Differences between everyday and scientific psychology. Scientific and everyday psychology

At the heart of any science there is some everyday, empirical experience of people, because each person has his own store of vital psychological knowledge. There are also outstanding worldly psychologists - great writers, clergymen, doctors, teachers, i.e. representatives of those professions that constantly communicate with people. Ordinary people also have certain psychological knowledge, judging by the fact that each person is to some extent able to understand the other, influence his behavior, take into account individual characteristics and provide assistance.

Everyday or pre-scientific psychology

If we talk about psychology as a form of everyday knowledge, then it appeared along with human society. Worldview in everyday or pre-scientific psychology grew out of the daily practice and life experience of primitive man. Interacting with each other, people learned to distinguish mental qualities hidden in behavior. Behind the actions performed, the motives and characters of people were guessed.

Psychological knowledge arose in the process of understanding specific situations. The content of this knowledge was limited to the conclusions that could be drawn by analyzing simple events, and the reasons underlying them were easily traced. People recorded all the conclusions drawn in proverbs and sayings, for example, “repetition is the mother of learning”, “measure seven times - cut once”, “not knowing the ford - do not go into the water”, etc.

There is no doubt that pre-scientific psychology could not rise to a holistic assessment of being and limited itself only to a symbolic explanation of its individual fragments. The psychological knowledge of primitive people corresponded to a non-systemic, fragmented worldview that arose and existed in the conditions of underdevelopment of rational ways of mastering reality. It is called topocentric, because the content was limited to knowledge only of the place where the clan or tribe lived. Nevertheless, covering all spheres of the life of primitive man, this knowledge could be quite extensive.

Modern psychologists believe that the origin of this knowledge was caused by such obvious manifestations of the human psyche as:

• Dreams;
• Such mental states as joy, fear, sadness, etc.;
• Mental qualities - benevolence, hostility, cunning, all of them are manifested in the communication of people.

The phenomena that ancient people observed and, making attempts to explain them, led to the conclusion that the soul can leave the human body. At the time of death, she leaves the body forever. So in India, the most ancient and widespread teaching about the transmigration of the soul from one body to another appeared.

It does not mean at all that the ordinary forms of psychological knowledge, despite their simplicity, turned out to be false. Some of these ideas have retained their significance to this day and have entered the treasury of modern psychological science:

• Everything psychological exists within man;
• The soul remains to live forever and does not die with the person.

The immortality of the soul today is presented differently compared to the ancient Egyptians, who believed that the soul of a dead person turns into a bird and lives on his grave.

Eternity, the immortality of the soul, according to the ideas of modern man, is associated with good deeds performed by him during his life. Even Seraphim of Sarov (1754-1833) argued that if you save yourself, then thousands around you can be saved.

The idea that emerged from the primitive man about the eternity of the soul, thus, continues to live in the public mind today, albeit in a slightly different form.

Psychology had to begin with the idea of ​​the soul, considered the domestic psychologist L.S. Vygotsky. This idea became the first scientific hypothesis of ancient man and a huge conquest of thought.

Differences between everyday and scientific psychology

The presence of everyday psychology raises the question of its relationship with scientific psychology. In addition to academic interest, this question also has a practical meaning. Human life is permeated with psychological connections and relationships, so if there is everyday psychology in some specific forms, then people are its bearers. And if this is so, then it is quite possible to assume that, by assimilating the psychological lessons of everyday life, people become or do not become psychologists.

There are a number of differences between everyday psychological knowledge and scientific psychology:

• Knowledge of everyday psychology is specific, timed to a specific situation, specific people. For example, a child in a family, solving specific pragmatic tasks, knows exactly how to behave with one or another parent in order to achieve the desired goal.
• Scientific psychology strives for generalizations, like any science. To achieve the result, scientific concepts are used, and their development as the most important function of science. Scientific psychological concepts have one feature, which is their frequent coincidence with worldly concepts, i.e. expressed in the same words, but the inner content is still different;
• Everyday psychological knowledge is of an intuitive nature, which depends on the way it is obtained. The result is achieved mainly through practical trials. Children have a well-developed psychological intuition, acquired by the tests they subject adults to daily and hourly. As a result, it turns out that the children know very well from whom they can “twist the ropes”. Teachers and trainers can go in a similar way, finding effective ways of education and training;
• Scientific psychological knowledge is distinguished by its rationality and awareness. The scientific path consists in putting forward verbally formulated hypotheses and verifying the consequences arising from them;
• Ways and possibilities of knowledge transfer. Such a possibility is limited in the field of practical psychology, which follows from their concrete and intuitive nature of everyday psychological experience. The life experience of the older generation is passed on to the younger generation to a small extent and with great difficulty, so the problem of "fathers and sons" will be eternal. Each new generation, in order to acquire this experience, is forced to "stuff its bumps" on its own;
• Scientific psychological knowledge is accumulated and transmitted with great efficiency, because it crystallizes in concepts and laws, and is fixed in the scientific literature. Their transmission occurs with the help of verbal means - speech and language;
• The method of obtaining knowledge in worldly psychology is based on observation and reflection;
• An experiment is added to scientific methods in psychology, and the researcher no longer waits for a confluence of circumstances, but causes this phenomenon himself, creating appropriate conditions for it. The introduction of the experimental method allowed psychology to take shape as an independent science;
• The advantage of scientific psychology is that it has a diverse, extensive, and sometimes unique factual material, which cannot be said about the bearer of everyday psychology.

Output

Thus, the development of special branches of psychology is a method of general psychology, everyday psychology does not have such a method, but nevertheless, scientific and everyday psychology are not antagonists, collaborating, they complement each other.

Comparative analysis of everyday and scientific psychology in a condensed version is shown in the table below.

Herbert Spencer

Everyday psychology is a psychology in which every person can be a psychologist. After all, it is a collection of beliefs, views, sayings, customs, proverbs, aphorisms and other similar knowledge about life and people, which the main part of the population adheres to. We all know something about life and about people, about their behavior and the patterns of this behavior, thanks to our personal experience and the experience of people we know well. This knowledge is valuable in its own way, but not applicable to all situations. After all, in most cases they are based on spontaneous observations and are intuitive in nature. Therefore, what is natural in one situation is completely inapplicable to another. In other words, worldly knowledge is always concrete. But despite this, they are very useful for each of us individually and for society as a whole, since everyday psychology is always practical, since it conveys to us in a very simple and understandable form for most people the experience of many generations. Well, let's see together what everyday psychology can be of interest to us.

First of all, I would like to tell you, dear readers, that everyday psychology is not as simple as it seems, and sometimes you need to think about the knowledge that it carries in itself and that it shares with us no less than scientific knowledge in order to get from them favor. The same folk proverbs and sayings need to be interpreted; you cannot use them in all life situations that are more or less suitable for them in order to act competently and effectively. Scientific knowledge is also not universal, although science tends to generalize, so they also need to be applied in life carefully, thoughtfully, gradually. And even everyday experience is even more so very situational, even when it comes to your personal experience, which has been repeated many times. Therefore, if you, for example, have seen many times how people responded to the good they did with evil, you do not need to immediately adjust these observations to well-known sayings and finally decide on good deeds and reactions to them from other people. Otherwise, you will not be able to make the right decision in a situation where there is a person next to you who can adequately appreciate your kindness and give you a lot in return. But it is these people who make our life happy, it is them that we want to see next to us. And there are many such examples. So those common truths on which worldly psychology is based are not always true. Remember this.

An example of everyday psychology is intuitively drawn conclusions, thanks to observations, reflections and own experience. At the same time, it is quite obvious that our observations and experience cover only a small part of even our own life, not to mention life as a whole. In other words, we see the world through a small window, and on the basis of what we see, we draw the same limited conclusions as our review. And our thoughts are based on what we see and know. And if we have not seen so much and do not have extensive and complete knowledge about anything, about the same life and people, for example, then it is natural that our conclusions based on our reflections will not be completely complete and accurate. At the same time, they form the basis of everyday psychology if they coincide with the same incomplete and insufficiently accurate conclusions of other people. In their own way they are true, but limited in terms of their application. The experience of each person is certainly valuable in its own way, although it is difficult to draw general conclusions about certain situations, phenomena, and events on its basis. And since many situations in life are repeated, the projectile is also very rare, but it falls into one funnel, then having in your head the experience of other people, no matter how limited it may be, is very useful. Especially if we are talking about such an experience that has been confirmed by generations. The likelihood that the advice based on this experience will be correct is quite high. So everyday psychology is beyond any doubt very practical, since it is determined by the events and conditions in which this or that “wisdom” was born, which was then adopted by society as worldly knowledge. Only you need to use such knowledge wisely - they are not instructions for execution - they are the basis for reflection.

Personally, I have great respect for worldly psychology, because I believe that no matter how specific everyday knowledge is, it can be generalized, it is possible to create a certain system from this knowledge that has its own patterns proven by practice. Strictly speaking, scientific psychology relies to a large extent on everyday psychological experience, as on experience that has been formed over many generations of people. This, you know, is quite a solid experience. Therefore, everyday knowledge can be ordered in such a way that it turns into scientific knowledge, that is, into more generalized, more accurate, verifiable and practical knowledge. In everyday psychology, many knowledge, though true, and in many ways useful, but, unfortunately, are not very well ordered. They are not flexible enough and not complete enough to be used in solving complex life situations. Some of this knowledge is not verified by practice, experiments and is based on people's belief in the truth of this knowledge. Plus, some worldly knowledge are statements that cover a rather vast area of ​​human life, but do not have adjustments for the various characteristics of a particular person and the life situation in which these statements are true. Well, you probably noticed that, say, the same proverbs, sayings and various folk predictions often contradict each other. Have you ever wondered why it is so? The point is not that some proverbs are correct and others are wrong, that some proverbs are true and others are not, that some predictions come true and others do not. The point is the situational nature of worldly psychology. Each specific situation with all its features is reflected in a single proverb and saying. Each specific pattern is reflected in a single prediction. Therefore, worldly knowledge is correct under certain circumstances, but not always. Life is too complex and people are complex enough to be able to represent all knowledge about them and their behavior in a few strict and inviolable laws about life. Even scientific psychology, like any science, although it strives for generalizations, nevertheless, it must be admitted that it is not capable of explaining all life situations without exception with the help of laws and regularities common to all such situations. Therefore, in any case, the analysis of this or that situation requires deep reflection on it, for its full understanding, regardless of what knowledge we are guided by in its analysis, scientific or everyday, or both. If all situations in life could be controlled using several algorithms, if there were no uncertainty and novelty in life, then our whole life could be calculated using mathematical formulas and people could be safely controlled by computers.

Meanwhile, the great advantage of worldly psychology is that it is always practical, since it has a direct bearing on the events and conditions in which it was developed. There are no complex theories in it, there are only examples from life that people notice and fix in their own and public consciousness with the help of proverbs, sayings, signs, customs, rituals and the like. It follows from this that you can learn something from any person, since each of us has valuable experience that can save other people from many unnecessary mistakes. The misfortune of people is that they do not always manage to effectively transfer their knowledge and experience to other people and, in particular, to subsequent generations. And other people are not always ready to accept this knowledge and do not even always show interest in it. In general, we are very reluctant to learn from each other, preferring to teach and instruct other people rather than learn from them. Actually, it is our laziness, pride, inattention, carelessness that hinder our development. Everyday psychology gives each of us a lot, just like scientific psychology, but not everyone wants to work with this knowledge and apply it in life. Just think what successes we would achieve in life, both individually and collectively, if we willingly learned from each other's mistakes. It would just be a huge breakthrough in evolution - it would be a revolution in human development. Because today, more than ever, anyone can do it. We can all learn new things all the time, we can learn from each other without leaving home, thanks to modern information technologies. But, alas, the reality is that most people, even from their own mistakes, do not always learn, thereby depriving themselves of the opportunity to achieve impressive success in life. And many of us make the same mistakes over and over again. And you and I know that history often repeats itself, and this repetition has its own purpose. Life will teach people the same lesson until they learn it. We go through many lessons several times, because we do not learn them either from the first, or from the second, or sometimes even from the tenth time. And this, despite all the abundance of knowledge that we have thanks to, among other things, our ancestors, who from generation to generation accumulated and passed on valuable everyday knowledge. That's who we are, people. Perhaps this has its own meaning - everything has its time.

We all contribute to life psychology when we actively share our experiences with others. We all have a past that taught us something, there is knowledge of life, which, of course, is not complete, but very practical. All this we can share with each other in order to enlighten each other in various fields. Many worldly knowledge is as valuable as scientific knowledge, since they point to such truths that have not changed throughout our history. Knowing these truths, a person can advance much further in his life than his predecessors, because he will already know what awaits him around one corner or another. Not all of these truths are written in textbooks, many of them are passed from mouth to mouth and constantly fall on our ears, but we are not always fully aware of them. The fact is that if a person has heard about something many times in his life, then he has a false idea that he understands what it is about. But in reality, there is no awareness of what he heard, saw, read, but a person believes that he has precisely mastered this common truth, therefore it does not carry anything new for him and he does not need to pay attention to it. At the same time, a person can act contrary to this truth, but not notice it. I'm sure you've experienced this many times in your life. And they noticed, if not for themselves, then for other people for sure, that they can say one thing, speak correctly, wisely, and act contrary to what was said, without even admitting the fallacy of their actions. This I mean that we can know much of what everyday psychology tells us about from childhood, but at the same time, this knowledge, these common truths do not benefit us, because we do not follow them, and we do not follow them for the reason that we do not understand them. Watch yourself, suddenly you live just like that, when you seem to have useful knowledge, but at the same time you are not guided by them in your life. Then, perhaps, you will have a reason to reflect on what you know in order to realize it.

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 only be understood through our own experience, that much of what we are taught does not fully resemble 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 conduct professional observations that will give us a lot of useful information that explains certain patterns 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.

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, of course, are 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, the average person also has certain psychological knowledge. This can be judged by the fact that each person can understand the other to some extent, 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 are also 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. The development of concepts is one of the most important functions of science. 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.

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. It is necessary to note one feature of scientific psychological concepts: they often coincide with everyday ones in their external form, that is, simply speaking, they 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 were very different, and one student answered: "This is what 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. This is due to the special way they are obtained: they are acquired through 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, children discover who can be "twisted with ropes" and who cannot.

Often, teachers and coaches find effective ways of educating, teaching, training, going the same way: experimenting and vigilantly noticing the slightest positive results, that is, in a certain sense, "groping". Often they turn to psychologists with a request to explain the psychological meaning of the techniques 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. Each new generation, each young person has to "stuff his own bumps" in order to acquire 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 branches of psychological science, such as developmental psychology, educational psychology, patho- and neuropsychology, labor and engineering psychology, social psychology, zoopsychology, etc.

In these areas, dealing with various stages and levels of mental development of 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 does not only expands the range of its 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'll give you a 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 the famous Soviet scientists A.I. Meshcheryakov and E.V. Ilyenkov).

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

So, summarizing, we can say that the development of special branches of psychology is the Method (method with a capital letter) of 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 the bearer of 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, it will inevitably arise sooner or later 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. “The problems of human life,” they say, “no, I don’t deal with them. I do scientific psychology. I understand neurons, reflexes, mental processes, and not the “pangs 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 above-mentioned scientific psychologist was forced 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 * "to tear apart" spiritual life "to pieces" .

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 of 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.

You will not read anywhere about how to see the reflection of general principles in small facts and how to move from general principles to real life problems. You can develop these abilities 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, at the last stage it is checked.

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

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 a person in everyday life is 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.

The reliability of worldly psychology is being tested 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 one's 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 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. Moreover, life experience is far from being such an important factor here. It has been noticed that there is no strong relationship 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 people's internal states well.

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 of 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”, “Softly spreads, but 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 is the book of essays "Experiments" (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 considered it the greatest feat of 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.

Psychology as a form of everyday knowledge arose a very long time ago, almost with the advent of human society. The accumulation of everyday experience later served as the basis for a psychology oriented towards scientific thinking. Everyday and scientific psychology are distinguished by a versatile approach, cultural level and degree of organization.

Everyday knowledge and all accumulated experience are the results of spontaneous observations, while scientific ones are built on the conclusions of professionals made by them during organized experiments.

The real correlation between everyday and scientific psychology

The concept of "everyday psychology" includes the acquisition of psychological knowledge through self-observation, viewing various life situations or during interaction with other people or the environment. The perception of the world by a person in prescientific psychology was due to his daily activities and the accumulation of experience. The mental characteristics and characters of other people could be guessed from their behavior and actions.

Contrasting everyday and scientific psychology in obtaining psychological knowledge openly demonstrates the main differences between disciplines. In worldly psychology, this was associated with reflections on specific events. The conclusions could be made quite simple, since it seemed not so difficult to find the cause of what was happening. They are reflected in folk proverbs. For example: “Not knowing the ford, do not climb into the water”, “An alien soul is darkness” or “A smart one does not say everything he knows, and a stupid one does not know everything he says.”

Everyday psychology was limited to explanations of individual fragments of being, therefore, there was no systemic nature in the psychological knowledge of people. Their worldview was significantly influenced by the lack of appropriate ways to study the surrounding reality. But even despite the topocentric content of knowledge tied to the place where the human community lived - a clan or tribe, they could be very relevant and significant.

Their origin, according to modern psychologists, was due to the following manifestations of the psyche:

• emotional states - affect, fear, frustration;
• dreams;
• character traits - diligence, independence, truthfulness or greed, selfishness.

The idea of ​​the soul, which arose even among primitive people, is still relevant and alive in the public mind. This is the first scientific hypothesis and a great achievement of thought.

Unlike everyday scientific psychology, it is most attuned to the study and understanding of the general laws of life, takes into account the facts obtained by experience, develops methods for systematic observations, modeling, and analysis of documents. In scientific psychology, there are ways to measure mental phenomena, the results of which can be verified.

Everyday and scientific psychology: comparison of characteristics

Human life consists of various interconnections and relationships, with mental ones making up the clear majority. It can be assumed that people are carriers of worldly psychology. They receive constant experience from various situations, they know how or not how to use its capabilities. The ratio of everyday and scientific psychology is of genuine interest to many modern people who are interested in the characteristics of the individual's behavior in various societies. In everyday psychology there are a number of differences from scientific.

Among them, for example, are:

Processes	Everyday psychology	Scientific psychology
The acquisition of knowledge	The acquisition of experience by an individual in a particular situation, as a result of the method of practical trials, is intuitive.	Abstracted experience, conceptually formalized, obtained with the help of systematized, purposeful, instrumental-equipped methods, is received by various scientific communities and associations of psychologists
Ways to save knowledge	Empirical and indifferent to the logical component. For a long time they were preserved and transmitted orally, in the form of proverbs and sayings. And also in the personal experience of the subject and in works of fiction	Systematized knowledge, in the form of hypotheses, theories and axioms, is purposefully deepened and accumulated. They are preserved in written works created as a result of research.
Reproduction of knowledge and ways to transfer it	Are readily available, but in most cases depend on personal experience. Passed down orally, during communication and from generation to generation	The conditions for obtaining knowledge are always predetermined. Knowledge is organized and easy to navigate. They serve as a basis for new practical research and theoretical developments
Difference in material supply	Ordinary colloquial speech	Specific scientific language that accurately describes what is happening, with an abundance of foreign terms

In everyday psychology, a transition is being made from observing and explaining specific actions to a generalized understanding of human behavior and thoughts. Scientific psychology is characterized by a rational approach, the use of abstract scientific categories, and high intellectualism.

Worldly and scientific psychology cannot be opposed to each other.

Modern psychologists draw their ideas from everyday psychology, which is recognized as the initial stage in the study of psychological phenomena and processes, as well as rational knowledge of the world.

Video lecture on everyday and scientific psychology