Differences between everyday and scientific psychology. The use of worldly psychology, art, irrational psychology in the curriculum

In everyday life, we often use the words "psychology", "psychologist", "psychological", not always thinking about their meaning. "This person is a good psychologist," we say about someone who knows how to establish and maintain contacts with people. “He has such a psychology,” we explain the interests, inclinations and actions of a person or characterize the features of his personality. Sometimes you can hear a phrase like "Well, he's crazy!", Meaning the emotional characteristics of another person as inferior or sick.

Psychological knowledge accumulated and used by man in Everyday life, are called worldly psychology. They are usually specific and are formed in a person in the course of his life as a result of observations, self-observations and reflections.

Reliability worldly psychology checked on personal experience. A person applies this knowledge in interaction with other people. The need to coordinate one’s actions with the actions of another, to understand not only the words, but also the context of the statement, to “read” in the behavior and appearance of another person’s intentions and moods, prompts one to single out and fix the multifaceted manifestations of inner life.

A person tries to explain this or that act of another by the peculiarities of his inner world. To do this, different actions of another person are compared and conclusions are drawn about the typical properties of his soul. Thus, everyday psychology moves from observation and an attempt to explain a specific act to a generalized understanding of a person. The desire to better understand the inner world of people encourages you to compare their actions with each other and come to general conclusions. In essence, everyday psychology is a generalization of everyday psychological knowledge.

Of course, people differ in terms of psychological vigilance and worldly wisdom. Some are very perceptive, capable of easily capturing the mood, intentions or character traits of a person through the expression of the eyes, face, gestures, posture, movements, habits. Others do not have such abilities, are less sensitive to understanding the behavior, the internal state of another person. And life experience turns out not so far an important factor. Noticed that no strong dependence between psychological insight and a person’s age: there are children who are well versed in the psychological qualities of other people, and there are adults who do not understand well internal states of people .

The source of everyday psychology is not only a person's own experience, but also the people with whom he directly comes into contact. The content of worldly psychology embodied in folk rituals, traditions, beliefs, proverbs and sayings, aphorisms folk wisdom, fairy tales and songs. This knowledge is passed from mouth to mouth, recorded, reflecting centuries of everyday experience. Many proverbs and sayings have a direct or indirect psychological content: "There are devils in the still waters", "It lays softly, but it's hard to sleep", "A frightened crow and a bush is afraid", "Praise, honor and glory and a fool loves", "Seven times measure - cut once", "Repetition is the mother of learning".

Rich psychological experience is accumulated in fairy tales. In many of them, the same heroes act: Ivan the Fool, Vasilisa the Beautiful, Baba Yaga, Kashchei the Immortal - in fairy tales; Bear, Wolf, Fox, Hare - in fairy tales about animals. Fairy tale characters often characterize certain psychological types and characters of people encountered in life.

Many worldly observations collected by writers and reflected in works of art or in the genre of moral aphorisms. Widely known are the collections of aphorisms that M. Montaigne, F. La Rochefoucauld, J. La Bruyère compiled in their time.

Historical digression

Michel de Montaigne(1533-1592) - French writer, politician, philosopher. Among the most famous works- book of essays "Experiences" (1580-1588). He lived in difficult times - St. Bartholomew's night, plague, religious wars. However, his philosophy is alive, real, clear and life-affirming.

François de La Rochefoucauld(1613-1680) - French writer and moralist. In an aphoristic form, he outlined philosophical observations on the nature of the human character. La Rochefoucauld wanted to help a person "know himself" and believed greatest feat friendship to open a friend's eyes to his own shortcomings.

Jean de La Bruyère(1645-1696) French moralist. In 1688, the first edition of the book "Characters, or Morals of the Present Age" was published. During the life of the author, it was officially reprinted nine times (1889 - the first Russian translation).

Task for reflection

Explain in your own words what kind of psychological wisdom the following aphorisms of Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère express. Give examples of everyday observations or situations in which these aphorisms are confirmed.

• Cm.: Slobodchikov V.I., Isaev E.I. Fundamentals of Psychological Anthropology // Human Psychology: An Introduction to the Psychology of Subjectivity: textbook, manual for universities. M. : PI Cola-Press, 1995. S. 39.

Psychological knowledge and their types

The first chapter characterizes the sphere of psychological knowledge as a whole, shows their specificity in everyday, scientific, practical psychology, as well as the features of psychological knowledge contained in works of art and in various types irrational psychology.

The world of psychological knowledge

Psychology is the knowledge of the mind inner world people about psychological reasons explaining their behaviour. Under the mental phenomena understand the facts of internal subjective experience. These facts include various manifestations of the spiritual (mental) life of a person:

• cognitive mental processes (sensations, perception, representation, imagination, thinking, speech, memorization, preservation, reproduction);
• emotional phenomena (anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise, anxiety, stress, sympathy, antipathy, love, friendship, hatred);
• Various parties regulation of activity (needs and motivation, attention);
• mental states(inspiration, stress, fatigue, adaptation);
• mental properties of a person (temperament, character, abilities, self-awareness, a person's ideas about himself, his self-esteem and self-respect, the level of claims, a number of other personal characteristics);
• mental phenomena characterizing interpersonal relations of a person (interpersonal perception, sympathy, antipathy, compatibility, conflicts, friendship, love, suggestibility, leadership, psychological climate).

Mental phenomena are conscious and unconscious. Psychological knowledge as knowledge about the spiritual world of a person can have different sources. Five basic types of psychological knowledge differ in methods of obtaining, construction features, ways of expression and justification, as well as criteria of truth:

1. life psychology,
2. scientific psychology,
3. practical psychology,
4. art,
5. irrational psychology.

Everyday psychology

The psychological knowledge accumulated and used by a person in everyday life is called ʼʼeveryday psychologyʼʼ. Οʜᴎ are usually specific and are formed in a person in the course of his life as a result of observations, self-observations and reflections.

The reliability of everyday psychology is tested on personal experience and the experience of people with whom a person is in direct contact. This knowledge is passed from mouth to mouth and recorded, reflecting centuries of everyday experience. Rich psychological experience is accumulated in fairy tales. Many everyday observations are collected by writers and reflected in works of art or in the genre of moral aphorisms. Everyday observations prominent people, by virtue of their wisdom and ability to generalize, are also of great value.

The main criterion for the truth of the knowledge of everyday psychology is their plausibility and obvious usefulness in everyday life situations.

The peculiarities of this knowledge are concreteness and practicality. Fragmentation is characteristic of everyday psychological knowledge. Such knowledge is intuitive.

Οʜᴎ are characterized by the availability of presentation and clarity. In knowledge of this type, the inaccuracy of the concepts used is manifested. Knowledge of everyday psychology is characterized by reliance on life experience and common sense.

Everyday psychology - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Everyday psychology" 2017, 2018.

Professor V.V. Petukhov on scientific and everyday psychology.
download video

Everyday psychology is always concrete and down to earth, this is its strength and weakness.
download video

The main difference between everyday and scientific psychology lies in the quality and nature of knowledge. Everyday knowledge and experience is usually more specific, intuitive and often of a low cultural level: based on spontaneous observations, random reflections, often negative and irresponsible, highly susceptible to fashion, moods, fears and rumors, largely irrational. Scientific psychological knowledge is thought out, generalized, rational, substantiated by professional observation and organized experiment.

Everyday psychological knowledge is concrete; they are timed to specific situations, specific people, specific tasks.

Waiters and taxi drivers, as a rule, are good worldly psychologists, but, as a rule, only within the framework of their profession.

Children are professors of psychology, he is alone with his mother, another with his father, and a third with his grandmother: in each case, the child knows well how to behave in order to achieve the desired goal. But outside of their families, children tend to be naive and helpless. Their knowledge doesn't spread that far.

Scientific psychology, like any science, strives for generalizations. It sets such tasks for itself and moves towards these tasks, albeit gradually.

Everyday psychological knowledge is intuitive. As a rule, they are acquired through practical trials and adjustments, and this path does not require rational thinking.

For example, children gain their experience through the daily and even hourly tests they put adults through. Experience is the richest, everyone has it, but few can express it verbally.

Scientific psychological knowledge is thought out, rational, fully conscious.

The cultural level of scientific knowledge and scientific concepts is usually higher. Everyday psychological knowledge is based on spontaneous observations, random reflections, often negative and irresponsible, highly subject to fashion, moods, fears and rumors, largely irrational and often no different from superstition.

Lovers of the tabloids rarely wonder what certain judgments are based on. For example,

• The ad uses the “25 frame effect”^
• Controlling your emotions is bad
• "All you need is love!" and so on -

Such judgments are presented confidently and ostensibly convincingly. The brightness and novelty of the judgment, the proximity to the usual points of view often turn out to be more important circumstances than the facts confirming or refuting the judgments.

Is scientific knowledge subject to fashion, rumors, fears and moods? In the field of exact sciences - in small degree, in the field of psychology - unfortunately, yes. The unofficial ban on the word "formation", which has developed in psychology in recent decades, hardly has any objective, scientific grounds. Nevertheless, in the field of psychology, scientific judgments are more justified than worldly concepts, and with the development of psychological culture, they gradually approach the high standards of science more and more.

Common beliefs in the psychological community that do not have a serious evidence base:

• A family curse can be removed by sincerely asking for forgiveness from the deceased.
• Without maternal love a complete personality cannot be formed.
• A loss loved one This is a severe psychotrauma.
• The consequences of childhood psychotraumas make themselves felt throughout the rest of life^
• Behavioral therapy is less effective than depth therapy^.

Negativity and irresponsibility - certainty, responsibility

Considering that the cultural level of the population is low and is more at the level of a human child, the main features of the beliefs of everyday psychology are negativism and irresponsibility. Typical samples of negative and irresponsible beliefs of worldly psychology:

• How New Year you spend, so the year will turn out!
• Monday is a tough day.
• Morning is not good.
• Everyone thinks only of himself^.
• Coaching doesn't help anyone.
• All diseases are from nerves.

Psychologists working in a science-oriented tradition tend to be more specific and responsible in their formulations.

Everyday knowledge is tested personal experience, scientifically substantiated by professional observation and organized experiment.

essence experimental method consists in the fact that the researcher does not wait for a confluence of circumstances, as a result of which the phenomenon of interest to him arises, but causes this phenomenon himself, creating the appropriate conditions. Then he purposefully varies these conditions in order to reveal the patterns that this phenomenon obeys.

Scientific knowledge is consciously systematized and accumulated.

The position of a scientific psychologist in relation to worldly psychology

What should be the position of a scientific psychologist in relation to the carriers of worldly psychology? The development of science is reminiscent of moving through a complex labyrinth with many dead-end passages. To choose the right way, you need to have, as they often say, good intuition, and it arises only with close contact with life. It is necessary to respond sensitively to the demands coming from life, and strive to ensure that scientific developments enter into life, improve the psychological culture of people, and form a healthier and more positive worldly psychology. A scientific psychologist must be at the same time a good worldly psychologist, or, to be more precise, a practical psychologist.

Source:
Everyday and scientific psychology
Psychologos Encyclopedia of Practical Psychology
http://www.psychologos.ru/articles/view/zhiteyskaya_i_nauchnaya_psihologiya

Everyday psychology

Everyday psychology is the giants on which we, the pygmies, stand. These are aphorisms, proverbs, sayings, customs and rituals. In addition, each of us intuitively owns everyday psychology. We draw conclusions intuitively, according to observations, reflections and our own experience, this is an example of everyday psychology.

Everyday psychology is always practical and is determined by the events and conditions in which this or that “wisdom” was developed. You probably noticed that proverbs and folk predictions often contradict each other, but everyday psychology is not embarrassed, in it, frankly, there is very little logic. Practical and everyday psychology are closely related, if everyday psychology always refers to practical psychology, then the latter is by no means 100% composed of everyday psychology.

Scientific psychology exists on the basis of the goal of generalizing everything and deriving a rule applicable to all. It is based on logic and is based on experiments. Unlike everyday, in scientific psychology the details surrounding the event do not play a role: here all the rules exist regardless of the circumstances.

In scientific psychology, everything is natural and consists of axioms.
Knowledge obtained by experimental methods is accumulated, and new knowledge flows out and expands its predecessors.

Every psychologist here

Given the fact that main method worldly psychology is the transfer of one's own experience, the main feature of this direction will be the abundance of specialists who are always ready to help. Everyone has their own past and their own knowledge of life, and each of us is an expert own life. As a result, in everyday psychology everyone is a pro, but “100% advice” is not always effective in our hands. The reason is simple - worldly psychology is situational.

We will not evaluate these two methods of cognition and transfer of knowledge. All of them are good and useful in their own way, and in a difficult moment, as usual, there is no "everyday" or "scientific" psychologist nearby.

Source:
Everyday psychology
Today, the introduction of psychology into our everyday life is becoming very popular: we attend psychological trainings, turn to a psychologist for support, and we ourselves become home
http://kak-bog.ru/zhiteyskaya-psihologiya

Everyday psychology

Knowledge of the laws of life is incomparably more important than many other knowledge, and knowledge that leads us directly to self-improvement is knowledge of the highest importance.

It should also be said that worldly psychology has much in common with practical psychology. Everyday psychology is always related to practical psychology, but practical psychology does not entirely consist of worldly psychology. It's all about the concreteness of everyday psychology, because of which it is not applicable to all situations. And practical psychology relies heavily on scientific experiments that are as universal as possible.

We can always test our worldly knowledge with personal experience, and this experience is in fact priceless. I noticed a long time ago, even after I studied psychology, that much in life can be understood only through our own experience, that much of what we are taught does not have a complete resemblance to real life. At this point, everyday and scientific and practical psychology, and indeed any science, is tested by life. Of course, we can organize experiments, we can carry out professional observations that will give us a lot of useful information explaining certain regularities of this world. And still, in the process of life, we will constantly be amazed at new combinations of certain patterns that make our life unpredictable. Therefore, I believe that each of us should value and increase our experience, which in essence is life-tested knowledge.

One should not expect one hundred percent accuracy from everyday psychology, because no matter how much wisdom it carries in itself, it is not applicable to all life situations. In general, scientific psychology is not as accurate and universal as we would like. Therefore, in any science, one must rely not only on other people's knowledge, and not even always on one's own knowledge, but also on intuition, as real scientists do. And in life, we all often have to be a little scientists, because sometimes life sets such tasks for us that no knowledge from textbooks and no experience of our ancestors will help us to solve them. This is the beauty of life - it is mysterious and unpredictable, which, although it scares us a little, makes our life damn interesting.

Source:
Everyday psychology
Knowledge of the laws of life is incomparably more important than many other knowledge, and knowledge that leads us directly to self-improvement is knowledge of the highest importance. It is also worth saying that the worldly
http://psichel.ru/zhitejskaya-psihologiya/

Everyday psychology

Any science has as its basis some worldly, empirical experience of people. For example, physics relies on the knowledge we acquire in everyday life about the movement and fall of bodies, about friction and energy, about light, sound, heat, and much more. Mathematics also proceeds from ideas about numbers, shapes, quantitative ratios, which begin to form already in preschool age.

But it is different with psychology. Each of us has a store of worldly psychological knowledge. There are even outstanding worldly psychologists. These are, of course, great writers, as well as some (though not all) representatives of professions that involve constant communication with people: teachers, doctors, clergy, etc. But, I repeat, and a common person possesses certain psychological knowledge. This can be judged by the fact that each person to some extent can understand the other, influence his behavior, predict his actions, take into account his individual characteristics, help him, etc.

Let's think about the question: what is the difference between everyday psychological knowledge and scientific knowledge? I will give you five such differences.
First: worldly psychological knowledge, concrete; they are timed to specific situations, specific people, specific tasks. They say waiters and taxi drivers do too good psychologists.

But in what sense, for what tasks? As we know, often quite pragmatic. Also, the child solves specific pragmatic tasks by behaving in one way with his mother, in another way with his father, and again in a completely different way with his grandmother. In each case, he knows exactly how to behave in order to achieve the desired goal. But we can hardly expect from him the same insight in relation to other people's grandmothers or mothers. So, everyday psychological knowledge is characterized by concreteness, limitedness of tasks, situations and persons to which they apply.

Scientific psychology, like any science, strives for generalizations. To do this, she uses scientific concepts. Concept development is one of essential functions Sciences. Scientific concepts reflect the most essential properties of objects and phenomena, general connections and ratios. Scientific concepts clearly defined, correlated with each other, linked into laws.

For example, in physics, thanks to the introduction of the concept of force, I. Newton managed to describe, using the three laws of mechanics, thousands of different specific cases of motion and mechanical interaction of bodies. The same thing happens in psychology. You can describe a person for a very long time, listing in everyday terms his qualities, character traits, actions, relationships with other people.

Scientific psychology, on the other hand, seeks and finds such generalizing concepts that not only economize descriptions, but also allow one to see the general tendencies and patterns of personality development and its individual characteristics behind a conglomerate of particulars. One feature of scientific psychological concepts: they often coincide with worldly in their external form, i.e., simply speaking, are expressed in the same words. However, the inner content, the meanings of these words, as a rule, are different. Everyday terms are usually more vague and ambiguous.

Once, high school students were asked to answer the question in writing: what is a personality? The answers turned out to be very different, and one student answered: “This is something that should be checked against the documents.” I will not now talk about how the concept of "personality" is defined in scientific psychology - this is a complex issue, and we will deal with it specifically later, in one of the last lectures. I will only say that this definition is very different from the one proposed by the aforementioned schoolboy.

Second difference worldly psychological knowledge lies in the fact that they are intuitive. It's connected with in a special way obtaining them: they are acquired by practical trials and adjustments. This is especially true in children. I have already mentioned their good psychological intuition. And how is it achieved? Through daily and even hourly trials to which they subject adults and which the latter are not always aware of. And in the course of these tests, the children discover from whom they can “twist ropes” and from whom they cannot.

Often educators and coaches find effective ways education, training, training, going the same way: experimenting and vigilantly noticing the slightest positive results, i.e., in a certain sense, "groping". Often they turn to psychologists with a request to explain psychological meaning methods they have found.
In contrast, scientific psychological knowledge is rational and fully conscious. The usual way is to put forward verbally formulated hypotheses and test the consequences logically arising from them.

Third difference consists in the ways of transferring knowledge and even in the very possibility of transferring it. In the field of practical psychology, this possibility is very limited. This follows directly from the two previous features of worldly psychological experience - its concrete and intuitive character.

The deep psychologist F. M. Dostoevsky expressed his intuition in the works he wrote, we read them all - did we become equally insightful psychologists after that?
Is life experience passed on from the older generation to the younger? As a rule, with great difficulty and to a very small extent. The eternal problem of “fathers and sons” is precisely that children cannot and do not even want to adopt the experience of their fathers. To every new generation, to every young man you have to “stuff your bumps” yourself to gain this experience.

At the same time, in science, knowledge is accumulated and transferred with a high, so to speak, efficiency. Someone long ago compared representatives of science with pygmies who stand on the shoulders of giants - outstanding scientists of the past. They may be much smaller, but they see farther than the giants, because they stand on their shoulders. The accumulation and transfer of scientific knowledge is possible due to the fact that this knowledge is crystallized in concepts and laws. They are recorded in the scientific literature and transmitted using verbal means, i.e., speech and language, which, in fact, we have begun to do today.

Quadruple Difference consists in methods of obtaining knowledge in the fields of everyday and scientific psychology. In worldly psychology, we are forced to confine ourselves to observations and reflections. In scientific psychology, experiment is added to these methods. The essence of the experimental method is that the researcher does not wait for a confluence of circumstances, as a result of which a phenomenon of interest arises, but causes this phenomenon himself, creating the appropriate conditions.

Then he purposefully varies these conditions in order to reveal the patterns that this phenomenon obeys. With the introduction of the experimental method into psychology (the discovery of the first experimental laboratory at the end of the last century), psychology, as I have already said, took shape as an independent science.

Finally, fifth distinction, and at the same time, the advantage of scientific psychology lies in the fact that it has at its disposal extensive, varied and sometimes unique factual material, inaccessible in its entirety to any bearer of everyday psychology. This material is accumulated and comprehended, including in special industries. psychological science such as developmental psychology, educational psychology, patho- and neuropsychology, work psychology and engineering psychology, social Psychology, zoopsychology, etc.

In these areas, dealing with various stages and levels mental development animals and humans, with defects and diseases of the psyche, with unusual working conditions - conditions of stress, information overload or, conversely, monotony and information hunger, etc. - the psychologist not only expands the range of his research tasks, but also encounters new unexpected phenomena. After all, consideration of the work of any mechanism in the conditions of development, breakdown or functional overload from different angles highlights its structure and organization.

I will bring short example. Of course, you know that in Zagorsk we have a special boarding school for deaf-blind-mute children. These are children who have no hearing, no vision, no sight, and of course, initially no speech. The main "channel" through which they can make contact with the outside world is touch.

And through this extremely narrow channel, in conditions of special education, they begin to learn about the world, people and themselves! This process, especially at the beginning, goes very slowly, it unfolds in time and in many details can be seen as if through a “time lens” (the term used to describe this phenomenon by well-known Soviet scientists A.I. Meshcheryakov and E.V. Ilyenkov).

Obviously, in the case of the development of normal healthy child much passes too quickly, spontaneously and unnoticed. Thus, help to children in the conditions of a cruel experiment that nature has put on them, help organized by psychologists together with teachers-defectologists, turns simultaneously into essential tool knowledge of general psychological patterns- development of perception, thinking, personality.

So, summarizing, we can say that the development of special branches of psychology is a Method (method with a capital letter) general psychology. Of course, worldly psychology lacks such a method.

Now that we have become convinced of a number of advantages of scientific psychology over everyday psychology, it is appropriate to raise the question: what position should scientific psychologists take in relation to the bearers of everyday psychology? Suppose you graduated from the university, became educated psychologists. Imagine yourself in this state. Now imagine some sage next to you, not necessarily living today, some ancient Greek philosopher, For example.

This sage is the bearer of centuries-old reflections of people about the fate of mankind, about the nature of man, his problems, his happiness. You are a carrier scientific experience, qualitatively different, as we have just seen. So what position should you take in relation to the knowledge and experience of the sage? This question is not idle, sooner or later it will inevitably arise before each of you: how should these two kinds of experience be related in your head, in your soul, in your activity?

I would like to warn you about one erroneous position, which, however, is often taken by psychologists with great scientific experience. “Problems of human life,” they say, “no, I don’t deal with them. I am a scientific psychologist. I understand neurons, reflexes, mental processes, and not in the "throes of creativity."

Does this position have any basis? Now we can already answer this question: yes, it does. These certain grounds consist in the fact that the mentioned scientific psychologist was compelled in the process of his education to take a step into the world of abstract general concepts, he was forced, together with scientific psychology, figuratively speaking, to drive life in vitro * "disassemble" mental life"into parts".

But these necessary actions made too much impression on him. He forgot the purpose for which these necessary steps were taken, what path was envisaged further. He forgot or did not take the trouble to realize that the great scientists - his predecessors introduced new concepts and theories, highlighting the essential aspects real life, suggesting then to return to its analysis with new means.

The history of science, including psychology, knows many examples of how a scientist saw the big and vital in the small and abstract. When I. V. Pavlov first registered the conditioned reflex separation of saliva in a dog, he declared that through these drops we would eventually penetrate into the pangs of human consciousness. The outstanding Soviet psychologist L. S. Vygotsky saw in “curious” actions such as tying a knot as a memento as a way for a person to master his behavior.

On how to see a reflection in small facts general principles and how to move from general principles to real life problems, you will not read anywhere. You can develop these abilities in yourself by absorbing the best examples contained in the scientific literature. Only constant attention to such transitions, constant exercise in them can give you a sense of the "pulse of life" in scientific studies. Well, for this, of course, it is absolutely necessary to have worldly psychological knowledge, perhaps more extensive and deep.

Respect and attention to worldly experience, its knowledge will warn you against another danger. The fact is that, as you know, in science it is impossible to answer one question without ten new ones. But new questions are different: "bad" and correct. And it is not just words. In science, there have been and still are, of course, whole areas that have come to a standstill. However, before they finally ceased to exist, they worked idle for some time, answering "bad" questions that gave rise to dozens of other bad questions.

The development of science is reminiscent of moving through a complex labyrinth with many dead-end passages. To choose the right path, one must have, as is often said, good intuition, and it arises only through close contact with life. Ultimately, my idea is simple: a scientific psychologist must be at the same time a good worldly psychologist. Otherwise, he will not only be of little use to science, but will not find himself in his profession, simply speaking, he will be unhappy. I would like to save you from this fate.

One professor said that if his students mastered one or two main ideas in the entire course, he would consider his task completed. My desire is less modest: I would like you to learn one idea already in this one lecture. This thought is as follows: the relationship between scientific and worldly psychology is similar to the relationship between Antaeus and the Earth; the first, touching the second, draws its strength from it.

So, scientific psychology, firstly, is based on everyday psychological experience; secondly, it extracts its tasks from it; finally, thirdly, last step they are checked.

excerpts from the book Gippenreiter Yu.B. "Introduction to General Psychology"

Whether we realize it or not, we encounter mental phenomena every day: we observe our own mood swings, we see how the character of our children changes as they grow up, we understand when the leader is not in the spirit. It would seem that we do not need special knowledge for this. Moreover, worldly psychology is certainly an older field. Even before the advent of psychology as a science, knowledge was fixed in the form of archetypes, fixed in proverbs and sayings.

Psychology as a science and everyday practice common goal: learn to understand mental phenomena and manage them. So what is the difference between them?

Here are five differences that were formulated by the Russian psychologist Yulia Borisovna Gippenreiter.

1. Everyday psychological knowledge is specific, scientific psychology deduces patterns.

Numerous television programs (“Let's get married”, “Let them talk”, “Male and female”, “About love”) are built according to the same scenario. The details of the problem are discussed, experts and viewers empathize with the hero, express opinions and advice. But are they resolved in this way? psychological problems? No. Most often, as a result of the discussion, there is a feeling of coincidence with the life experience of the invited experts. The viewer experiences an emotion, but does not solve his problem. The same thing happens if a girlfriend or neighbor acts as a "psychologist".

Situation

A young mother complains to her peer, a housemate, about her four-year-old son: he completely stopped obeying, scatters and breaks toys.

Everyday psychology

“You don’t leave it like that,” the neighbor gives universal advice. - Tell your husband to be stricter with him! Now ours has become like silk - so afraid of his father.

Scientific psychology

A professional psychologist will not give advice. First of all, he will try to find out what caused this behavior of the child. Maybe the scenes of aggression that he saw on TV? (The scientific basis for this assumption is Albert Bandura's theory of social learning.) Or the lack of due attention from parents? (Psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud.) Or maybe the irritability of the mother or father on the weekends? ("Sunday neurosis" or the manifestation of an existential crisis due to the lack of meaning in life according to Viktor Frankl.)

Having found out the reason, the psychologist will work with it, adequately choosing the method of correction.

2. Everyday psychology is based on the experience of everyday life, scientific - on experimental methods.

In everyday life, we are forced to limit ourselves to observation and reflection: “Why did this happen to me?” The scientific path consists in the "experiment - theory - practice" scheme and is based on scientific methods Key words: analysis and synthesis, experiment, projective methods.

Situation

A young ambitious leader suddenly faced with a situation: he cannot stand the gaze of his subordinate, who is twice his age and enjoys special authority among colleagues. He will probably formulate his problem as follows: “What should I do in order not to blush at the meeting and not lower my eyes, like a schoolboy?”

Everyday psychology

A household answer may be: “Look not directly into the eyes, but a little higher, at the forehead area.” Even if a young person tries this method and temporarily solves the problem, such a "victory" will be imaginary.

The psychologist will solve a deeper problem, and not eliminate its "symptoms"

Scientific psychology

The psychologist will address the deeper problem, not eliminate its "symptoms". In social psychology, a number of experiments are known that describe the behavior of informal leaders in an organization: this is probably the subordinate. So, the experiments of Elton Mayo revealed that informal leadership is important for the activities of the group. And the task of the leader is not to be able to suppress when communicating, but to know the resources of his team and direct them as efficiently as possible to achieve organizational goals. That is what we should strive for.

3. Everyday psychological knowledge is intuitive. Scientific - rational and conscious.

The ability to unconsciously process information allows even one year old baby it is great to understand with which of the adults he can be capricious, with whom not, however, such data are not supported by either logical reasoning or evidence. This is intuition. Of course, some researchers have a well-developed intuition, but they always support their guesses with the results of experiments.

Situation

The story of a ninth-grader son drives his mother to despair: “At school, they complain about him: he studies well, but at the lessons he makes classmates laugh, disrupts classes. At home, he is quiet and attentive. I feel good about him - well, he can’t behave like that! I don’t know who to trust: myself, my son or teachers? The husband advises to write a complaint to the Department of Education, let them sort it out. But something stops me from such a step ... "

Everyday psychology

Intuitive “feel” and “something” quite correctly prevent a woman from taking a wrong step, but she does not receive an answer to her question with the help of intuition.

Scientific psychology

What is scientific explanation this situation? In social psychology, the dependence of behavior on the presence of other people has long been studied and described. American psychologist Norman Triplett late XIX century drew attention to the fact that cyclists rode faster when there were a lot of people around, and slower when the park was deserted. This was how the effect was discovered, later called social facilitation. It is he who stands behind the actions of a teenager, and reinforces his social motive "to take a certain status in the reference (reference, significant) group of peers": he fails through marks, let's try through jokes.

4. Scientific knowledge is transmitted through consolidation in terms and scientific literature. The possibilities of transferring worldly knowledge are very limited.

Is life experience passed on from the older generation to the younger? As much as we'd like to believe it, no. At the age of 30, we lament: “I should have listened to my mother,” but at 15 we are firmly convinced that “she doesn’t understand anything.” The accumulation and transfer of scientific knowledge is possible due to the fact that this knowledge is formulated and fixed in concepts, definitions and laws. The main way to transfer such knowledge is scientific literature.

Situation

Question on one of the forums: "Advise what to read in order to better understand people, find an approach to anyone."

Everyday psychology

In response, forum visitors actively recommend different literature: from the Gospel to Castaneda. The forum occupies several pages, on one of them the user offers to read a textbook on psychology. The reaction of the rest of the participants is purely negative: “fog”, “complicated terminology, absolutely useless for the average person”.

Scientific psychology

From the point of view of science, the violent protest against psychology textbooks is caused precisely by the desire to preserve one’s “I-concept” (according to Robert Burns): it triggers psychological defense mechanisms if new experience does not fit into existing ideas about himself, and helps the individual interpret the traumatic experience or deny it.

5. Scientific psychology relies on extensive factual material.

In its entirety, such material is not available to any bearer of worldly psychology, no matter how rich life he leads and how many people he communicates with.

Situation

For the first time in his life, a young specialist has been appointed to leadership position. He has to build relationships in the team, establishing a leadership position, but he does not know what to rely on.

Everyday psychology

An unprofessional scenario for resolving contradictions in a work team involves a situational recommendation, such as: “If you want to do it well, do it yourself” or “Write everything down in job descriptions.”

Scientific psychology

A psychologist, advising a client on the problem of leadership in an organization, will rely on the theories of transformational leadership by James Burns, types of leadership by Fred Fiedler, human resources by Douglas McGregor and others. Each of them is based on extensive empirical material.

***

You should not consider scientific and everyday psychology as opposing sides: they complement each other. The practice of communication and life experience serve as material for the scientific understanding of mental phenomena and vice versa. The time for abstract ideas is over: today the main task those who deal with problems human psyche not to produce another brilliant idea but to make it work.

about the author

- Head of the master's program "Leadership in the management of civil and public initiatives" Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis , business coach, coach consultant.

What is the difference between everyday psychological knowledge and scientific knowledge?

The term "PSYCHOLOGY" in translation into Russian literally means " the science of the soul”(Greek psyche - “soul” + logos - “concept”, “teaching”).

From a linguistic point of view, "soul" and "psyche" are one and the same.

Most people believe that they know psychology because they have experience with other people. So, every person in one way or another is an amateur psychologist.

Consider the relationship between scientific and everyday psychology.

Any science has as its basis some worldly, empirical experience of people. For example, physics is based on the knowledge we acquire in everyday life about the movement and fall of bodies, about friction and inertia, about light, sound, heat, and much more.

Mathematics also proceeds from ideas about numbers, shapes, quantitative ratios, which begin to form already in preschool age.

But it is different with psychology. Each of us has a store of worldly psychological knowledge. There are even outstanding worldly psychologists. These, of course, are great writers (L.N. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky, Oleg Roy, Astrid Lindgren, etc.), as well as some representatives of professions that involve constant communication with people: teachers, doctors, clergymen, etc.

But if you think about the question: what is the difference between everyday psychological knowledge and scientific knowledge?

Yu.B. Gippenreiter identified five such differences.

First: worldly psychological knowledge is concrete; they are timed to specific situations, specific people, specific tasks. They say that waiters and taxi drivers are also good psychologists. But in what sense, for what tasks? As you know, often quite pragmatic. Also, the child solves specific pragmatic tasks by behaving in one way with his mother, in another way with his father, and again in a completely different way with his grandmother. In each case, he knows exactly how to behave in order to achieve the desired goal. But one can hardly expect from him the same insight in relation to other people's grandmothers and mothers. So, everyday psychological knowledge is characterized by concreteness, limitedness of tasks, situations and persons to which they apply.

Scientific psychology, like any other science, strives to generalizations. To do this, she uses scientific concepts. Scientific concepts reflect the most essential properties of objects and phenomena, general connections and correlations. Scientific concepts are clearly defined, correlated with each other, linked into laws and allow you to see the patterns of personality development and its individual characteristics.

Second the difference between worldly psychological knowledge is that they are intuitive character. This is due to the special way they are obtained: they are acquired through practical trials and fitting.

This is especially true in children. Through daily, and in some cases hourly tests, to which they subject adults and which adults do not always guess. During these tests, children discover who can be “twisted with ropes” and who cannot.

Often, teachers find effective ways of educating and teaching, following the same path: experimenting and vigilantly noticing the slightest positive results, i.e. in a certain sense "by touch".

In contrast, scientific psychological knowledge is rational and fully conscious. The usual way is to put forward verbally formulated hypotheses and test the consequences logically arising from them.

Third the difference lies in the methods of transferring knowledge and even in the very possibility of transferring it.

Is life experience passed on from the older generation to the younger? As a rule, with great difficulty and to a very small extent. The eternal problem of “fathers and sons” is precisely that children cannot and do not even want to adopt the experience of their fathers. Each new generation, each young person has to "stuff his own bumps" in order to gain this experience.

At the same time, in science, knowledge is accumulated and transferred with a high, so to speak, efficiency. The accumulation and transfer of scientific knowledge is possible due to the fact that this knowledge is crystallized in concepts and laws. They are recorded in the scientific literature and transmitted through verbal means, i.e. speech and language.

Fourth the difference lies in methods obtaining knowledge in the fields of everyday and scientific psychology. In worldly psychology, we are forced to confine ourselves to observations and reflections. In scientific psychology, these methods are supplemented experiment.

The essence of the experimental method is that the researcher does not wait for a confluence of circumstances, as a result of which a phenomenon of interest arises, but causes this phenomenon himself, creating the appropriate conditions.

Fifth The difference, this, above all, the advantage of scientific psychology lies in the fact that it has at its disposal vast, diverse, unique factual material, inaccessible in its entirety to any bearer of everyday psychology. This material is accumulated and comprehended, including in special branches of psychological science, such as developmental psychology, educational psychology, neuropsychology, social psychology, special psychology, etc.

So, the relationship between scientific and worldly psychology is similar to the relationship between Antaeus and the Earth; the first, touching the second, draws its strength from it. Scientific psychology relies on everyday psychological experience, extracting its tasks from it and checking it, taking into account the laws of personality development.