Action and its role in personality development. Human character and life circumstances.
A number of psychologists understand by action
an action that expresses a person’s attitude towards other people, the task at hand, existing social norms, values and therefore, as a rule, subject to public assessment. So, S.L. Rubinstein calls an action an action in which a person’s position, a conscious attitude towards other people, towards the norms of public morality is expressed. Aseev V.G. indicates that an act is always an action evaluated in a broad social context, an action that has a certain social meaning. Petrovsky A.V. O.
Thus, psychologists are currently introducing the concept of “ action
" to indicate:
– conscious actions in which a person expresses his attitude towards other people and the world as a whole and having social significance;
– moral actions, i.e. actions aimed at the creative embodiment of existing values in individual activities, achieving moral ideals, observing moral imperatives, etc.;
– activities in which a person expresses his moral attitude towards the world;
– special personal activity of a person, not reducible to the implementation of individual actions or activities.
It is necessary to distinguish between the concepts of “activity”, “behavior” and “action”. Deed
- this is an action (an element of activity) with a clear social meaning.
An act
is a conscious action of a person who understands its social meaning and is performed in accordance with the accepted intention;
Personality begins with action. A person’s choice of action is, as a rule, conscious. This choice is focused on achieving a personally significant result, which determines the direction of the action. Thus, personality expresses itself in action, and action expresses personality.
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Expression (self-expression) is associated with the structure of the action. The structure of an act concentrates the components of individual moral consciousness, which is realized in the behavior of the individual. It is possible that the mechanism of transition from internal to external is carried out with the help of a semantic attitude, which is formed on the basis of personal meaning. In this case, the semantic attitude ensures the stability of the act and behavior as a whole and serves as a connecting link between the internal content side of the act and its external formal manifestation.
The action underlies the assessment of the individual by others. A moral assessment of an action is possible and necessary only when the actor has freedom to choose both the goal and the means of achieving it. Without analyzing the structure, it is impossible to give a moral assessment of this or that action. Analysis of the student’s actions is of paramount importance for the teacher, because it determines the nature of the assessment of the individual as a whole and the choice of methods for his upbringing. What is an action?
The most general definition of an act convinces us that an act is a personally significant act, controlled by a system of norms accepted in society. According to established ethical ideas, an act is a kind of “cell” of moral behavior. Every action is a holistic phenomenon in which subjective-personal (motives) and objectively significant (results) elements coexist. An action with equal justification can be understood as a subjectively motivated result and as an objectively realized motive. An act is performed out of good will, out of internal motivation: its motive is duty, conscience and other strictly moral norms of motivation. The result of an action is always moral. An act devoid of moral result is called an offense.
Misdeeds go beyond the requirements of normative morality that underlie behavior.
The action has a certain orientation towards other people. A single act verifies a line of behavior and contributes to the individual’s choice of decision - to accept it or reject it. In an act, individual (individual), special (group, collective) and general (social) moral experience interpenetrate each other. “Therefore, moral actions express a variety of social relationships: individuals and individuals, individuals and groups, individuals and collectives, individuals and society.
It is noteworthy that an act can manifest itself not only in action, but also in evasion from it. But that's not the point. An action reflects a subjective value attitude, without which it simply does not exist. Moreover, the act lies both in the sphere of objective and in the sphere of subjective. The value of an action is determined by a morally valuable motive embodied in a personally and socially significant result; moreover, the moral value of an action lies in the harmony of motive and result. It is equally important that the value of an action is determined through the relationship between goals and means.
Finally, let us pay attention to the relationship between action and choice. Moral choice is usually spoken of as a choice of values and as a choice of action.
Actualization of choice requires preference for one of the options for action. An act is the core of moral choice, in which internal incentives merge with the process of realizing moral values. The conclusion about the isomorphism (correspondence) of the structure of moral choice to the structure of action is also very significant. In other words, by identifying and analyzing the structure of an act, we identify and analyze the structure of choice, and vice versa.
Character
is a set of stable individual properties of a person that determine his typical modes of behavior and activity.
The main condition for the formation and development of character
is the social environment. Of course, physiological conditions cannot be discounted. After all, the peculiarities of the functioning of the brain (processes of excitation, inhibition, the degree of mobility of nervous processes) largely determine the differences in mental reactions to the same influences.
Every person from the first days of his life is included in the system of objective attitudes of the people around him to reality. He turns out to be included in the system of relations of these people to each other and to himself. Gradually, all these relationships become his own relationships - to nature, social institutions, work, public and personal property, to other people, to himself.
Personal attitudes towards various aspects of reality, which become typical for a person and are manifested in the modes of behavior that have become habitual for him, constitute the character of this person. In other words, relatively stable and typical personal relationships to reality, manifested in the usual ways of behavior for a person, which are usually attributed to the sphere of character, are always in the closest relationships with each other and together form a more or less complex structure.
Every person, from childhood, develops a system of values in which different aspects of reality related to nature, human communities, the affairs of the person himself, etc., have unequal subjective significance for him, since they serve in different ways to satisfy his material and spiritual needs. That is why a person behaves differently when faced with different aspects of reality. For example, realizing that there is a very significant event in front of him, a person gives a strong emotional response and behaves accordingly. In another case, faced with an event that he evaluates as insignificant, a person gives a weak emotional reaction to it and again behaves accordingly. Thus, the relationship essentially represents a unity, a kind of “fusion”, of knowledge, experience and behavior.
People's attitudes to individual aspects of reality, their components and characteristics, as a rule, differ from each other not only by varying degrees of positivity or negativity, but also by varying degrees of generalization and differentiation. For example, one person can treat things that constitute public and personal property with equal thrift; for another, this quality manifests itself only in relation to personal objects. Or a person may consistently behave as a collectivist within the work team of which he is a member, but lose this quality outside of it. And his teammate shows this quality equally in the brigade and in any other community, both in official and unofficial settings.
Thus, in specific cases, a person’s attitude acts as a kind of integration of more particular, so to speak, partial relations to various objects, situations, events, states of the reality surrounding him, etc., which he combines according to some characteristics into one category. The system of such more general relationships constitutes the structure of a person’s character.
We have already discussed above that behind a person’s relationships there are always his needs, and to be more precise, a person’s needs are manifested in relationships. Therefore, it is clear that the uniqueness of the system of relationships that form character, and therefore its structure, largely depends on what needs a person has, which of them are expressed more strongly, which are weaker, how far they are separated from each other in content. Thus, if the leading human need is the need to work “not for fear, but for conscience,” then we have one system of relationships and a completely definite structure of character. On the contrary, if a person’s need to work is completely undeveloped, and among other needs the desire to parasitize and spend time idly dominates, then we have a completely different system of relationships, and the character has a structure that is different in content and form.
You should pay attention to one more character parameter that usually catches your eye when comparing the personalities of different people - strength of character. When in a person’s system of needs one or several closely related needs subjugate his thoughts and feelings for a long time, then their owner is constantly encouraged to overcome external and internal obstacles that prevent the satisfaction of the dominant need (or group of needs). This means that his character, in terms of strength, is becoming increasingly pronounced.
Numerous facts obtained in specially conducted experimental studies, as well as through observations of people’s behavior in everyday life, show that there is not always a direct correspondence between the content of character and its form. For example, several people, based on the content of the leading relationships in their characters, may turn out to be collectivists. However, the form of expression of their collectivistic character varies greatly. For some, collectivism in its form is not loud, not flashy, but is clearly expressed in behavior aimed at benefiting the country, people, comrades in a common cause, and manifests itself in caring for loved ones. For others - leaders by nature - collectivism is associated with a bright emotional manner of expression and increased activity.
In everyday life, we also encounter people’s characters where the form (behavior) can sharply disharmonize with the content. For example, a person behaves like a collectivist in front of others, but he does not experience a dominant (among others) need to be a collectivist. Those around them, without penetrating into the personality of such a person, as a rule, are not able to immediately understand that the imitation of collectivism they observe is a manifestation of another need he has, say, self-affirmation.
Many psychologists call will the spine of character. And there are reasons for this. No wonder wisdom says: sow an action and you will reap a habit, sow a habit and you will reap a character, sow a character and you will reap a destiny. Actions are the clearest manifestation of will. And if we repeat them repeatedly, trying to ensure that they meet the standards of high morality, they form volitional qualities that correspond to it, becoming character traits.
Thus, in the early stages of a person’s life, the facets of character
“hones” mainly life itself. Gradually, the initiative increasingly passes into the hands of the individual himself.
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A man of action. The main method of the powers that be
“A man is valuable when his words match his actions.” Oscar Wilde
There is another good quality - he is a man of action. There are very few such people, but they are all successful and rich. Such people not only talk and, after a while, act. They plan and then act quickly and immediately. They quickly make a decision and immediately begin implementation.
Do you know what you want from life? What to do when life is stagnant?
What does it mean to be a man of action? The time between idea and implementation becomes minimal. While others are gathering, making plans, thinking, calculating and dreaming, the man of action has already begun.
A person of action starts earlier than others and is more flexible in making decisions. He tries out an idea, a theory or a dream, and then looks at the intermediate result. If he is not satisfied, he changes the strategy or refuses implementation. A man of action is always several steps ahead of others.
