideas about the soul (today we would say about the personality) of a person and about the simplest human relationships - relationships in the family.

So, Confucius (VI-V centuries BC) proposed to regulate relations in society and the state on the model of relations in the family. Both there and there there are elders and younger ones, the younger ones should follow the instructions of the elders, relying on traditions, norms of virtue and voluntary submission, and not on prohibitions and fear of punishment.

Plato (5th-4th centuries BC) saw the same principles for the soul and the society-state. Reasonable in man - deliberative in the state (represented by rulers and philosophers); "furious" in the soul (in modern language - emotions) - protective in the state (represented by warriors); "lustful" in the soul (there are needs) - farmers, artisans and merchants in the state.

Aristotle (4th century BC) singled out, as we would say today, the concept of “communication” as the main category in the system of his views, believing that this is an instinctive property of a person, which is a necessary condition for his existence. True, communication in Aristotle obviously had a broader content than this concept in modern psychology. It signified the human need to live in community with other people. Therefore, the primary form of communication for Aristotle was the family, and the highest form was the state.

A remarkable feature of the history of any science is that it allows you to see with your own eyes the connection of ideas in time and to be convinced of the well-known truth that the new is the well-forgotten old. True, the old usually arises at a new level of the spiral of knowledge, enriched with newly acquired knowledge. Understanding this is a necessary condition for the formation of professional thinking of a specialist. For simple illustrations, what little has already been said can be used. So. Confucius's ideas are reflected in the moral and psychological organization of modern Japanese society, to understand which, according to Japanese psychologists, it is necessary to understand the connection and unity of relations along the axis "family - ~ firm - state". And the Chinese authorities organized a conference in 1996 to show that the ideas of Confucius did not contradict the communist ideology.

Plato's three initial beginnings can justifiably give rise to an association with modern ideas about the three components of a social attitude: cognitive, emotional-evaluative and behavioral. Aristotle's ideas have something in common with the ultra-modern concept of people's need for social identification and categorization (X. Tezhfel, D. Turner and others) or with modern ideas about the role of the "compatibility" phenomenon in the life of groups (A. L. Zhuravlev and others).

The socio-psychological views of ancient times, as well as the Middle Ages, can be combined into a large group of concepts that G. Allort (1968) called simple theories with a "sovereign" factor. They are characterized by a tendency to find a simple explanation for all the complex manifestations of the human psyche, while highlighting some one main, determining, and therefore sovereign factor.

A number of such concepts originate from the philosophy of hedonism of Epicurus (IV-III century BC) and are reflected in the views of T. Hobbes (XVII century), A. Smith (XVIII century), J. Bentham (XVIII -19th century), etc. The sovereign factor in their theories was the desire of people to get as much pleasure (or happiness) as possible and avoid pain (compare with the principle of positive and negative reinforcement in modern behaviorism). True, in Hobbes this factor was mediated by another - the desire for power. But people needed power only in order to be able to get maximum pleasure. From here, Hobbes formulated the well-known thesis that the life of society is a "war of all against all" and only the instinct of self-preservation of the race, combined with the human mind, allowed people to come to some kind of agreement on how to distribute power.

J. Bentham (1789) even developed the so-called hedonistic calculus, that is, a tool for measuring the amount of pleasure and pain received by people. At the same time, he singled out such parameters as: duration (of pleasure or pain), their intensity, certainty (of receiving or not receiving), proximity (or remoteness in time), purity (that is, whether pleasure is mixed with pain or not), etc. P.

Bentham understood, of course, that pleasure and pain are generated by different sources and therefore have a different character. Pleasure, for example, can be simply sensual pleasure, the joy of creativity, satisfaction from friendship relationships, a feeling of power from power or wealth, etc. Accordingly, pain can be not only physical, but also appear in the form of grief for one reason or another. . The main point was that, by their psychological nature, pleasure and pain are the same regardless of their sources of origin. Therefore, they can be measured based on the fact that the amount of pleasure received, for example, from a delicious meal, is quite comparable to the pleasure from reading good poetry or from communicating with a loved one. It is interesting that such a psychologized approach to the assessment of pleasure-pain predetermined complex and far-reaching socio-political assessments. According to Bentham, the task of the state was to create as much pleasure or happiness as possible for the largest possible number of people. It should be recalled that Bentham's ideas were formulated in the initial period of the development of capitalism in Europe, which was characterized by the most severe and overt forms of exploitation. Bentham's hedonistic calculus was very convenient for explaining and justifying the fact why some part of society works 12-14 hours in "sweat-squeezing workshops", while the other enjoys the fruits of their labor. According to Bentham's method of calculation, it turned out that the "pain" of those thousands of people who work in "sweat extractors" is much less in total than the "pleasure" of those who use the results of their work. Consequently, the state is quite successful in its task of increasing the total amount of pleasure in society.

This episode from the history of social psychology testifies to the fact that in its relations with society it played, basically, the role of a "guided one". It is no coincidence that G. Allport (1968), speaking of the psychology of hedonism, noted: “Their psychological theory was woven into the social situation of the day and became, to some extent, what Marx and Engels (1846) and Mannheim (1936). ) is called an ideology.

The ideas of the psychology of hedonism also find their place in later socio-psychological concepts: for 3. Freud, this is the “pleasure principle”, for A. Adler and G. Lasswell, the desire for power as a way to compensate for feelings of inferiority; behaviorists, as already noted, the principle of positive and negative reinforcement.

The basis of other simple theories with a sovereign factor is the so-called "big three" - sympathy, imitation and suggestion. Their fundamental difference from hedonistic concepts lies in the fact that not negative features of human nature, such as egoism and the desire for power, are taken as sovereign factors, but positive principles in the form of sympathy or love for other people and their derivatives - imitation and suggestion. Nevertheless, the desire for simplicity and the search for a sovereign factor remains.

The development of these ideas went at first in the form of a search for compromises. So, even Adam Smith (1759) believed that, despite the selfishness of a person, “there are some principles in his nature that give rise to his interest in the well-being of others ...” The problem of sympathy or love, or rather, benevolent principles in relations between people, occupied a large place in the reflections of theorists and practitioners of the 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries. Different types of sympathy were proposed according to the signs of their manifestation and character. So, A. Smith singled out reflex sympathy as a direct inner experience of the pain of another (for example, at the sight of the suffering of another person) and intellectual sympathy (as a feeling of joy or grief for events happening to loved ones). G. Spencer, the founder of social Darwinism, considered it necessary to have a feeling of sympathy only in the family, since it forms the basis of society and is necessary for the survival of people, and excluded this feeling from the sphere of social relations, where the principle of struggle for existence and survival of the strongest should operate.

In this regard, it is impossible not to note the contribution of Peter Kropotkin, who had a noticeable influence on socio-psychological views in the West.

P. Kropotkin (1902) went further than his Western colleagues and suggested that not just sympathy, but the instinct of human solidarity should determine the relationship between people and human communities. It seems that this is very consonant with the modern socio-political idea of ​​universal human values.

The concepts of "love" and "sympathy" are not often found in modern socio-psychological research. But they were replaced by the concepts of cohesion, cooperation, compatibility, harmony, harmony, altruism, social mutual assistance, etc., which are very relevant today. In other words, the idea lives, but in other concepts, including the concept of “joint life activity”, developed at the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences , is one of the most integral and explaining phenomena, including "sympathy", "solidarity", etc.

Imitation became one of the sovereign factors in the socio-psychological theories of the 19th century. This phenomenon was considered as a derivative of the feeling of love and sympathy, and the empirical beginning was observations in such areas as the relationship between parents and children, fashion and its distribution, culture and traditions. Everywhere one could single out a pattern of attitudes and behavior and trace how this pattern was repeated by others. Hence, all social relations received a fairly simple explanation. Theoretically, these views were developed by G. Tarde in The Laws of Imitation (1903), where he formulated a number of patterns of imitative behavior, and also by J. Baldwin (1895), who identified various forms of imitation. W. McDougall (1908) proposed the idea of ​​"induced emotions", generated by the desire to repeat the instinctive reactions of others. Simultaneously named and other authors tried to identify different levels of awareness of imitative behavior.

Suggestion became the third "sovereign" factor in a series of simple theories. It was introduced into use by the French psychiatrist A. Liebo (1866), and the most accurate definition of suggestion was formulated by W. MacDougall (1908). “Suggestion is a process of communication,” he wrote, “as a result of which the transmitted statement is accepted with conviction by others, despite the absence of logically adequate grounds for such acceptance.”

At the end of XIX and beginning of XX centuries. Under the influence of the works of J. Charcot, G. Lebon, W. MacDougall, S. Siegelet and others, almost all problems of social psychology were considered from the standpoint of the concept of suggestion. At the same time, many theoretical and empirical studies have been devoted to the issues of the psychological nature of suggestion, which remain relevant today.

Stage of social empiricism. It is easy to see that the elements of empirical methodology appeared, for example, already in Bentham's attempt to connect his conclusions with the specific situation in his contemporary society. This tendency, either explicitly or implicitly, was also manifested by other theorists. Therefore, by way of illustration, we can limit ourselves to only one example of such a methodology, namely the work of Francis Galton (1883). Galton is the founder of eugenics, that is, the science of the improvement of mankind, the ideas of which are still offered in an updated version today in connection with the development of genetic engineering. Nevertheless, it was Galton who demonstrated the limitations of the methodology of social empiricism. In his most famous study, he tried to find out where intellectually outstanding people come from. Having collected data on outstanding fathers and their children in modern English society, Galton came to the conclusion that gifted people give birth to gifted children, that is, the genetic principle is the basis. He did not take into account only one thing, namely, that he studied only very wealthy people, that these people could create exceptional conditions for the upbringing and education of their offspring, and that, being "outstanding" people themselves, they could give their children incomparably more than "simple " people.

It is important to remember about Galton's experience and the methodology of social empiricism in general, because even today, especially in connection with the spread of computer data processing technology, random, external relationships (correlations) between certain phenomena are interpreted as the presence of a causal relationship between them. When used thoughtlessly, computers become, in the words of S. Sarason, “substitutes for thinking”. One could give examples from domestic dissertations of the 80s, in which, on the basis of “correlations”, it was stated that “sexually unsatisfied girls” tend to listen to the Voice of America, that American youth hate their police, and Soviet youth love the police, etc. d.

Stage of social analysis. This is the stage of formation of scientific social psychology, it is closer to the current state of science, and therefore we will only touch on certain milestones on the way to its formation.

If the question was raised: who is the "father" of modern social psychology, it would be practically impossible to answer it, since too many representatives of different sciences have made a significant contribution to the development of socio-psychological thought. Nevertheless, one of the closest to this title, paradoxically, could be called the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857). The paradox is that that this thinker was considered almost an enemy of psychological science. But in fact, the opposite is true. According to many publications, Comte is known to us as the founder of positivism, that is, external, superficial knowledge, supposedly excluding the knowledge of internal hidden relationships between phenomena. At the same time, it was not taken into account that by positive knowledge Comte meant, first of all, objective knowledge. As for psychology, Comte did not speak out against this science, but only against its name. In his time, psychology was exclusively introspective, that is, subjective-speculative. This contradicted Comte's ideas about the objective nature of knowledge, and in order to rid psychology of the unreliability of subjectivism, he gave it a new name - positive morality (la morale positive). It is not so widely known that, by closing the multi-volume series of his works, Comte planned to develop a "genuine final science", by which he understood what we call psychology and social psychology. The science of man as more than a biological being and at the same time more than just a "clot of culture" was to become, according to Comte, the pinnacle of knowledge.

The name of Wilhelm Wundt is usually associated with the history of psychology in general. But it is not always noted that he distinguished between physiological psychology and the psychology of peoples (in modern language - social). His ten-volume work The Psychology of Nations (1900-1920), on which he worked for 60 years, is essentially social psychology. Higher mental functions, according to Bundga, should have been studied from the standpoint of the "psychology of peoples."

W. McDougall left a memory of himself as one of the first textbooks of social psychology, published in 1908. His entire system of views on socio-psychological relations in society was based on the theory of instincts, which, taking into account the contribution of 3. Freud, dominated the scientific consciousness in subsequent 10-15 years old.

At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. social psychology was still undergoing a period of formation as an independent science, so many of its problems were reflected in the works of sociologists. It is impossible not to note in this connection the works of E. Durkheim (1897), who sharply raised the questions of the influence of social factors on the mental life of individuals, and C. Cooley, who developed the problem of the relationship between the individual and society.

A large place in the writings of sociologists at the end of the XIX century. occupied the problem of the crowd, but this issue will be considered in the corresponding section of this work.

1. Social psychology in the system of scientific knowledge”

1.1. Social psychology as a science.

1 .The relationship of social psychology with other sciences and branches of psychology gee. The relationship of social psychology with other scientific disciplines is due to two circumstances. The first is the logic of the development of science in general through the differentiation of its individual branches. At the same time, each of the branches of scientific knowledge reflected the specifics of “its own” vision and explanation of the surrounding world. The second is the ever-increasing need of society for the need to use the integrated knowledge of many branches of science. Thus, the closeness of the connection between social psychology and other sciences can be traced taking into account such aspects as: the presence of a common object of study;

Use of general methods in solving theoretical and practical problems;

Mutual use of certain explanatory principles in understanding the nature of socio-psychological phenomena;

Involvement of facts “obtained” by other scientific disciplines, which help to better understand the factors and specifics of the development and manifestations of human social psychology.

2 .The relationship of social psychology with sociology and general psychology. Sociology and social psychology find many common interests in the development of problems related to society and the individual, social groups and intergroup relations. Sociology borrows from social psychology methods of studying personality and human relations. In turn, psychologists widely use traditional sociological methods of collecting primary scientific data - questionnaires and surveys. For example, sociometry, which originally arose as a psychological theory of society (J. Moreno), is simultaneously used as a socio-psychological test for assessing interpersonal emotional ties in a group.

The relative boundary of social psychology with general psychology touches upon the problems of determination and manifestation of the individual psychological qualities of a person in the conditions of his action in real social groups.

The designation of the boundaries studied by social psychology, the problems, makes it possible to single out certain aspects of the subject of this science. They are 1:

1) Socio-psychological characteristics, patterns, mechanisms of the processes of joint activity and communication of people, features of information exchange, mutual perception and understanding, the impact of people on each other in situations of interaction. Under communication

The socio-psychological approach, in contrast to the general psychological approach, is characterized by a clear understanding of the conditionality of human behavior, his personal characteristics in a specific situation of interaction: the roles played by the participants, the norms of communication and activity, the socio-cultural, historical background, and even spatio-temporal parameters (where and when the interaction occurs). The most important socio-psychological mechanisms for the emergence of sociality, that is, the properties of community and mutual understanding of people, are the processes of imitation, suggestion, infection, and persuasion.

3 .Types of socio-psychological knowledge.

1) Ordinary, worldly knowledge.

Distinctive features of ordinary socio-psychological knowledge:

a) it reflects the individual experience of a person’s daily life, is rather of a single or group character, being the result of an ordinary generalization of the external, superficial, immediate;

b) has an unsystematized nature of the complex, a set of facts, cases, conjectures and interpretations from the point of view of “household”, “common sense” and “generally accepted views” about the mechanisms of socio-psychological phenomena. (such as “bald, with glasses and a hat - an intellectual”, etc.);

c) “everyday psychology”, focused on ensuring optimal relationships with people and internal comfort within the framework of the elements of life, without the need for experimental verification of existing ideas;

d) is fixed in the system of everyday spoken language, which expresses general ideas and the individual emotional and semantic shell of its words.

2) Artistic knowledge.

Includes aesthetic images that capture typical or unique forms of human psychology of a particular era, social stratum, etc. in the material of an artistic work of literature, poetry, painting, sculpture, music.

3) philosophical knowledge.

This type of socio-psychological knowledge is a moral and ideological reflexive generalization and performs, in addition, the function of methodology, that is, a system of fundamental principles for understanding the relationship between man and society.

4) Esoteric(from Greek “internal”) knowledge.

Varieties of this type of socio-psychological knowledge are religious, occult-mystical, magical (astrology, palmistry, etc.) knowledge.

5) Practical and methodological knowledge.

Being the result of an experimental generalization for interested users, this type of knowledge acts mainly as procedural and technological knowledge (“Know-how”, or the so-called “Carnegie knowledge”), which represents a ready-made recipe (algorithm) for actions in certain life situations. .

6) scientific knowledge.

Its main types are: scientific-theoretical and scientific-experimental knowledge. Scientific knowledge is a logically consistent and experimentally substantiated system of interrelated concepts, judgments, conclusions that describe socio-psychological phenomena, explain their nature and predict dynamics, and also justify the possibility of managing them.

4. Patterns of socio-psychological phenomena associated with the inclusion of the individual in large and small social groups.

Socio-psychological characteristics, patterns, mechanisms of the processes of joint activity and communication of people, features of information exchange, mutual perception and understanding, the impact of people on each other in situations of interaction. Under communication refers to the exchange of information between people, their interaction.

5. Methodology and methods of social psychology.

In modern scientific knowledge, the term "methodology" refers to three different levels of scientific approach.

1) General methodology - some general philosophical approach, a general way of knowing, adopted by the researcher. The general methodology formulates the most general principles that are applied in research. Different researchers accept different philosophical systems as a common methodology.

2) Private (or special) methodology - a set of methodological principles applied in a given field of knowledge. Private methodology is the implementation of philosophical principles in relation to a specific object of study. This is a way of knowing, adapted to a narrower sphere of knowledge.

3) Methodology - a set of specific methodological methods of research; more commonly referred to as "method". The specific methods used in socio-psychological research are not completely independent of more general methodological considerations.

Methods of research and methods of influence.

6 .Methods of research and methods of influence.

It can be divided into two classes: research methods and influence methods. In turn, research methods are divided into methods for collecting information and methods for processing it. Among the methods of collecting information, it is necessary to name: observation, study of documents, surveys (questionnaires, interviews), tests (including sociometry), experiment (laboratory, natural).

There are various classifications and typologies of socio-psychological methods. For conceptual and applied problems solved by psychologists in the field of social life, it is more appropriate to use the following typology. Methods:

1) phenomenologization and conceptualization; 2) research and diagnostics; 3) processing and interpretation;

4) correction and therapy; 5) motivation and management; 6) training and development; 7) design and creativity.

There are no rigid boundaries between the listed methods of social psychology, they are interconnected, mutually intersect, and complement each other. Rather, we should talk about the emphasis in a particular group of methods on solving a certain range of problems. So, for example, in order to teach the use of the methods of psychology, it is necessary, in addition to using the actual socio-psychological methods of teaching, to know the current level of knowledge of the student, his individual psychological characteristics, the dominant style of activity, etc. This requires the use of research and diagnostic methods, processing and interpretation. Knowing the personal characteristics of a person, the degree of their compliance with the goals and objectives of training, we may be forced to somehow correct these characteristics, which means using methods of therapy and correction, as well as methods of motivation and management. At the same time, it may be necessary to create a communication environment and show creative spontaneity in applying these methods to a real life situation.

The most common type of psychological impact is socio-psychological training. It involves the use of active methods of group psychological work in order to develop competence in communication. Among the various types of socio-psychological training, the most well-known are behavioral training, sensitivity training, role-playing training, video training, etc. The main methods of socio-psychological training are group discussion and role-playing.

7 .Objective grounds for the "dual" position of social psychology.

The dual nature of the status of social psychology. This position, reflecting the features

the subject of social psychology as a science, is enshrined in the United States, for example, also organizationally,

because sections of social psychology exist both within the American Psychological Association and within the American Sociological Association. As an experimental discipline, social psychology is subject to the same standards of hypothesis testing that exist for any experimental science, where various models of hypothesis testing have long been developed. However, possessing the features of a humanitarian discipline, social psychology gets into difficulties associated with this characteristic. For example, in social psychology there are such subject areas (large groups, mass processes) where verification is simply impossible. In this part, social psychology is similar to most of the humanities and, like them, must assert the right to exist for its deep specificity.

8. Basic points of view on the subject of social psychology.

During the discussion about the subject of social psychology, various points of view were expressed about its role and tasks. So, G.I. Chelpanov proposed to divide psychology into two parts: social, which should be developed within the framework of Marxism, and psychology proper, which should remain an experimental science. K.N. Kornilov contrary to G.I. Chelpanov proposed to preserve the unity of psychology by extending the method of reactology to human behavior in a team. At the same time, the collective was understood as a single reaction of its members to a single stimulus, and the task of social psychology was proposed to be the measurement of the speed, strength and dynamism of these collective reactions.

9. Subject, problems and tasks of social psychology.

The subject of social psychology is the structural and dynamic features and patterns of psychological phenomena that arise in the process of social interaction, that is, in situations of communication and joint activities of people, as well as reasonable ways to manage these phenomena.

G. Tajfel considers social psychology as a discipline that studies “the interaction between social change and choice”, and its central problem considered the relationship between a person and a change in the social environment. Interaction with the social environment is a collective process, where individual decisions are mediated by a system of social interaction. Society itself changes through the interaction of groups that a person enters, and whose social characteristics he takes into account and embodies in the process of interaction with other people. This manifests decentering in the perception and thinking of an individual regarding certain events, when he thinks from the point of view of the norms and values ​​of the community to which he is included, to which he belongs.

The main tasks of social psychology are:

Study of the structure, mechanisms, patterns and characteristics of socio-psychological phenomena: communication and interaction of people, psychological characteristics of social groups, personality psychology (problems of social attitude, socialization, etc.);

Identification of factors in the development of socio-psychological phenomena and forecasting the nature of such development;

Direct application of methods of socio-psychological influence aimed at increasing the socio-psychological competence of people and resolving existing psychological problems.

10. Modern ideas about the subject of social psychology.

The socio-psychological theories that implement a new approach to understanding the image of social psychology include the cultural concepts of S. Moscovici (“the concept of social representations”), G. Tejfel (“the concept of intergroup relations” and “the theory of social identity”), as well as “ethogenetic approach” R. Harre.

So, according to S. Moscovici, the basis of the social process is the relations of production, exchange and consumption that develop between social subjects, and society acts as a system with special qualities that cannot be reduced to the sum of individual relations, divorced from their objective mediation. He understands society itself quite broadly - as a system of social subjects, self-determining (through the formation and correction of social ideas) relative to each other. The development of society is associated with the presence of social conflicts, acting as the driving force of the social process.

According to G. Tejfel, the logic of human social behavior unfolds taking into account the existence of two poles of interindividual interaction: a purely interpersonal relationship - a purely intergroup one. Purely interpersonal relations practically do not exist, but intergroup relations are reflected in numerous examples of undifferentiated division of “us” and “they” (for example, soldiers of two warring parties) The closer the situation of interaction is to the intergroup pole of the continuum, the greater the likelihood of more consistent and uniform actions of group members in relation to another group, as well as a greater tendency to perceive members of another group as its faceless representatives, that is, undifferentiated

The development of society is seen by R. Harre as the structuring of the system of social interaction, the improvement of the expressive system, which provides the possibility for the individual to implement the norms of “decent behavior”. Thus, human behavior is regulated not so much by the main motive declared by R. Harre, but by the rules accepted in society

11. Correlation of psychological and sociological knowledge.

Recently there have been critical trends in the development of social psychology. One of the reasons is the presence of a large amount of empirical data, but at the same time their low effectiveness in solving acute social problems. Therefore, interest in theory is growing and the question of the relationship between the theoretical and empirical levels of knowledge arises in a new way. This interest is due primarily to the complexity of the object of study of social psychology, the lack of well-developed models of theoretical knowledge, since psychology has long existed in the depths of philosophy. It is noted, in particular, that “social psychology came late to the theory development business. None of its theories is a theory in the strict sense of the word. But the theoretical point of view stimulates and guides research, and therefore the development of theories is the most important task of social psychology ”(Shaw and Constanzo).

The birth and actual finding of social psychology at the junction of two sciences (psychology and sociology) cause great attention to the criteria , defining the face of science, and to scientific theories. In this regard, various scientists propose the following criteria: 1) the economy of the theory, that is, its ability to subordinate many observed relationships to one single principle; 2) the ability of the theory to use numerous variables and principles in various combinations to predict phenomena; 3) the theory should be as simple as possible; 4) economy in explaining phenomena; the theory should not contradict other theories related to it, which have a high probability of being true; 5) the theory should give such interpretations so that it is possible to establish a “bridge” between them and real life; 6) the theory should serve not only the purpose of research, but also the general progress of science.

It is argued that the hypotheses put forward in socio-psychological practice should be relevant not so much to theories as to social practice, and the main method for testing the hypothesis should be not a laboratory experiment, but a field experiment. The question of the social role of science is also posed in a new way. In this regard, overcoming the “neutral” position of the researcher will actually be expressed in the direct inclusion of methodological foundations related to understanding the nature of man, society and their relationships in the context of an experimental study, which will make it possible to obtain data not “cleansed” by laboratory conditions, but to explore a polydetermined social -psychological reality .

12 .Social interaction of people as an object of social psychology.

The most important characteristic of human life is that it takes place in the form of social interaction. The social interaction of people is motivated by individual, group and social needs. These needs are met within the framework of the main forms of interaction - communication and joint activities. If we take human society as a whole, then it is thanks to communication and joint activity that the conditions of life and the individuals themselves develop and improve, their mutual understanding is ensured and individual actions are coordinated, communities are formed - large and small social groups. A special type of interaction is opposition, struggle, social conflicts.

A person is both a product and an active participant, a subject of social interaction. Therefore, the process of becoming aware of oneself as a member of a society or a group is, in fact, a process of social interaction. A person is able to condemn or praise himself, depending on the situation, force him to change his behavior, encourage him to commit social actions - deeds or crimes. In this case, the individual is both the subject and the object of interaction, which takes the form of reflection - that is, the individual's awareness of himself as a social being - the subject of social relations and conscious activity. Reflection, in fact, is a person's communication with himself (Goncharov A.I.).

The processes of social interaction are accompanied by the emergence of special phenomena - various states, properties and formations, which reflect the characteristics of the human psyche, his consciousness and the unconscious as products of the individual's life in society. The most common phenomenon is a change in the individual psyche in communication. In one situation, a person is bold, aggressive, in another - cowardly or shy. Sometimes for such a change, the mere presence of others, their observation of the actions of a person, is enough. Psychologists have long noticed that when interacting with other people, a person can withstand stronger unpleasant sensations, for example, pain. In front of the audience, athletes show better results (the effect of “facilitation” - relief).

13. Socio-psychological phenomena.

Socio-psychological phenomena are situational manifestations by a person of certain properties and qualities (disinterestedness or cowardice, authoritarian leadership style or social passivity). The same range of phenomena includes both relatively stable and dynamic features of a small social group - the moral and psychological climate, the level of cohesion, group moods, traditions, etc. At the same time, it turns out that the individual contribution to joint activity decreases proportionally with an increase in the number of participants. Moreover, subjectively, this may not be realized by the participants themselves. The group can force its member, who avoids conflicts or “white crow” positions, to change his point of view even on quite obvious things (the effect of “conformity”). Such phenomena that accompany and, importantly, regulate social interaction can include: processes of mutual perception, mutual influence, relationships of various types - sympathy, antipathy, leadership, rumors, fashion, traditions, panic, etc. Such phenomena that accompany human life have always been intuitively or consciously taken into account by people in order to more successfully communicate and work together. These phenomena that arise in social interaction are called socio-psychological phenomena.

14 .The structure of social psychology as a science

The structure of social representation includes three elements:

information (the sum of knowledge about the represented object);

presentation field (characterizes its content from a qualitative point of view);

setting the subject in relation to the representation object.

The dynamics of social representations (“objectification”) includes a number of phases:

personification (associating the representation object with specific people);

the formation of a "figurative scheme" of representation - a visually represented mental construction;

“naturalization” (operating in ordinary consciousness with the elements of a “figurative scheme” as autonomous entities)

15. Theoretical and practical tasks of social psychology.

One of the complex practical tasks facing social psychology are the tasks of: optimizing personal and group interactions aimed at achieving certain goals (for example, educational, industrial); improvement of planning, organization, motivation and control of joint activities of people; improving the efficiency of information exchange (communication) and decision-making. To solve such problems, social psychologists develop various methods of motivation and management , allowing to encourage subjects to activity and ensure the optimal functioning of individuals and groups in the process of achieving certain goals.

The very combination of the words “social psychology” indicates the specific place it occupies in the system of other sciences. The history of the formation of social psychology is closely connected with the need to explain such a class of facts, which in themselves can be investigated only with the help of the combined efforts of the two sciences. In the course of the development of socio-psychological practice, the subject of science was also refined. Its understanding by various authors proceeded from an understanding of the place of social psychology in the system of scientific knowledge, as well as the range of practical problems to be solved. All the variety of debatable views can be represented in the form of the following positions:

social psychology is a part of sociology (the main emphasis is on the need to study mass phenomena, large social communities, certain aspects of social psychology - mores, traditions, customs, etc.);

social psychology is a part of psychology (the main subject of research is the personality, its position in the team, interpersonal relationships, communication system);

social psychology is a science at the intersection of psychology and sociology, and the border area of ​​social psychology with sociology is the study of the problems of mass communication, public opinion, and the sociology of personality.

0 Stages of development of socio-psychological knowledge.

1. Descriptive stage in the development of social psychology (until the middle of the 19th century)

At this stage, there is a gradual accumulation of socio-psychological knowledge within the framework of philosophy with attempts to determine the determinants of human behavior and personality development in society. So, in the ancient Eastern teaching of Taoism, it was argued that human behavior is predetermined by the law of “tao”. The path of a person is determined by fate, therefore the main thing for a person is to develop calmness and adequately obey fate, realizing personal growth. In the works of Confucius, Sun Tzu, Mo Tzu, the problems of innateness or acquisition of various socio-psychological properties are considered.

In ancient philosophy, two lines of analysis of the relationship between man and society can be distinguished. The line of sociocentrism and the line of egocentrism. The line of sociocentrism is presented, for example, in the works of Plato (dialogues “State” and “Laws”), where he expressed a “collectivist”, social-centric judgment: society is an independent variable, and the individual is a dependent variable. The society thus stands above the individual. Plato's point of view on the irrational behavior of the masses as a phenomenon later became quite widespread in foreign social psychology.

Representatives of the line of egocentrism considered the individual as the source of all social forms, since all relevant tendencies are embedded in it. Aristotle, for example, in his treatise "On Politics" said that man by nature is a political animal, and social instinct is the first basis for the origin of a social union.

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, individualism developed within Christianity. At the same time, questions were studied: what drives a person, what is the origin and formation of the internal structure of society. The continuation of the theme is reflected in the views of representatives of science of the Renaissance. T. Hobbes ("Leviathan", 1651) sees this driving force in a person's desire for power and personal gain.

Adam Smith called the driving forces of economic and social life "sympathy" and the desire to satisfy one's own interests. Emphasizing at the same time the role of the social environment, he wrote long before modern researchers (Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1752) that the attitude of the individual towards himself, his self-esteem depend on the mirror, the function of which is performed by society.

Sociocentrism finds expression in the views of N. Machiavelli, J. Vico, P.Zh. Proudhon and other authors. So, according to the views of N. Machiavelli, the society that subordinates the individual is considered as a kind of social mechanism (“organism”) that regulates the social activity of the individual. A number of questions concerning the definition of the place and role of personality psychology in the life of society were raised by Helvetius. In his works "On the Mind" and "On Man" he emphasized the role of the social environment in the upbringing of a person, as well as the role of consciousness and passions, needs, desires of the individual in the development of society.

In the works of the German philosopher Hegel, one can find an interesting attempt at a socio-psychological approach to explaining the historical process as a whole and its individual stages. He considered the change in the characters of people in connection with the change in the socio-political situation in the country. In turn, the features of such stable formations as religion and the state turn out to be the result of certain changes in a special psychological formation - the “spirit of the people”.

2. Accumulation of socio-psychological knowledge in the field of philosophy, sociology and general psychology. Descriptive stage in the development of social psychology (until the middle of the 19th century) At this stage, there is a gradual accumulation of socio-psychological knowledge within the framework of philosophy with attempts to determine the determinants of human behavior and personality development in society (see the first answer)

3. Social, scientific and ideological prerequisites for the separation of social psychology into an independent science.

The need for the emergence of social psychology manifested itself in the development of two sciences that are considered the immediate parents of social psychology - sociology and psychology. Characteristically, the psychology of the individual has become the defining direction of psychology. However, a new approach was required in explaining human behavior, not reducible to its determination by individual psychological factors. Sociology emerged as an independent science in the middle of the 19th century. Its founder is the French philosopher Auguste Comte. Sociology from the very beginning sought to build an explanation of social facts, referring to the laws of psychology, seeing the psychological principle in the specifics of social phenomena. Later, a special psychological direction in sociology was formed (Lester Ward, Franklin Giddings), reducing the laws of the social to the laws of the collective psyche. These mutual aspirations were realized in the middle of the 19th century. and gave life to the first forms of proper socio-psychological knowledge.

Thus, two factors contributing to the emergence of the first socio-psychological doctrines can be distinguished:

a) the development of society (political, economic, social, spiritual spheres);

b) the logic of the development of science.

4. The socio-psychological content of the concepts of "Psychology of Peoples" (M-Lazarus, G. Steinthal, W. Wundt), "Psychology of the Masses" (G. Le Bon, G. Tarde, S. Siegele) and "Theory of Instincts of Social Behavior" ( W. McDougall).

60s xix century-20s xx stage of formation of social. psychic knowledge

This stage is characterized by the emergence of the first socio-psychological theories, such as the “psychology of peoples” by M. Lazarus and G. Steinthal, the “psychology of the masses” by G. Le Bon and S. Siegele, the theory of “social behavior instincts” by W. McDougall. By this time (the middle of the 19th century) one can observe significant progress in the development of a number of sciences, including those directly related to the social life of society. Linguistics was greatly developed, the need for which was caused by the processes that took place in capitalist Europe - the rapid development of capitalism, the multiplication of economic ties between states, which caused a huge migration of the population. The problem of linguistic communication and mutual influence of peoples and, accordingly, the problem of the connection of language with various components of the psychology of peoples has become acute. Linguistics could not solve this problem on its own.

Psychology of peoples- a theory that asserts that the main force of history is the people or the “spirit of the whole”, which expresses itself in art, religion, language, myths, etc., and individual consciousness is only its product. This theory developed in the middle of the 19th century. in Germany. The theoretical sources of its origin were Hegel's doctrine of the "folk spirit" and the idealistic psychology of Herbart.

The direct creators of the psychology of peoples were the philosopher M. Lazarus (1824-1903) and the linguist G. Steinthal (1823-1893). They argued that there is a kind of supra-individual soul, subordinated to a supra-individual wholeness. This integrity is represented by the people or the nation. The soul of the individual is its non-independent part, that is, it is involved in the soul of the people. As a program and task of the psychology of peoples, in their article “Introductory Discourses on the Psychology of Peoples” (1859), the authors proposed “to know psychologically the essence of the spirit of the people and their deeds, to discover the laws according to which ... proceeds ... the spiritual activity of the people ... as well as the foundations for the emergence, development and disappearance of specific features characteristic of the people.

Mass psychology- a theory that explains the reasons for changing the behavior of a person in the mass, his irrational behavior by the action of psychological mechanisms of imitation and infection. This theory solved the question of the relationship between the individual and society from an “individualistic” position. The theory was born in France in the second half of the 19th century. Its origins were laid in the concept of imitation by G. Tarde. Tarde, while investigating various phenomena, ran into the following difficulty: these phenomena could not be satisfactorily explained within the framework of the intellectualistic views of academic psychology. Therefore, he drew attention to the affective (irrational) elements of people's social behavior, which until that time had not been the subject of study. The creators of "mass psychology" were influenced by two provisions of the work of Tarde ("Laws of imitation", 1890), namely the idea of ​​the role of imitation and suggestion and irrationalism in explaining social behavior. The phenomena observed by Tarde concerned mainly the behavior of a person in a crowd, in a mass. In psychology under crowd is understood as an unstructured accumulation of people, deprived of a clearly perceived commonality of goals, but interconnected by the similarity of their emotional state and a common object of attention.

Theory of social behavior instincts(or "hormic theory"). The founder of the theory is the English psychologist William McDougall (1871-1938). McDougall's work "Introduction to Social Psychology" was published in 1908 - this year is considered the year of the final establishment of social psychology in independent existence. It should be noted that in the same year, the book of the sociologist E. Ross "Social Psychology" was published in the United States. However, eleven years earlier, J. Baldwin's Studies in Social Psychology (1897) had been published, which could also claim the "title" of the first systematic guide to social psychology.

McDougall in his "Introduction" set as a goal a systematic study of the driving forces to which human behavior, especially his social behavior, must obey. In his opinion, the common cause of social behavior is the desire of a person for a goal (“gorme”), which is realized as instincts, which have an innate character.

The repertoire of instincts in each person arises as a result of a certain psychophysical predisposition - the presence of hereditarily fixed channels for discharging nervous energy. They consist of an afferent (receptive, perceiving) part, which is responsible for how objects and phenomena are perceived, a central (emotional) part, due to which we experience emotional excitement during perception, and an efferent (motor) part, which determines the nature of our reaction to these objects and phenomena.

Thus, everything that happens in the field of consciousness is directly dependent on the unconscious beginning. The internal expression of the instincts are mainly emotions. The relationship between instincts and emotions is systematic and definite. McDougall listed six pairs of related instincts and emotions:

the instinct of struggle and the corresponding anger and fear; the instinct of flight and a sense of self-preservation; the instinct of reproduction and jealousy, female timidity; the instinct of acquisition and a sense of ownership; the instinct of building and a sense of creation; the herd instinct and a sense of belonging.

From the instincts, in his opinion, all social institutions are derived: the family, trade, social processes (primarily war)

5. Experimental stage in the development of social psychology (late XX - early XX centuries)

This stage is characterized by attempts to clarify the relationship of socio-psychological phenomena to the experiment, the accumulation of a large number of facts. In turn, it can be divided into the following periods:

1) the undivided dominance of the experiment (20-40s);

2) attempts at proportional development of theoretical and experimental knowledge (50s to the present).

First period. At the beginning of the twentieth century. social psychology is gradually turning into an experimental science. The official milestone was the program proposed in Europe by V. Mede and in the USA by F. Allport, in which the requirements for the transformation of social psychology into an experimental discipline were formulated. It receives its main development in the USA, where from the very beginning it was focused on applied knowledge, on the solution of certain social problems, as a result of which it directly linked its fate with the interests of such institutions as business, administration, the army, and propaganda. The recommendations of social psychology regarding the "human factor" in demand in each of these areas stimulated the pragmatic orientation of this science.

Second period considered stage in the development of social psychology coincides with the period that began after the end of the Second World War. The general trend is characterized by attempts by social psychologists to find the optimal balance between theory and experiment. At the same time, most of the theories that have arisen in social psychology after K. Levin are rather unanimously called theories of “middle rank”. If in the classical period of the development of science the school practically coincided with the theory, then the rejection of general theories by social psychologists raises the question of the traditional division of social psychology into “schools” in a new way.

6. Discussion about the subject of social psychology in the 20s of the XX century

In the 20-30s. the development of domestic social psychology was accompanied by the development of theoretical problems of psychology as a whole, based on the restructuring of its philosophical foundations. During the discussion about the subject of social psychology, various points of view were expressed about its role and tasks. So, G.I. Chelpanov proposed to divide psychology into two parts: social, which should be developed within the framework of Marxism, and psychology proper, which should remain an experimental science. K.N. Kornilov contrary to G.I. Chelpanov proposed to preserve the unity of psychology by extending the method of reactology to human behavior in a team. At the same time, the collective was understood as a single reaction of its members to a single stimulus, and the task of social psychology was proposed to be the measurement of the speed, strength and dynamism of these collective reactions.

Another prominent domestic psychologist P.P. Blonsky was one of the first to raise the question of the need to analyze the role of the social environment in characterizing the human psyche. “Sociality” was considered by him as a special activity of people associated with other people. Under this understanding of sociality, the activity of animals was also suitable, therefore, the proposal of P.P. Blonsky was to include psychology as a biological science in the circle of social problems.

7. The history of the development of socio-psychological ideas in Russia.

In the development of domestic social psychology at the end of the 19th century. a large role belongs to N.K. Mikhailovsky. His indisputable merit is in posing the problem of the need to develop a special science (collective, mass psychology), designed to study mass psychology, its role and place in social movements. Mikhailovsky in every possible way emphasized the role of the psychological factor in the historical process, and in connection with this, the role of collective psychology in the study of mass movements (primarily the peasant movement). One of the problems considered by N.K. Mikhailovsky, was the problem of the ratio of the crowd and the hero (leader). Naturally, this issue also had a well-defined social context for its consideration. In the reproduction of certain forms of social behavior, a significant place, according to N.K. Mikhailovsky, belongs to imitation as a mechanism of mass behavior. He distinguished between external factors of imitation (behavior, an example of another person) and internal ones (poverty, poverty of the individual's inner world, suggestibility, weakness of will, inability of conscious self-control).

8. The first experiments to study the influence of the group on the activity of the individual.

As the first milestones in the development of experimental social psychology, we can single out:

the first step of social psychology in the laboratory was N. Tripplet's study of dynamogenic factors in cooperation (1897);

the first step in the “field” is the study by E. Starbuck “Psychology of Religion” (1899);

the first work of an applied nature is the work of G. Jale on the psychology of advertising (1900).

He conducted a series of brilliant experimental studies in the 1930s and 1940s. with his staff Kurt Lewin, who emigrated from Germany in 1933, at the Center for the Study of Group Dynamics at the University of Massachusetts, which he founded.

9. Problems of social psychology in the "collective reflexology" of VM Bekhterev. L.S. Vygotsky on the relationship between "social" and "collective" psychology.

The proposal to create a special science of reflexology was made by the outstanding physiologist V.M. Bekhterev. Reflexology- a natural-scientific direction in psychology, which was developed in the period 1900-1930, mainly in Russia, associated with the activities of V.M. Bekhterev and his collaborators and close in essence to behaviorism. The solution of socio-psychological problems, according to V.M. Bekhterev, a certain branch of reflexology should be engaged. He called this branch “collective reflexology”, and considered the behavior of collectives, the behavior of an individual in a team, the conditions for the emergence of social associations, the features of their activities, and the relationship of their members to be the subject of its study. He saw the overcoming of subjectivist social psychology in the fact that all the problems of collectives were understood as the correlation of external influences with the motor and mimic-somatic reactions of their members. The socio-psychological approach had to be provided by combining the principles of reflexology (mechanisms for bringing people together into collectives) and sociology (features of collectives and their relationship with the conditions of life and class struggle in society). In a number of his experimental studies, V.M. Bekhterev established (together with M.V. Lange and V.N. Myasishchev) that the group promotes more productive activity by influencing the individual psyche of its members. However, in this approach, although the idea of ​​the emergence of qualitatively different phenomena in the team was affirmed, and the personality was declared a product of society, biological characteristics were nevertheless taken as the basis for considering this personality and its behavior, and group psychology was thought of as a derivative of individual psychology.

In the course of the further development of Russian psychology, the ideas of the cultural and historical determination of the psyche, the mediation of the individual psyche by the conditions of being in a team (L.S. Vygotsky), the unity of consciousness and activity (S.L. Rubinstein, A.N. Leontiev). However, the actual implementation of these principles into research practice was hampered by the peculiarities of the socio-political situation of those years.

10. Current state and problems of social psychology in Russia.

At present, the features of domestic social psychology are the consideration of the problems of the individual, group, communication based on the principle of activity, which means the study of socio-psychological phenomena in real social groups united by joint activity, provided that this activity mediates the entire system of intragroup processes.

1. Dynamic theory of group functioning (V. Bayon).

The theory is an attempt to interpret the parameters of the group and the mechanisms of its functioning by analogy with the psychological characteristics of the individual. The material for observation was the therapeutic groups. It is argued that a group is a macro-variant of an individual, therefore, socio-psychological analysis is possible according to the same criteria as the study of an individual (needs, motives, goals, etc.).

The group, according to Bayon, is presented in two plans:

a) performance by a group of a task (conscious actions of group members);

b) group culture (norms, sanctions, opinions, attitudes, etc.) as a result of the unconscious contributions of group members. Between these two levels of group life - rational (or conscious) and irrational (unconscious) - conflicts are inevitable that bring into action “ collective defense mechanisms”, which are again interpreted by analogy with individual defense mechanisms in psychoanalytic interpretation.

2. Interactionist orientation in social psychology.

General characteristics of the direction:

a) the main starting point for analysis is not the individual, but the process of social interaction of people, the means of its implementation and regulation; b) close connection with cognitivist theories and sociology; c) key concepts - "interaction" and "role"; e) the main theoretical source is the socio-psychological concepts of George Mead, an American philosopher, sociologist and social psychologist.

Main directions: 1) symbolic interactionism; 2) role theories; 3) reference group theories.

3. Cognitive orientation in social psychology.

The main problems and theoretical foundations of the cognitive approach in social psychology. Cognitive psychology emerged in the mid-1960s. in the USA and was directed against the behaviorist interpretation of human behavior, ignoring the role of cognitive processes and cognitive development.

cognitive psychology- one of the modern areas of research in psychology, explaining human behavior on the basis of knowledge and studying the process and dynamics of their formation. The essence of the cognitivist approach comes down to the desire to explain social behavior through a system of cognitive processes and to establish a balance of cognitive structures. These structures (attitudes, ideas, expectations, etc.) act as regulators of social behavior. On their basis, the perceived object, phenomenon is assigned to a certain class of phenomena (categorization). Within the framework of the cognitivist approach, the following problems are studied:

a) social perception;

b) attractions (emotional experience of another);

c) formation and change of attitudes. attitude- a social attitude that implies the readiness of the subject for one or another image and type of action, which is actualized when he anticipates the appearance of a certain social object, phenomenon and bears the features of a holistic personality structure, its dependence on the orientation towards the values ​​of the group.

The theoretical sources of cognitive psychology are Gestalt psychology and K. Levin's field theory. The following ideas are accepted from Gestalt psychology:

a) a holistic image - the assertion of the initially holistic nature of perception;

b) categorization of images - the assignment of an object to a certain class of phenomena based on the characteristics of existing cognitive structures that reflect the specifics of individual knowledge of the world and personal experience of a person;

c) isomorphism - assertion of the existence of a structural similarity between physical and psychological processes;

d) the dominance of “good figures” - the “desire” of perception to close, complete the construction of individual elements to an integral (or symmetrical) figure;

e) assimilation and contrast - perception of an image on the basis of categorization, that is, assignment to a certain class and comparison of its qualities from the point of view of difference or similarity with the typical qualities of objects of a given community (category);

f) immanent dynamics of gestalt - the assertion that the restructuring of cognitive structures occurs in connection with a change in the perceived situation, which leads to their mutual correspondence

4. Cognitive approach of S. Asch, D. Krech, R. Cruchfield.

This approach does not rely on the principle of correspondence, which is fundamental for the theories discussed above. The main ideas of the authors, acting as a methodological setting for experimental studies, are reduced to the following provisions:

a) human behavior can be considered only on the basis of recognition of its integrity;

b) the most important element of the holistic organization of behavior is cognition;

c) perception is seen as the relation of incoming data to the cognitive structure, and learning as a process of cognitive reorganization.

S. Asch, focusing his efforts on the study of the problems of social perception, argues that a person's perception of the surrounding social reality selectively depends on previous knowledge. That is, the tendency towards “perceptual integration” (combining new and old knowledge) is realized taking into account the possibility of ensuring the consistency of the cognitive organization. Moreover, when a person constructs an image of an object, identical data is not the same in different contexts. This conclusion was made on the basis of an experiment in which two groups of subjects were offered 7 adjectives allegedly referring to the same person, and the last adjectives were different for the two groups: “warm” and “cold”. Then the participants of the groups were offered 18 character traits, from which they had to choose those that, in their opinion, would characterize this person. As a result, the set of these traits turned out to be completely different depending on belonging to a certain group and indicated a tendency to build a configuration of traits around the words “warm” or “cold”. These characteristics determined the very context of perception in which they occupied a central place, generally setting a certain tendency to combine perceived characteristics into an organized semantic system.

In another experiment, the phenomenon of “social support” was revealed, when, in a conflict situation for the subject, the expression of only one judgment in his support sharply increased his stability in defending his opinion.

In general, the cognitive approach in social psychology is characterized by the following:

the main source of data and the determining factor of human behavior are cognitive processes and formations (knowledge, understanding, judgments, etc.);

Based on the understanding of human behavior and cognition as integral (molar) processes, general schemes for the study of these phenomena are oriented;

the qualitative interpretation of dissonant states and the prognosis of the individual's behavior in most cases is interpreted based on the psychology of people, which is both an explanatory principle and a kind of norm for comparing the real behavior of the subjects with it

5. Neobehavioristic orientation in social psychology.

The neobehaviorist orientation in social psychology is an extrapolation of the principles of traditional behaviorism and neobehaviorism to a new range of objects. Behaviorism- one of the leading directions in psychology, the main subject of study of which is behavior, understood as a set of "stimulus - reaction" relationships. neobehaviorism- a direction in psychology that replaced behaviorism in the 30s. 20th century Characterized by the recognition of the active role of mental states in the management of behavior. Presented in the teachings of American psychologists E. Tolman, K. Hull, B. Skinner.

The neo-behaviorist orientation in social psychology is based on a neo-positivist methodological complex, which includes the following principles: 1) absolutization of the standard of scientific research that has developed in the natural sciences; 2) the principles of verification (or falsification) and operationalism; 3) naturalism as ignoring the specifics of human behavior; 4) negative attitude towards theory and absolutization of empirical description; 5) a fundamental break in ties with philosophy. The main problem of behavioral orientation is learning (learning). It is through learning that the entire repertoire of observable behavior is acquired. Learning is seen as establishing or changing the association between the learner's responses and the stimuli that motivate or reinforce him.

There are two trends in the field of the neobehaviorist approach in social psychology: the operant approach, which emphasizes the reinforcement of the most successful actions (operant conditioning) as the main mechanism for the formation and modification of behavior, and the mediator approach, which continues the line of traditional behaviorism, which sees the learning mechanism in fixing the necessary connection between stimuli. and reactions (Table 3). operant conditioning- a type of learning carried out by reinforcing the most successful reactions of the body to certain stimuli. The concept of operant conditioning was proposed by the American psychologist E. Thorndike and developed by B. Skinner.

Important categories for neobehaviorism in social psychology, which explain the mechanisms of human behavior, are: 1) generalization (generalization) - the tendency of a reaction received to one specific stimulus to be associated with another, new, but similar stimulus; 2) discrimination (differentiation) - the ability of an individual to distinguish the desired stimulus from others and respond specifically to it; 3) reinforcement (positive and negative) - the actions of the experimenter (other people), leading to observable changes in the external reactions of the individual.

The main theories of neobehaviorism in social psychology are: the theory of aggression and imitation, the theory of dyadic interaction, the theory of social exchange

6. Role theories.

Representatives of the role theory: T. Sarbin, E. Hoffman, R. Linton, R. Rommetveit, N. Gross and others.

Main category - "social role", that is, a set of norms, rules and forms of behavior that characterize the typical actions of a person occupying a certain position in society. Role is defined as a dynamic aspect of status. Status is a “set of role expectations” in relation to a member of the group, which are divided into “expectations-rights” and “expectations-duties” of an individual in the performance of his role. When an individual exercises his rights and obligations arising from his status, he performs the appropriate role (R. Linton).

In understanding the role, the following aspects are distinguished: a) the role as a system of expectations in society regarding the behavior of the individual; b) the role as a system of specific expectations of the individual in relation to his behavior in interaction with others; c) the role as the observed behavior of the individual.

There are types of roles: a) conventional, formal (there are clear generally accepted ideas in society) and interpersonal, informal (there are no common ideas about them); b) prescribed (externally set, independent of the efforts of the individual) and achieved through the efforts individual; c) active (performed at the moment) and latent (potential).

In addition, roles may differ depending on the intensity of their performance by a person, on the degree of his involvement in the role (from zero to maximum involvement). The perception and performance of the role by an individual depends on the following conditions: a) knowledge of the role; b) ability to perform the role; c ) internalization of the role being performed. When an individual is not able to fulfill the requirements presented by the role, a situation of role conflict arises. There are two types of conflicts:

1) inter-role conflicts- a conflict that occurs when an individual is forced to perform several roles, but is not able to meet all the requirements of these roles; 2) intra-role conflicts- conflict, when the requirements for the bearers of the same role come into conflict in different social groups.

The severity of role conflict is determined by two factors: a) the more common requirements two roles make, the less role conflict they can cause; b) the degree of strictness of the requirements of the roles: the more strictly the requirements of the roles are defined and the more strictly they are required to be observed, the more difficult it is for their performer to evade the fulfillment of these requirements and the more likely that these roles can cause role conflict.

The nature of a person's actions to overcome role tension - that is, the state of an individual in a situation of inter-role conflict - is made dependent on the following circumstances:

a) subjective attitude to the role of its performer; b) sanctions applied for the performance or non-performance of the role;

c) the type of orientation of the performer of the role (orientation to moral values; pragmatic orientation).

Based on these factors, it is possible to predict which way the role performer will prefer to resolve the conflict.

The representative of the "role" direction - E. Hoffman in his work "A Man in Everyday Behavior" (1959) - put forward the concept of "social dramaturgy", where he draws an almost complete analogy between real life situations and a theatrical performance. The author proceeds from the fact that a person is able not only to look at himself through the eyes of a partner, but also to correct his behavior in accordance with the expectations of another in order to create a more favorable impression of himself. For effective interaction, partners must have information about each other, the means of which are: appearance; previous interaction experience; partner's words and deeds (can manage them by creating his own image).

7. Symbolic interactionism.

Theory of symbolic interactionism- theoretical views on the significance of symbols, gestures, facial expressions in communication.

Representatives of symbolic interactionism: J. Mead, G. Bloomer, N. Denzin, M. Kuhn, A. Rose, A. Rose, A. Strauss, T. Shibutani and others pay special attention to the problems of “symbolic communication” (communication, interaction through symbols).

The most significant work in the field of symbolic interactionism is the work of Mead George Herbert (1863-1931) "Consciousness, Personality and Society" (1934). J. Meade- American philosopher, sociologist, social psychologist, expressed the ideas of pragmatism, believed that the human "I" has a social nature and is formed in the course of social interaction.

The main positions that determine the theoretical essence of symbolic interactionism, set out by J. Mead: a) personality is a product of social interaction. In the process of interaction, facial expressions, individual movements, gestures, called “symbols” by Mead, cause certain reactions in the interlocutor. Therefore, the meaning of a symbol or significant gesture should be sought in the reaction of the person to whom this symbol is addressed. ;b) to conduct successful communication, a person must have the ability to accept the role of another (interlocutor). The role is associated with the ability to see oneself through the eyes of another; in) the accumulation of interaction experience leads to the formation of an image of a “generalized other” in a person. “Generalized other” is a concept that means the integration of the attitudes of an individual in relation to those people who see him (the individual) from the outside; G) An individual's behavior is determined mainly by three components: personality structure, role, and reference group.

The personality structure includes three components:

“I” (I) - impulsive, creative, driving principle of the personality, which is the cause of variations within the role behavior, deviations from it;

“Me” (me) is a normative “I”, a kind of internal social control based on taking into account the requirements that are significant for other people and, above all, the “generalized other” and directing the actions of the individual to achieve successful social interaction;

“Self” (self) is a combination of impulsive and normative “I”, their active interaction. Two schools are distinguished in symbolic interactionism - Chicago (G. Bloomer) and Iowa (M. Kuhn).

G. Bloomer- Representative of the Chicago School of Symbolic Interactionism. He opposed the empirical confirmation of the conclusions of D. Mead, arguing that only descriptive methods are suitable for identifying socio-psychological phenomena and personality characteristics, since the expression of the personality of its relations and states develops each time in a different way. He believed that a person is in a continuous process of change, the essence of which is a unique and continuous interaction between the impulsive "I" and the normative "I", the constant dialogue of the individual with himself, as well as the interpretation and evaluation of the situation and the behavior of other people. Due to the fact that human social attitudes are constantly changing, it is concluded that behavior can be explained, but cannot be predicted. Role behavior is a searching, dynamic and creative process (making a role).

M. Kuhn(Iowa School) - the author of the "personality self-esteem theory". He argued that behavior is determined by how the individual perceives and interprets the surrounding reality, including himself. That is, knowing the self-esteem of a person, we can predict the behavior of this person. Role behavior is interpreted as “performing”, “playing”, “accepting” a role, which excludes its creative nature.

M. Kuhn introduces the following operational definition of personality: “Operatively, the essence of personality can be defined ... as the answers that an individual gives to the question: “Who am I?”, Addressed to himself, or to the question: “Who are you?”, addressed to him by another person. The responses of the subjects to this question received in the course of the study were divided into two categories:

a) characterizing the social status and role (student, daughter, citizen);

b) related to individual characteristics (fat, unlucky, happy).

Of the answers received, the vast majority belonged to the first category, which means that role positions are more important for the individual.

8. Socio-psychological aspects of psychoanalytic interpretations of personality and group processes.

Psychoanalysis has not become as widespread in social psychology as other areas, in particular behaviorism and interactionism.

Psychoanalysis performs the function of the general theoretical basis of this trend only in part. This is most likely about the use of certain provisions of psychoanalysis in the course of socio-psychological research, which involves transferring the scheme of a person's individual development to the social context.

Psychoanalysis- a doctrine that recognizes the special role of the unconscious in the dynamics of personality development. It contains a system of ideas and methods for interpreting dreams and other unconscious mental phenomena, as well as diagnosing and treating various mental illnesses. Freudianism- a doctrine associated with the name of the Austrian psychiatrist and psychologist 3. Freud, in addition to psychoanalysis, contains a theory of personality, a system of views on the relationship between man and society, a set of ideas about the stages and stages of a person's psychosexual development.

Later, on the basis of psychoanalysis, neo-Freudianism, whose views, unlike Z. Freud, are associated with the recognition of the essential role of society in the formation of personality and with the rejection of consideration of organic needs as the only basis for social human behavior.

Examples of theories that directly use the ideas of classical psychoanalysis are the theories of L. Bayon, W. Bennis and G. Shepard, L. Schutz. They attempt to consider the processes occurring in the group, which expands the scope of the studied

Social psychology as a branch of psychology arose in the twenties of the twentieth century, although socio-psychological knowledge accumulated and formed into coherent theories over many centuries long before that.

Social psychology, although it is a branch of the science of psychology, includes not only psychological knowledge. It is located at the intersection of psychology with sociology, philosophy, pedagogy, political science and other sciences.

From sociology to social psychology is different by the fact that it studies not society, but a person in society, but from general psychology by the fact that it studies not individual mental phenomena and the personality as such, but a person in the system of social relations.

Subject of study social psychology are the patterns of behavior and activities of people, due to their involvement in social groups and the psychological characteristics of these same groups.

Communication and joint activities- these are the two forms of human involvement in the social system, which are studied and researched by various methods within the framework of social psychology.

Simplifying, we can say that social Psychology is a branch of psychology that explains exactly how a person’s thoughts, feelings and behavior are influenced by the real or perceived presence of other people nearby.

Hence the two main problematic issues social psychology:

• What is the relationship between the consciousness of the individual and the consciousness of the group?
• What are the driving forces of human social behavior?

However, social psychology studies not only the individual in a group, but also the psychology of the social groups themselves.

social group is a community of people with common goals, values, norms of behavior and interests. But in order for the group to be formed, one unifying factor, for example, a common goal, is enough.

Leadership, leadership, team cohesion, aggressiveness, conformism, adaptation, socialization, prejudices, stereotypes and many other group processes and phenomena are studied by social psychology.

Methods and branches of social psychology

Methods of socio-psychological research usually divided into two classes:

• research methods,
• influence methods.

To research methods include:

In its relatively short period of existence, social psychology has managed to turn into the most extensive and sought after branch of psychology. It featured a lot of big sub-sectors, which are applied:

• conflictology,
• ethnic psychology,
• political psychology,
• psychology of religion,
• psychology of management,
• communication psychology,
• psychology of interpersonal relationships,
• family psychology,
• mass psychology,
• social psychology of personality and a number of other sections.

area practical application social psychology and its sub-sectors is absolutely the entire system of social relations.

Development of social psychology

Social psychology began very actively develop in the post-war, 50s of the twentieth century, due to the fact that the Second World War left a lot of acute social questions unanswered. These were questions about the social nature of man, about why people behave one way or another, finding themselves under the yoke of unbearable circumstances, to which one would not want to adapt, but is necessary in order to survive.

Since the second half of the twentieth century, abroad and in the Soviet Union, often held experiments aimed at studying various socio-psychological phenomena.

We can recall a series of experiments about submission to authority American psychologist S. Milgram (1933-1984), who showed that an adult and reasonable person is ready to go to great lengths (in the experiment - to cause severe pain to another person), blindly following the instructions of an authoritative person. The subordination and conciliation of the majority of people knows no bounds.

Interestingly, S. Milgram also experimentally substantiated theory of "six handshakes". It was this psychologist who proved that any two people on Earth are separated by no more than five levels of common acquaintances, that is, each person is indirectly familiar with any other inhabitant of the Earth (whether he is a TV star or a beggar on the other side of the world) on average through five common acquaintances.

People in the literal and figurative sense are not so far from each other, as it seems, but, nevertheless, they are ready to harm their neighbor, at the very first “instruction from above”. All people are connected and close to each other. Every time, forgetting about it, humanity threatens the very fact of its existence.

V.S. Mukhina demonstrated that readiness of a person to agree with the opinion of the crowd or an authoritative statement, which sometimes comes to the ridiculous. Her experiments were repeated in 2010, but the results are still the same: people are more likely to believe what others say than their own eyes.

In the twentieth and at the beginning of our century, many other various experiments were carried out, during which they studied:

• the influence of the media on personal attitudes - K. Hovland;
• how the pressure of the group forms the same behavior among its members - S. Ash;
• learning without awareness - J. Grinspoon;
• diffusion of responsibility - B. Latane and J. Darley;
• communication as a unity of three processes (social perception, communication, interaction) - G.M. Andreeva, A.A. Bodalev, A.A. Leontiev;
• intergroup relations - V.S. Ageev, T.G. Stefanenko;
• interpersonal and intergroup conflict - A.I. Dontsov, N.V. Grishin, Yu.M. Borodkin and others;
• and so on, the list can be long.

All these numerous and interesting socio-psychological experiments formed a scientific and practical basis for understanding the social nature of man and contributed to development of society.

Unfortunately, there are negative aspect popularity of social psychology. Valuable knowledge obtained as a result of social studies is used in politics, economics and advertising, often with the aim of manipulating the consciousness of the masses with further programming of their behavior.

Today, those in power cannot do without image makers, PR managers and other specialists with psychological knowledge, and also sponsor socio-psychological research, as they know that the data obtained helps to manipulate the minds of citizens even more skillfully.

Have you ever taken part in a socio-psychological study before?

Social psychology draws information from various areas of social, psychological, general humanitarian knowledge, enriching them at the same time with its discoveries. Close are its links with psychology and sociology.

The significance of connections with psychology is due to the fact that in the late XIX - early XX century. she significantly changed the content of her subject, considering the mental as a product of the socio-historical development of man and society. No less important is the fact that in order to explain the ontogenesis (development) of mental processes, psychology began to use such social categories as "interaction", "communication", "cooperation". All this led to the peculiarities of the analysis of the relationship between the individual and the social, internal and external. Without weakening its interest in man's reflection of objective reality, psychology simultaneously considered the mental and as a regulator of social relations. She ceased to consider the social as an external factor, under the pressure of which the transformation of the inner (mental) life of a person takes place, and gave it the significance of the primary factor. And internal mental processes were considered in interaction with social factors. their psychology began to interpret as external operations, which in the process of interaction passed into the internal sphere of the individual.

Rice. 2. in

yes, they became his emotional, volitional or intellectual act.

Started in the 20s of the XX century. American psychologist Floyd Allport and Russian physiologist Vladimir Bekhterev experimental studies of the impact of the socio-psychological factor showed that in the presence of other people, especially during interaction with them, the performance of the individual changes - increases or decreases. The direct influence of one individual on another is the simplest socio-psychological phenomenon. This gives grounds to assert that psychology began to focus on the use of social factors in explaining the essence of the mental, and social psychology as an independent science began to take shape from the first attempts to explain why the activity of an individual changes in the presence of others. Modern psychology studies the general patterns of the human psyche and is a source of development for all branches of psychological science, and determines the foundations of scientific psychological research in the field of social psychology.

The relationship of social psychology with sociology arose at the beginning of the 20th century, using psychological data during the analysis of social structures and relationships. This was clearly manifested in microsociology, which pays the most attention in explaining social phenomena to the motives and meanings of behavior, interpersonal relationships. In this context, psychology and sociology, each solving its own problems, form a new discipline - social psychology. However, not everyone who was called a social psychologist had the same understanding of the essence of this science. Not infrequently, professional sociologists considered themselves social psychologists, and vice versa.

In general, sociology as a science of society, social institutions and social communities studies the laws of development and functioning of society, the nature and nature of social, group and individual values ​​and norms. Social psychology studies the specific mechanisms of their formation. If sociology explains the sources of human social activity, then social psychology explains the ways and patterns of its manifestation. Unlike sociology, it studies not objectively existing social relations between people, not social communities that arise on the basis of these relations, but how people reflect in their minds, concretize in assessments and real behavior. Exploring the specific patterns and mechanisms of the relationship between the individual and society, social psychology finds out how and why the social (society, organization, group) affects the individual; as a person, his activities affect the functioning of the social group; how the socio-psychological reality that arises in the process of such an interconnection manifests itself.

Social psychology and personality psychology have many common features, which study the patterns of formation of a person as a subject of life, the mechanisms for integrating all mental processes and properties of an individual into a systemic quality that mediates his interaction with the social environment through the process of socialization. Both sciences study the individual. The subject of personality psychology covers the structure, functional characteristics, driving forces of formation and deviations in the development of personality, and the like. In this case, attention is focused on individual internal mechanisms and differences between individuals. Social psychology, focusing on an individual or a group of people, is concerned with how society affects a person, a community, how social situations change the behavior of an individual, what causes the formation of conformal or independent, aggressive or altruistic individuals, which determines mass behavior and group dynamics phenomena.

Relevant is the connection of social psychology with speleology (Greek act - the highest degree, peak, highest point, the best time in human development) - a branch of psychological science that studies the patterns and mechanisms of human development at the stage of maturity, reaching a high level. Since unprofessionalism gives rise to psychological discomfort, uncertainty, confusion, apathy, a state of frustration (deceit, vain expectation) and the like, great importance is attached to mastering the secrets of mastery, the formation of psychological readiness to carry out activities effectively and efficiently, seeing the paths that lead to professionalism. An important problem of acmeology is the formation of general principles for improving the professional activities and communication of specialists. It is in the aspect of professionalism of communication and interaction that the direct exit of social psychology to acmeology is seen, because the problem of socio-psychological reflection is directly related to the problem of the psychology of communication, and professional interaction is inseparable from communication.

Traditionally, acmeology considers the patterns and mechanisms of human development at the stage of its maturity. However, the development of the skills and abilities of socio-psychological reflection, including communicative ones, the acquisition of social and moral experience, which are integral attributes of mastery and professionalism, are laid down in childhood. So, a mature person is not born, the state of maturity is influenced by all previous stages of its development. Therefore, acmeology considers the development of the individual in the preschool and school periods. To a large extent, this predetermines the connection between social psychology and developmental psychology, which studies the specific properties of the individual, his psyche in the process of changing age stages of development. Of particular scientific interest is the problem of the early formation of the professional foundations of a person's life, which ensures its stability in extreme conditions.

The intensification of international economic and cultural relations actualizes the interaction of social psychology with ethnopsychology. The professionalism of modern communicative activity implies that specialists have the knowledge and skills of business international negotiations, informal communication with representatives of different nationalities. For social psychology and ethnopsychology, which studies the ethnic characteristics of the psyche of people, national character, patterns of formation and functioning of national identity, ethnic stereotypes, it is especially valuable to find ways to regulate business communication both within an ethnic group and at the international level.

Effective is the interaction of social psychology with the psychology of management, which produces psychological knowledge about management activities. We are talking about the study of socio-psychological factors of managerial activity and career, socio-psychological counseling on problems of managerial development, socio-psychological mechanisms of managerial adaptation, socio-psychological mechanisms of professional managerial deformation and regressive personal development. An important problem is the communicative training of the leader as one of the most important factors in the effectiveness of his work.

Social psychology is also connected with other branches of psychological science (pedagogical psychology, cultural psychology, political psychology, legal psychology), as well as with pedagogy, philosophy, history, and economics.

Most researchers in the field of social psychology note the "specific place" that social psychology occupies in the system of scientific knowledge. The origins of socio-psychological knowledge are found in the works of ancient philosophers, this knowledge concerned issues related to the position of a person in society, the impact and management of people, and so on. We can say that already in those days, the conditionality of socio-psychological knowledge by the demands of society was traced. To date, this conditioning has increased, and scientists state that the needs of the practice of social development dictate the need for research, especially when it comes to borderline problems at the intersection of psychology and sociology.

Today, scientists state the boundary position of social psychology between psychology and sociology. The history of the formation of this discipline testifies to its maturation in the bowels of both psychological and sociological knowledge. Moreover, each of the "parent" disciplines today includes it as an integral part. The main reason for this inclusion, G. M. Andreeva considers the existence of a class of facts of social life, which in themselves can be investigated only with the help of the combined efforts of two sciences: psychology and sociology. For example, manifestations of social relations through the activities of people endowed with consciousness and will; or in situations of joint activity, when there are special types of communication and interaction links.

Considering the question of the "boundaries" of social psychology with "parental" disciplines, G. M. Andreeva identifies several positions.

• 1. Social psychology is a part of sociology.
• 2. Social psychology is a part of psychology.
• 3. Social psychology is a science "at the junction" of psychology and sociology, and the "junction" itself is understood in two ways:
  • a) social psychology rejects a certain part of psychology and a certain part of sociology;
  • b) it captures "no man's land" - an area that does not belong to either sociology or psychology.

These positions, according to the classification of American social psychologists J. McDavid and G. Harari, can be reduced to two approaches: ingradisciplinary and interdisciplinary, i.e. the place of social psychology is either within one of the "parent" disciplines, or on the borders between them (Fig. 1.1, 1.2).

Regarding the "border" between sociology and social psychology, it is worth pointing out the commonality of interests, firstly, at the level of the general theory of sociology, where the problems of the relationship between society and the individual, public consciousness and social institutions, power and justice, etc. are studied. Secondly, in the field of special sociological theories, for example, the sociology of mass communications, public opinion, the sociology of personality. Thus, the border or the greatest number of points of intersection between sociology and social psychology lies in the field of study of large social groups (Fig. 1.2). As G. M. Andreeva notes, it is in this area that distinctions are especially difficult and the very concept of "border" is very arbitrary.

Rice. 1.1.Options for defining the "boundary" of social psychology with sociology and psychology

Rice. 1.2.

According to D. Myers, people often confuse social psychology with sociology, since both sciences have common interests in studying human behavior in groups. The difference is that sociologists study groups (from small to very large - societies), and social psychologists study individuals (what a person thinks about others, how they influence him, how he treats them).

Thinking on our own

As an example, D. Myers considers marital relationships: "... a sociologist would focus his attention on trends in marriages, divorces, degrees of compatibility, while a psychologist could explore why certain individuals attract each other" .

The specifics of socio-psychological research include the study of the influence of a group on individuals, and an individual on a group. In addition, one of the methods of research in social psychology is an experiment, which involves some manipulation of one or another factor (for example, the presence or absence of peer pressure) in order to see what result this will lead to. The factors sociologists explore (such as economic class) are usually difficult or unethical to manipulate.

Regarding the "border" between general psychology and social psychology, the question is even more complicated. This is partly due to the fact that many domestic scientists adhere to the point of view that social psychology is the result of the development of a certain side of general psychology, in which the results of people's communication with each other are recorded. At the same time, the similarities between the phenomena of general and social psychology are noted in their social conditioning and general historical determinism. The difference in the social conditioning of socio-psychological phenomena is noted in their more specific, more complex nature, since "... they depend on the microenvironment, on direct contact between people, and they are significantly influenced by the microenvironment (all elements of the structure of society)" .

At the same time, the connection between social psychology and general psychology is two-way. Here, not only general psychological laws and phenomena are reflected in socio-psychological processes, but also socio-psychological phenomena and laws deepen our knowledge of general psychological processes. Individual features of mental processes (cognitive, emotional, volitional) and properties (temperament, character) are most fully and adequately revealed only in conditions of group, collective activity. These shifts and changes in mental processes and properties in the conditions of group activity have been experimentally proven in the works of V. M. Bekhterev, F. D. Gorbov, V. Mede, F. Allport and others. Thus, the phenomena and laws of social psychology are, as it were, necessary completion of the system of psychological science.

According to the research of G. M. Andreeva, the specific problems of social psychology are closest to that part of general psychology, which is designated as personality psychology. At the same time, in general psychology, the personality is studied outside of its social determination, and only social psychology studies this determination. The traditions of the Russian school of psychology indicate that from the very beginning the personality is regarded as "given" by society. A. N. Leontiev in his work notes that the activity of specific individuals can proceed in two forms: in conditions of open collectivity or face to face with the surrounding objective world. But "however, no matter what conditions and forms human activity takes place, no matter what structure it acquires, it cannot be considered as withdrawn from social relations, the life of society" . From this point of view, in general psychology, the structure of the needs, motives of the individual, etc., is studied, and in social psychology, it turns out how exactly the individual acts in various real social groups; why exactly these, and not other motives, needs, attitudes were formed in this person; to what extent all this depends on the group in which this person acts, and so on.

In the works of foreign scientists, the problem of similarities and differences in positions on the issue of studying the individual in social psychology and personality psychology is also in the center of attention. The difference between them lies in the social nature of social psychology.

Thinking on our own

Personality psychologists focus on individual internal mechanisms and differences between individuals, such as why some individuals are more aggressive than others. Social psychologists focus on the general mass of people, on how people in general evaluate each other and influence each other. For example, how social situations can cause most people to act humanely or cruelly, to be conformable or independent, to feel sympathy or prejudice.

Domestic scientists V. V. Petukhov and V. V. Stolits determine the place of social psychology in the system of psychological sciences as follows. Considering the psyche as a system for managing human behavior, they offer a scheme of "3 subjects" (Fig. 1.3).

Rice. 1.3. Scheme "3 subjects" V. V. Petukhov - V. V. Stolin

The first "subject" is the Organism (Fig. 1.3) - a subsystem responsible for managing the behavior associated with providing the organism. The section of psychology that studies it is called psychosomatics from lat. soma- body. Psychosomatics- a branch of psychology that studies the influence of psychological factors on health and health on the psyche.

The second "subject" - the Social Individual - is a subsystem for managing social behavior, i.e. interaction with other people, se studies social psychology.

The third "subject" - Personality - a subsystem responsible for individual development, self-realization, this part of the psyche includes what is unique in a person, peculiar only to him, which is studied by personality psychology, the psychology of personality differences, differential psychology