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- depth — the degree of knowledge of the essence of processes and phenomena
stored in consciousness;
- strength — the degree of stability of knowledge when exposed to negative
(temporary, emotional, etc.) factors;
- effectiveness — the ability to use existing knowledge in practical activities;
- flexibility — a person’s ability to creatively use existing knowledge in differ-
ent conditions.
Provided that the indicators of the listed characteristics are sufficient, the formation of appropriate skills and abilities begins, the vital significance of which for a
person is very great. They facilitate person’s mental and physical efforts in various
types of activities, introducing into them a certain element of rationality, rhythm and
stability, creating conditions for consistent creativity.
A skill is an automated (brought to the point of automatism) action, performed
under general control and assessment of consciousness (accompanied by consciousness). In the process of its formation, three main stages are distinguished: analytical
(isolating and selecting individual elements of an action), synthetic (combining individual elements in one action) and automation (multiple repetition of an action in order to give it the necessary speed and quality, as well as relieve stress of consciousness).
The most important conditions that ensure the success of developing a skill include the number of actions performed, their pace, division in time and knowledge of
its normative indicators (qualitative, quantitative, temporal).
Ability, in contrast to a skill, is a complex mental formation that allows you to
perform complex actions under special control of consciousness. In this case, consciousness does not accompany (control and evaluate), but precedes (plans) the execution of an upcoming action.
Analysis of the essential definition of skill and ability suggests that both of
them are implemented in human activity. However, if in a skill an action is first performed, the quality of which is subsequently controlled by consciousness, then in a
skill the action is first planned with the help of consciousness, then performed and
only after that evaluated.
As in the formation of knowledge, in the process of developing skills and abilities, the phenomenon of establishing temporary connections between the nerve cells
of the cerebral cortex is used as a physiological basis. However, only those in control
of the motor activity of the human body participate in this process.
Depending on the stage of formation and level of formation, four types of skills
and abilities are distinguished, which, in accordance with the psychophysiological
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logic of their formation, can be presented in the following form: initial skills, simple
skills, complex skills and complex skills.
Initial skills represent the primary independent application of knowledge in
practical activities. This is the first step from existing knowledge to practical human
activity. Their formation is based on information about the algorithm (sequence and
nature) of performing a specific action. In this case, consciousness plans (anticipates)
human activity.
Simple skills are simple techniques and actions performed automatically, that
is, first an action is performed, the correctness of which is subsequently controlled by
consciousness. They are formed as a result of repeated performance of a certain action based on the formed initial skill.
The formation of a simple skill is based on the establishment and consolidation
of conditioned reflex connections in the cerebral cortex, which leads to the precise
localization of the source of excitation in certain nervous structures. Differentiated
inhibition concentrates the excitation process to the limit, resulting in the formation
of systems of conditioned reflex connections, which reduces reaction time. This is
due to the fact that unnecessary movements disappear, and the tension of consciousness passes, as it were, into the background of activity and only realizes its controlling function.
In turn, simple skills are divided into several subtypes: motor (formed on the
basis of the work of motor analyzers), sensory (use the capabilities of the functioning
of sensory analyzers), mental (implemented in the mental activity of a person) and
mixed (based on previously formed motor, sensory and mental skills).
Complex skills are characterized as a learned complex automated action, performed accurately, easily and quickly with little effort of consciousness and ensuring
sufficient efficiency of human activity. They usually include several simple skills
combined into one activity. Combining several simple skills into complex one allows
a person to free up their consciousness to solve other more important tasks of activity.
Complex skills are interpreted by Russian psychology as a complex action performed in any operating conditions under the special control (planning and evaluation
of the result) of consciousness. They mark the ability of a person, achieved in the
learning process, to creatively apply the acquired skills in the continuously changing
conditions of practical activity. In this case, they are a kind of foundation on which
people’s professional skills are based, allowing them to thoroughly master a specific
type of activity, constantly increase their knowledge, form new ones and improve existing skills.
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The skills and abilities acquired by a person have an impact on the formation of
new ones, which can be both positive and negative. In the first case, this phenomenon
is denoted by the concept of “transfer,” the essence of which is that existing skills fa-
cilitate the formation of other skills similar to them (coinciding in structure). In the
second case, called interference, an existing skill makes it difficult to form a new one,
which includes actions either opposite in structure to those previously learned, or
contains new techniques that make it difficult to learn the correct technique for performing it.
To preserve the developed skills and abilities, they should be systematically
implemented. Otherwise, their deautomatization occurs—a decrease in the effectiveness of previously developed mechanisms of action as a result of a weakening of
conditioned reflex connections in the cerebral cortex. In this case, actions become
slower and less accurate, their coordination is disrupted, they begin to be performed
uncertainly, and require intense mental effort and an increase in the level of conscious control over them. At the same time, it has been experimentally proven that
the restoration of previously formed skills and abilities occurs much faster than their
initial formation.
The quality of the state of the mental formations under consideration and
their level are determined by three characteristics:
- flexibility — the ability of an individual to use skills and abilities in various
types of activities;
- strength — the degree of stability of skills and abilities when exposed to neg-
ative factors;
- complexity — the level of combination in a skill or ability of several similar
formations of a lower order.
The phenomena considered are recognized as leading among the mental formations of the personal sphere of a person and are used everywhere. It is they who
form a complex mental phenomenon called mastery and which manifests itself in a
high level of development of knowledge, skills and abilities, as well as professional
and moral qualities of the individual.
However, the world of mental formations also includes some others that are of
no less importance for humans, although they are realized only in appropriate conditions. These include habits, beliefs and consciousness.
Habits are an established way of behavior of a person, the implementation of
which in a certain situation has acquired the force of a need for him. It is based on a
knowledge system implemented in the skills and abilities of performing the corresponding action. However, unlike a skill, the decisive moment in the formation of a
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habit is not so much its subsequent development into a skill, but rather the formation,
based on existing knowledge, of a new functional need for its implementation (for
example, the habit of washing hands before eating).
The physiological basis of habit as a mental formation is the dynamic stereotype of nervous processes in the cerebral cortex formed during life. It is formed in the
process of repeatedly performing an action at the stage of its development when,
when performing it, no difficulty of a volitional or cognitive nature arises. In this
case, the mental well-being caused by the functioning of the action itself, colored
predominantly by a positive emotional tone, acquires decisive importance.
Habits are formed in all areas of human activity and manifest themselves in all
aspects of their life. They may be the product of targeted upbringing, but they often
develop completely spontaneously. Habits are usually realized in involuntary actions
and are largely a subconscious form of human behavior.
Habits are distinguished by type: situational (for example, the habit of turning
off the light when leaving a room); characteristic, reflecting the characteristics of a
person’s behavior in general (for example, the habit of greeting elders, speaking qui-
etly in a public place, etc.). In the latter case, they can significantly influence the formation of certain character traits, and therefore are considered both useful (leading to
the formation of positive character traits) and harmful, leading to bad inclinations.
The system of habits formed by a person is largely predetermined by his be-
liefs, which are considered as a person’s meaningful knowledge, organically merged
with their feelings and receiving personal meaning for them. At the same time, it is
necessary to take into account that knowledge itself does not automatically turn into
beliefs. For their formation, the unity of knowledge and a special attitude towards it
as something that indisputably reflects reality and should be realized in human behavior is very important. Consequently, the effectiveness of beliefs is determined by the
need to be guided by them in everyday activities, which makes a person’s behavior
consistent, logical and purposeful.
It is believed that elementary forms of beliefs develop already in preschool age.
The period of their intensive formation is recognized as the school period of human
development. If for a preschooler many things are considered convincing only because adults think so, then a teenager is already guided by the opinions of his peers.
Older schoolchildren are already characterized by a conscious and critical attitude to
what they see and hear — they strive to convince themselves of the truth of certain
provisions.
Beliefs are formed in a person’s life experience under the influence of the sur-
rounding reality, one’s own activities, as well as in the process of educational work
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with them. The knowledge obtained in this case serves as a source for the formation
of certain beliefs. However, their focus largely depends on the content of one’s
knowledge and habits, created through the formation of their experience of social relations and moral behavior. Consequently, spontaneously emerging beliefs (for example, in cases where they are formed under the influence of socially negative and
socially immature works of art) can be erroneous and distorted. In this case, a significant role is played by the imperfection of conceptual thinking, the inability to separate the essential from the unimportant, the presence of errors in the analysis of new
knowledge obtained, etc.
The highest level of regulation of human activity based on the implementation
of knowledge, skills, abilities, habits and beliefs is consciousness, which is considered as an integral mental formation that reflects the relationship between the content
of a person’s activity (sometimes habits) and their beliefs in a specific action. Manifesting itself in the system of mental formations, it allows a person to act (act) with a
clear and distinct understanding of the ultimate goals and possible consequences.
Consciousness is expressed in a person’s ability to analyze the motives of their own
behavior, experiencing them as an internal need, and choose the most rational way to
achieve their goals in accordance with social and moral norms accepted in society.
As already noted, the mental formations of a person’s personal sphere prede-
termine the quality of the activity one performs. However, there are often cases when
a subject can perform some activity, but does not do it. Consequently, in the structure
of the personal sphere there are some other phenomena that force a person to act one
way or another in a specific situation. In Russian psychology they are called mental
properties of personality.
Mental properties of personality
Mental properties of a person are understood as stable mental phenomena
that significantly influence a person’s activity and characterize them mainly from the
socio-psychological side. In other words, these are mental phenomena that are realized in a certain society (social group or in relationships with other people). Their
structure includes orientation, temperament, character and ability.
Orientation is a complex mental property that represents a relatively stable
unity of needs, motives and goals of an individual that determine the nature of its activities. Its content is formed on the basis of a person’s interconnected internal moti-
vations, which show what one strives for in life, what goals they set for themself and
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why they perform this or that action (commit an act). This is due to the fact that human activity is always subjectively determined and expresses everything that requires
satisfaction from them. They also reveal the relationships characteristic of a person
that have developed during the course of their life and are considered as an attitude
towards society as a whole and towards their behavior in a specific social environment in particular. Direction expresses these features in an integrated form and, as it
were, focuses the main personal meaning of human activity.
As a complex mental property of a person, orientation has its own internal
structure, including needs, goals and motives.
Needs — the need of a person as a socio-biological being for a specific spiritu-
al or material object (phenomenon). They demand their satisfaction and encourage
the individual to be active for this, to perform specific activities. Based on their focus,
needs are divided into material (the need for food, clothing, housing, etc.) and spiritual (the need for information, knowledge, communication, etc.).
In contrast to the needs of animals, which are predominantly at the instinctive
level and limited mainly by biological (material) needs, human needs are formed in
ontogenesis, multiply and change throughout their life, which is largely determined
by social relations and the level of social production. Moreover, the external situation
itself can actualize the formation of ever new needs at one or another stage of human life.
Needs, as a structural element of personality orientation, always have specific
characteristics. Firstly, they always have a specific content nature, associated either
with an object that people strive to possess (housing, clothing, food, etc.), or with
some activity (game, study, communication, etc.). Secondly, awareness of a need is
always accompanied by a characteristic emotional state (for example, satisfaction or
dissatisfaction). Thirdly, a need always has a volitional component, focused on finding possible ways to satisfy it.
A person’s material and spiritual needs have a decisive influence on the formation of a goal — a conscious ideal image of the result of an activity (action performed) aimed at satisfying an existing need. In personality psychology, this concept
is used in the study of intentional actions that represent a specific feature of human
activity. At the same time, goal setting is considered as the main mechanism for the
formation of any human actions.
The psychophysiological basis for the formation of goals of human activity is
the acceptor of the results of action, which P.K. Anokhin considered as a regulating
program for the physiological implementation of action through anticipating and authorizing (giving information about the compliance of the achieved result with the re-
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quired) commands. Their psychological basis, along with needs, is the subjectmaterial activity of a person, aimed at transforming the surrounding world. In ontogenesis, their development goes in the direction from the formation of certain intentions in joint activities with other people to a person setting goals for himself.
According to the duration of their existence, goals can be operational (near future), long-term (weeks, months), long-term (years) and life-long. The life goal acts
as a general integrator of all other goals. As a rule, the implementation of each of the
listed types of goals in adulthood is carried out in accordance with the life goal.
The image of the anticipated result of an action, acquiring a motivating force,
becomes a goal, begins to direct the action and determine the choice of possible
methods of implementation, only by connecting with a specific motive or system of
motives.
Motive (lat. moveo — I move) is considered as a direct internal urge to per-
form a specific action in order to achieve the set goal of the activity. Its specific content is determined by the objective conditions of human life. With changes in specific
social conditions, the prerequisites for the development of certain motives, appearing
in the form of situational or stable ones, also change.
The content and direction (carrying out an activity or prohibiting it) of motives
determine not only the very fact of carrying out this or that activity, but also its effectiveness. Its influence on the structure and specificity of memorization processes, the
construction of movements, the structure of the game, etc. has been experimentally
confirmed. In addition, the motives of the subject set the direction of his cognitive activity and structure the content of perception, memory, and thinking. As a result, they
can manifest themselves in the form of dreams, in products of the imagination, in patterns of involuntary remembering and forgetting of significant events. In this case,
the motives themselves may not be recognized, but only take the form of emotional
overtones of certain needs. At the same time, their awareness allows a person to control his activities and individual actions.
The process of formation of motives is characterized by the integration of
spontaneously arising impulses into larger motivational units with a tendency to the
formation of an integral motivational system of the individual. For example, the
amorphous structure of impulses typical to the early childhood is gradually transformed into a more complex structure with a centralized conscious-volitional system
of behavior control. The motives formed as a result represent a specific means of regulating activity, reflecting a specific energy level and structural features of the activity available to a person. In this regard, they can appear in a variety of forms and
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spheres of activity and represent both simple (drives, desires) and complex (interests,
attitudes, ideals) motives for actions, behavior and activity in general.
In general, the level of orientation is determined by its social significance, the
manifestation of a person’s life position, his moral character and the degree of social
maturity. Consequently, knowledge of the orientation of a person allows not only to
understand the actions of another person, but also to predict his behavior in specific
situations and operating conditions.
However, with relatively identical characteristics of orientation, different people behave differently: some are abrupt and impetuous, others react slowly, carefully
thinking through their steps, etc. This is due to another mental property of the individual — temperament.
Temperament (Latin temperamentum — proportionality, proper relationship
of parts) is a natural relationship between stable features of the functioning of the
psyche, forming a certain dynamics of mental processes and manifesting itself in human behavior and activity.
In the history of the development of the doctrine of personality psychology,
there are three main systems of views on the nature of temperament, the oldest of
which are humoral approaches. Thus, according to the theory of Hippocrates, it depends on the relationship between the four fluids circulating in the human body —
blood (Latin sanquis), bile (Greek chole), black bile (Greek melaschole) and mucus
(Greek phlegma). Assuming that one of them predominates in the human body, he
identified the corresponding temperaments: sanguine, choleric, melancholic and
phlegmatic. Close to humoral theories is the idea formulated by P.F. Lesgaft that the
properties of the circulatory system underlie the manifestations of temperament.
Morphological theories (E. Kretschmer, W. Sheldon, etc.) are based on the assumption that the type of temperament depends on the constitutional characteristics of a
person’s physique. However, the weakest point in both approaches is the desire of
their authors to identify as the root cause of behavioral manifestations of temperament such body systems that do not and cannot have the properties necessary for this.
In modern Russian psychology, a third system of views is used, based on the
typology of temperaments developed by I.P. Pavlov. In its physiological basis, he put
the most common characteristics of the basic mental processes — excitation and inhibition: their strength, balance and mobility. As a result of their various combinations, four types of higher nervous activity (HNA) were initially identified: strong,
unrestrained, inert and weak. Subsequent studies made it possible to describe people
with different types of HNA, manifested in the dynamics of their behavior and called
active, expansive, calm and depressed. Subsequently, the scientist connected his dis-
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covery with the concept of temperament proposed by Hippocrates and assigned them
the corresponding names — sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic and melancholic.
Sanguine temperament is formed on the basis of strong, balanced and mobile
nervous processes that determine a strong type of HNA and an active pattern of behavior. Sanguine people are characterized by activity, energy, a quick and thoughtful
reaction to events, and an interest in the significant and the unknown. In communication they are correct and emotionally restrained. They are flexible in behavior and
easily adapt to changing situations and operating conditions.
Choleric temperament is formed on the basis of strong, unbalanced and mobile
nervous processes that determine the unrestrained type of HNA and expansive behavior. People of this temperament (cholerics) are characterized by high activity, speed
of action and energy. When communicating, they often change their mood and easily
show harshness and outbursts of emotion. They usually talk quickly, make decisions
instantly, accompanying them with active gestures and sudden movements.
Phlegmatic temperament is formed in people with strong, balanced and sedentary nervous mental processes, which determine the inert type of HNA and measured
behavior. Outwardly, these are calm and somewhat slow people with inexpressive facial expressions and gestures. They easily tolerate monotonous operating conditions,
are thorough in making and making decisions, and successfully perform complex,
monotonous work. Their circle of communication is limited, their speech is monotonous and slow.
Melancholic temperament is formed as a result of weak, unbalanced and mobile nervous processes that determine a weak type of GNI and changeable behavior.
Melancholic people are easily vulnerable, acutely perceive injustice, are characterized
by the gradual maturation of feelings, and the significant influence of mood on the
quality of their activities. In communication, they prefer to listen to others, empathize, and show respect for the feelings of their interlocutors, as a result of which they
very often enjoy the respect of others.
At the same time, it should be noted that at the present stage of development of
psychology it is not possible to make a final conclusion about the number of temperaments. Recent research by scientists has shown that the very structure of the properties of the nervous system is much more complex than previously thought, and, therefore, the number of their main combinations may be much greater. However, for the
practical study of the characteristics of a person’s personal sphere, the division proposed by I.P. Pavlov into four main types of temperament can serve as a fairly good
basis.
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Based on the manifestation of a person’s temperament in specific social condi-
tions, the following mental property is formed — character.
Character in psychology is considered as a set of the most stable mental traits,
manifested in all types of interpersonal interaction of a person and expressing their
individual uniqueness. It is believed that the individual characteristics of a person,
which form their character, primarily depend on one’s personal orientation, the type
of nervous system and are determined by their will, emotions and intellect (mind).
The formation of a person’s character as a mental property of an individual oc-
curs under the conditions of their inclusion in various social groups (family, friends,
informal associations, etc.). Depending on the conditions under which the individualization of a person is carried out and the level of development of interpersonal relationships in them, the same subject in one case can develop openness, independence
and firmness, and in another the exact opposite traits — secrecy, conformism, weak
character. At the same time, it should be taken into account that their formation and
consolidation in many cases are determined by the orientation of the individual and
the uniqueness of the person’s temperament.
Among character traits, some act as primary ones, setting the general direction
of its manifestation, while others act as secondary ones, appearing only in certain situations. Their correspondence to each other is considered as integrity of character (integral character), and opposition as its inconsistency (contradictory character).
Character is the core mental property of a person, the content of which is assessed by its relationship to various events and phenomena of objective reality that
form the corresponding character traits. In turn, a character trait is a stable feature of
a person’s behavior that is repeated in various situations. The modern Russian lan-
guage has more than five hundred words that reveal the content of various aspects of
certain character traits. This allows you to characterize a person quite specifically, but
requires a fairly capacious thesaurus.
To overcome this difficulty, Russian psychology has developed an appropriate
systematization of mental personality traits (character traits), based on a dichotomous
method of classifying phenomena (dividing into polar pairs of subordinate elements).
As a result, for example, among the most indicative character traits that serve as the
basis for their classification, depending on the level of development of its main components, the following are distinguished:
- in relation to: social phenomena — convinced and unprincipled; to activity — active and inactive; to communication — sociable and reserved; to oneself —
an altruist and an egoist;
- by strength — strong and weak;
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