Functional theories: how people's views, opinions and beliefs are formed

Concept of consciousness

The concept of consciousness begins to be developed in science and philosophy in modern times. The former term used to denote the mental life of a person - the soul is increasingly becoming a thing of the past, its place is gradually taken by consciousness. This transition is associated with a change in the view of philosophers on man and his place in the world during the Renaissance. Humanistic and anthropocentric tendencies have brought man out from under the yoke of blind and powerful forces, be it nature or God, and made him a subject - a source of activity, capable of defending his interests in the world, exploring and influencing it. The emphasis on the cognitive aspect of human existence is reflected in the very semantics of the word – “consciousness”.

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In the philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries, consciousness was considered from two main positions:

idealistic,
materialistic.

The idealistic understanding of consciousness has been presented by many continental philosophers from Descartes and Leibniz, to Kant and Hegel. The peculiarity of this understanding was that in the relationship between consciousness and being, consciousness occupied a substantial independent position.

Thus, for Descartes, matter and spirit are two independent and parallel existing substances. The main property of the spirit-consciousness is thinking; unlike the material body, consciousness is directed towards God and comes into contact with him, thanks to which it has access to true knowledge, which is inherent in it from birth. Abstract thinking is the best way to understand the world around us.

Kant represents the surrounding reality as a world of things in themselves. Things in themselves are material, they really exist, but remain inaccessible to the understanding of our consciousness and reason. Instead, consciousness, separated from things just as they are from it, builds its illusory image of the world, in accordance with its own ideas and convenience, relying only on individual external characteristics of real things. The reality of a person is the reality of his consciousness, which depends little on the circumstances of the material world.

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The materialist tradition was formed in English philosophy, in the works of Bacon, Locke, Hobbes and their followers. Within the framework of mechanistic materialism, the primacy and substantiality of only matter is recognized. Consciousness is secondary. Locke points out that human consciousness is a blank slate on which life writes its book. It is experience, upbringing, training, and social environment that make a person who he is, that imparts to him certain mental qualities and knowledge about the world around him. There is no independence of consciousness, no innate truths. Consciousness is completely determined by reality.

A characteristic feature of classical philosophy is the fact that consciousness is conceived exclusively as individual. The subject, the researcher, is an isolated individual, and society is treated as their mechanical sum. This view was first overcome in Hegel’s dialectical concept, where consciousness - the World Spirit - refers not to a person or even a nation, but to all of humanity in general.

In Marxist philosophy, society is viewed as a set of social relations, the concept of social institutions and groups (classes) that have their own collective consciousness, expressed in the unity of their interests, values, as well as a certain position in society, is being worked out.

Does society influence a person?

Few people realize that from time to time following the opinion of society is dangerous. Society is a social educator, pointing out to fragile minds what is good and what is bad, telling about the basic norms of morality and ethics. If they used to say that labor made a man out of a monkey, now the role of labor is played by society.

Many may ask: “Then what is the danger?”

The danger is that a person has to choose between his ambitions, aspirations, desires and public opinion. And often a person chooses the second.

Everyone is afraid of being judged by society. Nobody wants to hear: “yes, this is a failed idea,” “you’re just like everyone else,” “he’s just a slacker,” “it won’t work out,” and the like. We go to school, study and try to meet the expectations of our family. And in case of failures at the stage of life called “school”, the teenager finds himself under severe pressure from the outside. And despite the fact that he draws beautifully, he puts all his energy into “physics”.

Later, many enter universities, but under what pretext? Some people don’t want to join the army, some don’t want to upset their parents, because they rely on us, they “invested” in us. And a fairly common situation is that after school you didn’t go anywhere of your own free will because you were tired or undecided on your specialty, or perhaps you have a dream that requires time and effort.

What will you hear around you in this case, especially from the older generation? “He’s kind of strange, he has such opportunities, and he...”, “We didn’t let books go out of our hands during his years,” “He’s probably stupid.” You are simply rejected. What will be the reaction of your parents if you came home with the phrase: “I don’t want to study yet, I want to realize my old dream, goal, idea.” They are unlikely to react positively.

And so all my life... That's why everyone should learn to turn a blind eye to other people's opinions. We must learn to go against the flow, resist it, and use all attempts to subdue you, calm you down as motivation. After all, if you look at all the geniuses, scientists, discoverers, these are simply people who went beyond the boundaries that society set for them.

Would Magellan prove that the earth is spherical if he believed in its flat shape? Would Leonardo da Vinci have been able to build the prototype of today's airplanes, and the Wright brothers build the first airplane, if they all believed in the impossibility of man to fly?

All goals and dreams will become at least more accessible if you stop being afraid of condemnation. Whatever it is, it is worth understanding that no one calls on a person to go against the system all the time. No, I just want to show the importance of conscious choice. After all, only when everyone begins to deliberately choose for themselves can they become a truly free person. But everyone strives for this...

Tags: society, other people's opinion, public opinion

Functional theories: how people's views, opinions and beliefs are formed

The functional approach provides perhaps the simplest and clearest answer to the question of how people's views, opinions and beliefs are formed and changed. This approach, or concept, forms a whole series of theories, united by a common name - functional theories.

Each person in his own way, individually perceives and experiences both external and internal processes. Different people develop different needs and, therefore, their attitudes also differ. Therefore, the same stimulus or situation affects different people differently. This is most clearly seen in the example of commercial advertising. According to experts in the field of mass communications, its effectiveness is considered high and even very high if it reaches from 1 to 10% of the target audience (Harris R., 2001). All this means that information that has an impact on some people has no effect on others.

In other words, functional theories argue that people have attitudes that express their needs and contribute to the satisfaction of those needs. New needs lead to the formation of new attitudes; changing needs lead to changes in attitudes.

All installation functions can be grouped into types or blocks. This classification was first carried out by D. Katz (1967), identifying five main functions of installations:

Protection function I.
Value-expressive function (self-representation).
Social-regulatory function.
Instrumental (utilitarian) function.
Cognitive function.

1. Protection function I

For the first time in the history of psychology, the theory of psychoanalysis spoke about the mechanisms of ego defense. Sigmund Freud himself, and especially his daughter Anna Freud, identified and described quite a few types of psychological defenses (Freud A., 1999). Among them are the following: neurosis, rationalization, projection, denial, formation of an opposite reaction, etc. The most typical example of a defense mechanism for the Self is rationalization: a person, prompted by some irrational, unconscious impulse, commits an act, but finds a completely rational one for it explanation. As a rule, the irrational impulse that motivates a person to perform certain actions comes from negative drives and feelings of a person - envy, anger, hatred, feelings of inferiority, worthlessness, etc. But in the self-attribution of an individual, the motivation for his actions acquires a noble , even more - sublime meaning. The person himself explains his actions solely with good intentions: he did so in the name of goodness, justice, and better considerations.

In those cases when a person’s self-awareness is developed to a certain extent and is periodically activated, he constantly resorts to ego-defense mechanisms to regulate self-esteem. At the same time, people follow the path of searching for the simplest ways to solve their problems. The easiest way to raise self-esteem is by humiliating and belittling other people - individuals or even entire social groups. The need to increase self-esteem, thus, leads to the formation of corresponding attitudes - xenophobia, racism, sexism, nationalism, class hatred, etc. Fear, envy, a sense of one’s insignificance give rise to an attitude of striving for power, wealth, give rise to arrogance, disdain , swagger (for example, superior, national, social, etc.).

As a rule, people use not one, but many ego defense mechanisms at once. Rationalization goes side by side with projection (it’s not me, it’s him, the first). Projection is accompanied by denial.

Thus, some people may constantly feel the need to protect the Self and have corresponding attitudes; for others, a state of increased anxiety and low self-esteem may be temporary. Still others may only occasionally experience the need for ego protection. and then their attitudes that contribute to its satisfaction may also be short-lived.

2. Value-expressive function

Attitudes that express a person’s values usually satisfy his need for self-representation. Simply put, through these attitudes a person makes himself known to his social environment. It is clear that you can only express what you have, what you yourself are. Therefore, both the type and level of a person’s values are determined by the level of his personal development and the complexity of his self-concept.

Image and style of life, manner of dressing, type of hairstyle, possession of certain things, expressed opinions, views, judgments, behavior - with all this a person expresses his self. So, say, creating the image of a rich, successful person can be associated with an orientation towards enrichment and, accordingly, express the basic value of the individual. In another case, it may be the creation of a sexually attractive image, which may also be a reflection of attitudes and values. But, of course, an individual can represent himself in other ways. He can, for example, actively express his public position, participate in some civil movements, support certain political parties. From the perspective of a functional approach, we can say that as many people as there are, so many needs.

3. Social-regulatory function

When interacting with other people, we, voluntarily or involuntarily, form our own ideas about them, in other words, we form attitudes towards them. We like some people, we don't like others.

It is important to note how our attitudes towards others help or hinder our social relationships. It is clear that if a person has a general negative attitude towards people, then his interactions with others will be minimized. And even those will begin to differ in tension. But the fact of the matter is that people do not always declare their real attitudes towards their acquaintances, relatives, neighbors, co-workers, etc. Much more often, in relationships with their immediate environment, people use politeness, good manners, flattery, that is demonstrate certain generally accepted patterns of behavior.

But in almost any case (with rare exceptions) if a person wants to achieve favor, sympathy, affection from others, he demonstrates his agreement with them, commonality of views, opinions, etc. The similarity factor in most cases enhances social attractiveness.

Of course, the similarity of views and attitudes between people can be real, and not just manifest. Therefore, to establish social relationships, we are looking for like-minded people, people similar to us - in age, gender, social group, based on the fact that they have the same attitudes as us.

4. Instrumental (adaptive, utilitarian) function

The very name of the function indicates the aspect of behavior that learning theories consider, and specifically the principle of instrumental learning. In the broadest sense, its essence boils down to the fact that a person learns to achieve desired results (reward) and avoid undesirable ones (punishment). Accordingly, people develop positive attitudes towards those objects that can help satisfy their needs, desires, drives, and negative attitudes towards objects that interfere with the achievement of what they want, causing frustration, as well as other undesirable consequences.

And in this regard, the instrumental function is capable of overlapping or absorbing all other functions: Ego-protective, value-expressive, regulatory and cognitive function. A person can win sympathy, admiration, friendship, goodwill, simply by expressing his views, opinions, value priorities, in a word, through the expression of his Self. In the same way, he can avoid the manifestation of anger, aggression, and other negative feelings towards himself, using the mechanisms of the Ego. defense, for example, repression, suppression, etc.

5. Cognition function

In addition to other extremely necessary functions, attitudes play an extremely important role in people’s lives in structuring and organizing knowledge about the world around them and about themselves. With their help, we categorize and build our knowledge into a more or less coherent, logically linked system. This does not mean that the world around us and we ourselves are exactly as we are presented in our attitudes. The role of attitudes is not to search for truth, but to organize the picture of the world in our minds.

Without ready-made cognitive schemes, including attitudes, we would hardly be able to live at all, since everything that happens would seem to us to be complete chaos.

Attitudes thus help us organize the world using the principle of economy of thought and avoiding the dangers of information overload. Borrowing other people's experience, opinions, views, attitudes creates big social problems, but an attempt to refuse borrowing in order to create your own and only your own position is unrealistic. The unifying basis of all attitudes of any particular individual are the basic values that he professes or adheres to.

To explain the reason for the emergence of pluralism and conflict of values in the attitudinal position of individuals, Anthony Pratkanis and Anthony Greenwald (1989) introduce the concepts of unipolar and bipolar attitudes. They believe that the ambiguity of an attitude towards a problem is explained by the fact that a person can consciously avoid one-sided information about it, trying to get acquainted with different and even contradictory information. Monopolar attitudes are formed under the influence of information that unambiguously evaluates the object of the attitude. If, say, your knowledge of a person is limited to the fact that he is smiling and polite, then, of course, you will insist that he is very sincere and nice.

The vast majority of people's attitudes are still monopolar. Having an already established attitude towards a certain object, people most often interpret new information about it in such a way that it is consistent with their existing ideas. Not to mention the fact that they may not even notice, perceive, or hear information that contradicts their views. People are not only more willing, but also better at remembering information that confirms their views. D. Roberts and Nathan MacCoby (1985), who established this fact, believe that a person experiences pleasure when receiving confirmation of the correctness of his attitudes. After all, it increases his self-esteem. Therefore, we make friends with those who like us, just as we like ourselves, we listen to the radio and watch television programs that confirm our attitudes, we read books, newspapers and magazines that are consistent with our views on reality. All this can be briefly defined as selectivity in the approach to information.

Paul Sweeney and Kathy Gruber demonstrated this bias in the 1972 Watergate scandal. It arose due to the fact that the election team of Richard Nixon, who won the election and became President of the United States, resorted to technical eavesdropping in the headquarters of Nixon's rival McGovern during the election campaign. So, supporters of the victorious Nixon and the lost election of McCovern Govern, it turned out, was not equally interested in the scandal that had erupted: Senate hearings, media reports, etc. While McGovern's supporters were interested in any information related to Watergate, Nixon's supporters showed a clear lack of interest in this case (Zimbardo F. , Leippe M., 2000).

Attitudes largely predetermine not only our vision of the world, but also our mood, vitality, and general psychological state. If the world seems dangerous and threatening to a person, then, of course, he will experience a constant feeling of anxiety and uncertainty. Conversely, a radiant worldview will tune a person to lightness and carelessness. The optimal option, as always, lies between these two extremes.

***

As we see, certain functions of attitudes are predetermined by the personal characteristics of people. Therefore, before trying to change an individual’s attitude, it is necessary to know and take into account how it is characterized: is it determined by the person’s personal characteristics or by the subject and content itself? Consequently, any attempt to change attitudes in large audiences, be it advertising or political propaganda, will be successful only with respect to some part of the people, but not with the entire audience. Moreover, here it is just as important to take into account and calculate the time of impact, since most people’s needs are temporary in nature and you can find yourself in an absurd position, trying to change those attitudes that no longer exist.

Functional theories thus explain the essence of two processes simultaneously—the formation and change of attitudes. Along with other theories, they give an idea of the role that attitudes play in the mental life of people and the impact they have on behavior.

Source: Elitarium

Stages of socialization

Sociologists distinguish the following stages of socialization:

Adaptation. It involves learning values and acquiring the skill of conforming to society. This is the stage when the child learns basic concepts, adapts to the rules of society, imitates and adapts.
Identification. It is about the desire to personalize and influence other people. The attitude towards social norms becomes more critical. At this stage, depending on age, they distinguish between intermediate (when the teenager does not yet have a formed worldview and character) and stable-conceptual socialization (when the personality has already established properties).
Integration. Allows you to express yourself and your capabilities in a specific social group. When society accepts the characteristics of an individual, integration is successful. If society does not accept these properties, then two options for the development of events are possible: the first - when individuality is preserved, the attitude towards society becomes aggressive, and the second option is characterized by attempts to change oneself and meet the expectations of society.
Labor stage. Its boundaries are blurred, since the stage includes the entire working life of a member of society. A person influences the environment and reproduces social experience.
Post-labor stage. It begins when work stops. At this stage, experience is passed on to younger members of society.

The process of socialization of an individual is directly influenced by the people with whom a person directly interacts. We are talking about agents of socialization. The composition of agents varies depending on age. First it is the family - parents, brothers, sisters, other relatives, then peers, teachers, colleagues, spouse. All of them influence a person to varying degrees and in different directions.

The stages of socialization in the age aspect are considered in more detail:

The infancy stage characterizes the period when the mother occupies the main place in a person’s life. The development of trust, as well as psychological development, directly depends on the relationship with the mother.
The early childhood stage involves the development of independence, the child begins to function more independently. The childhood stage allows the child to become aware of himself as an individual. He moves independently, talks, learns about the world, and develops thinking. Lack of attention and suppression from parents will negatively affect the development of the child.
The stage of primary school age involves mastering new knowledge outside the home and family.
At the stage of adolescence, many physiological processes occur in the child’s body, and the question of self-determination and finding one’s place in life becomes more acute.
The stage of adolescence is characterized by the search for a life partner, connections with the social group are strengthened.
At the maturity stage, the individual's attention is directed to work and caring for children.
The stage of old age is characterized by wisdom, rethinking oneself and one’s life.

The process of socialization is influenced by many factors: social and personal experience, surrounding people, heredity.

All factors are divided into four groups:

microfactors (social foundations in the family, educational institution);
mesofactors (social structure characteristic of the place of settlement, nationality);
macro factors (social parameters of the state, political and cultural system);
individual factors (personality characteristics of a certain age stage).

The effectiveness of the socialization process affects not only a specific individual, but also the entire society as a whole. When a deviation from generally accepted standards occurs in society, we are talking about deviation. Deviation is the behavior of members of society from generally accepted standards of behavior. Deviation can be individual or group. The second is more dangerous, as it says that the current conditions and circumstances do not allow a whole group of people to find their place in society.

Two more concepts are closely related to the process of socialization: