Psychic Phenomena. What are psychic phenomena? The state of "general tension"

Everything in our world operates according to certain rules. Psychology is no exception. As science, it helps answer the question, "Why do people sometimes behave the way they do?" Six psychological effects will help to understand the causal relationships of human behavior. Moreover, knowledge of these phenomena will allow you to monitor and control your own behavior.

bystander effect. The psychological phenomenon of the group

In fact, this effect (Bystander effect, bystander apathy) is shown in the image of a good Samaritan. Scientists call it “diffusion of responsibility”. For example, an ordinary passer-by is in a difficult situation that needs help. As the study shows, he will have a higher chance of getting help if there was one person as a witness, and, accordingly, a lower probability if there were several witnesses.

In the course of the study, the researchers simulated an event in which high school students touched and were about to beat younger than themselves "bespectacled and nerd" in the school wardrobe, in front of other students. 86% of those who watched this alone intervened and stood up for the victim. However, if two teenagers were watching the same situation, then the chances of help and patronage fell to the level of 64%. When the researchers increased the number of observers to four, the chances dropped to 30%.

However, this effect can be softened a little. If you are unlucky enough to get into a critical situation, and you need help, then do not ask for help from the public, but contact more personally and specifically. Instead of "Help!" It is better to address "Woman in a black dress, call an ambulance!"

Pygmalion effect. (Rosenthal) (Pygmalion effect, Rosenthal effect)

This psychological phenomenon gained popularity thanks to Robert Rosenthal, after whom it is named. The researcher tested the IQ of schoolchildren in schools, and deliberately provided false information about the results of students. Children with high scores were assigned average scores. And those who had an average result, they were credited with the best IQ test results. What happened next? Those schoolchildren who were presented to teachers as more gifted and smart actually became more successful and diligent in their studies. This happened because the plans and assumptions of teachers from specific students were higher than from others. A certain pressure from the teachers and forced the "mediocre" to study. This study can be formed in one tape - your assumptions and plans for a person or event form your reality and thoughts.

The experiment was conducted in the field of education, but the findings can be applied in other areas. So, if you want to reach certain heights, then it is better to set pre-inflated targets and evaluate your ability to achieve these goals much higher than the real state of affairs. Also, scientists noticed another pattern. Leaders who set high performance standards for their teams achieve more than leaders who set achievable goals.

The effect of complete failure. (Pratfall effect)

If you've shown your audience that you're not perfect, it's more likely that your audience will see you in a more pleasing light. When we need to impress our interlocutor and make him feel positive about you, we try to show the advantages, not the disadvantages. It turns out that another strategy would be much more effective. It is worth showing your vulnerability and weakness, because, according to research, this is precisely what stimulates empathy from other people. For example, if a professor who speaks at a conference is more worried, he will be trusted faster than a lecturer who speaks confidently. That is, making mistakes in front of an audience is normal, and you can benefit from it in the form of a positive attitude.

focus effect. (The focus effect)

People tend to overestimate the properties and qualities of things (phenomena) that they think about. Is there a cardinal difference in the feeling of happiness between a person who receives 10 thousand dollars a year for work, or a person who earns 4 thousand hryvnias a month? In fact, there is a difference, but it is rather poor. Will you be happy if you move to live on the coast of the sea or ocean, in a two-story house? Hardly. Thus, the inhabitants of Florida, despite 10 sunny months a year, are not much happier than the inhabitants of Chicago or New York.

The focus effect is widely used by marketers. They try to convince a person that a certain purchase will make him happy and joyful, which is highly unlikely in the long run.

Spotlight effect. (Spotlight effect)

Most people are usually thinking when they walk down the street. About family, work, credit, children, an interesting book, plans for the future. And when the thought process is occupied with thoughts, then people do not always pay attention to others.

In fact, passers-by frankly do not care how ironed your shirt is, whether you put on your tie correctly when you are going to university or work. The vast majority of them will not even notice the flaw in your appearance, because they will be busy with their own thoughts, which are much more interesting for them. In the spotlight, under the conditional spotlight, you are less likely than you think. That is why stop worrying about such "empty" attributes of human life, because those around you are more busy with their own problems than with your new smartphone, which you are trying to "light up" in front of others.

Psychological phenomena of decision making: the paradox of choice. (The paradox of choice)

As research by Mark Lepper and Shin Eisengar shows, the more diverse the choice, the less satisfaction we get from our decision. As part of the study, scientists offered a group of visitors in a hypermarket to take 1 of 6 types of jam for free. Others were asked to choose between 24 banks. The results of the experiment showed that 32% of the subjects who made a choice of 6 jars were quite satisfied with the decision. But of those who chose one species out of 24, only 3% were satisfied with the choice. The effect was discovered by Barry Schwartz. To avoid the paradox of choice, the researcher recommends limiting in your thoughts the number of likely choices that you can lean towards.

These six psychological phenomena will make it easier for you to find causal relationships in the behavior of your friends, colleagues and others. And don't forget to try these effects on yourself. Ask yourself more often: “Am I really attracting a lot of attention from passers-by or is this a spotlight effect?”

The psyche is complex and diverse in its manifestations. Three major groups of mental phenomena are usually distinguished:

Ø mental processes;

Ø mental states;

Ø mental properties.

mental process- this is the course of a mental phenomenon that has a beginning, development and end, manifested in the form reactions. The end of one mental process is closely connected with the beginning of a new process. Hence the continuity of mental activity.

Mental processes are caused by both external influences and irritations of the nervous system coming from the internal environment of the organism.

All mental processes are divided into cognitive(these include sensation and perception, representation, memory, thinking and imagination), emotional(active and passive experiences), strong-willed- decision, execution, volitional effort, and so on.

Mental processes provide the formation of knowledge and the primary regulation of human behavior and activities.

In a complex mental activity, various processes are connected and form a single stream of consciousness that provides an adequate reflection of reality and the implementation of various types of activity. Mental processes proceed with different speed and intensity depending on the characteristics of external influences and states of the individual.

Under mental state one should understand the relatively stable level of mental activity that has been determined at a given time, which manifests itself in increased or decreased activity of the individual.

Every person experiences different mental states on a daily basis. In one mental state, mental or physical work is easy and productive, in another it is difficult and inefficient.

Mental states are of a reflex nature: they arise under the influence of the situation, physiological factors, the course of work, time and verbal influences (praise, censure, and so on).

The most studied are:

Ø general mental state (for example, attention, manifested at the level of active concentration or absent-mindedness);

Ø emotional states or moods (cheerful, enthusiastic, sad, sad, angry, irritable, and others).

The highest and most stable regulators of mental activity are mental properties personality.

The mental properties of a person should be understood as stable formations that provide a certain qualitative and quantitative level of activity and behavior that is typical for a given person.

Each mental property is formed gradually in the process of reflection and is fixed in the process of practice, being the result of reflective and practical activity.

Personality properties are diverse. They are classified according to the grouping of mental processes on the basis of which they are formed:

Ø intellectual properties - observation, flexibility of mind;

Ø volitional properties - determination, perseverance;

Ø emotional properties - sensitivity, tenderness, passion, affectivity and the like.

Mental properties do not coexist together, they are synthesized and represent complex structural formations of the personality, which include:

Ø life position of the individual (a system of needs, interests, beliefs, ideals that determines the selectivity and level of human activity);

Ø temperament, that is, a system of natural personality traits (mobility, balance of behavior and tone of activity), characterizing the dynamic side of behavior;

Ø ability (a system of intellectual-volitional and emotional properties that determines the creative possibilities of the individual);

Ø character as a system of relationships and behaviors.

(a) Identification of individual phenomena from the general context of mental life

In any developed mental life, we are faced with such absolutely fundamental phenomena as the opposition of the subject to the object and the orientation of the "I" to a certain content. In this aspect, the awareness of the object (objective consciousness) is opposed to the consciousness of "I". This first distinction allows us to describe objective anomalies (distorted perceptions, hallucinations, etc.) as such, and then ask how and why the consciousness of the "I" could change. But the subjective (related to the state of "I") aspect of consciousness and the objective aspects of that "other" to which the "I" is oriented are united when the "I" is embraced by that which is outside of it, and at the same time is prompted from within to embrace this external in relation to him "otherness". The description of what is objective leads to an understanding of its meaning for the “I”, and the description of the states of the “I” (emotional states, moods, impulses, drives) leads to an understanding of the objective reality in which these states reveal themselves.

The subjective orientation to this or that object is, of course, a constant and fundamental phenomenon of any mental life accessible to understanding; but this alone is not enough to differentiate phenomena. Direct experience is always a set of relations, without the analysis of which no description of phenomena is possible.

This set of relations is based on the ways of our experience of time and space, our awareness of our own physicality and the surrounding reality, further, it has its own internal division due to the opposition of the states of feelings and drives, which, in turn, gives rise to further divisions.

All these articulations are overlapped by dividing the totality of phenomena into direct and indirect. Any phenomenon of mental life has the character of direct experience, but it is important for the soul that thinking and will be outside the sphere of this direct experience. The fundamental, primary phenomenon, without which analytical thinking and purposeful will are impossible, is denoted by the term reflection, it is the turning of experience back, on itself and on its content. From this arise all mediated phenomena, and the whole mental life of a person is saturated with reflexivity. Conscious psychic life is not a heap of isolated, separable phenomena, but a mobile set of relations from which we extract the data of interest to us in the very act of describing them. This set of relationships changes along with the state of consciousness inherent in the soul at a given moment in time. Any distinctions we make are transitory and sooner or later become obsolete (or we ourselves refuse them).

From this general view of mental life as a set of relations it follows that:

1) phenomena can be delimited and defined only partially - to the extent that they are available for re-identification. Separating phenomena from the general context of mental life makes them clearer and more distinct than they really are. But if we aim for accurate concepts, fruitful observations, and a clear presentation of facts, we must take this inaccuracy for granted:

2) phenomena can appear in our descriptions again and again, depending on which particular aspect is emphasized in them (for example, the phenomenology of perception can be considered both from the point of view of object awareness and from the point of view of feeling).

(b) Form and content of phenomena

Let us set forth a number of provisions that are of general significance for all the phenomena that are subject to description. Form must be distinguished from content, which may change from time to time; for example, the fact of a hallucination must not be confused with its content, which may be a person or a tree, menacing figures, or peaceful landscapes. Perceptions, ideas, judgments, feelings, impulses of self-consciousness - all these are forms of mental phenomena, they designate varieties of existence through which the content is revealed "for us. True, when describing specific events of mental life, we take into account the content of the psyche of an individual, but in phenomenology we are only interested in form. Depending on which aspect of the phenomenon - formal or content - we have in mind at any given moment, we can neglect its other aspect, that is, respectively, content analysis or phenomenological research. For the patients themselves, only the content usually matters. Often they are completely unaware of exactly how they experience this content; accordingly, they often confuse hallucinations, pseudo-hallucinations, illusory representations, etc., because they do not attach importance to the ability to differentiate these things that are so insignificant for them.

On the other hand, the content modifies the way phenomena are experienced: it gives phenomena a certain weight in the context of mental life as a whole and points the way to their comprehension and interpretation.

An excursion into the realm of form and content. All knowledge presupposes a distinction between form and content: this distinction is constantly used in psychopathology. Regardless of whether it deals with the simplest phenomena or complex wholes. Let's give some examples.

1. In mental life there is always a subject and an object. We call the objective element in the broadest sense psychic content, and how the object appears to the subject (perception, representation, thought) we call form. Thus, hypochondriacal content, regardless of whether it is revealed through voices, obsessions, overvalued ideas, etc., is always available for identification as content. Similarly, we can talk about the content of fears and other emotional states.

2. The form of psychoses is opposed to their particular content, for example, periodic phases of dysphoria as a form of illness should be contrasted with particular types of behavior (alcoholism, fumes, suicide attempts, etc.) as elements of the content.

3. Some of the most general changes affecting the mental life as a whole - such as schizophrenia or hysteria - being available for interpretation only in terms of psychology, can also be considered from a formal point of view. Any kind of human desire or aspiration, any kind of thought or fantasy can act as the content of one or another of these forms and find in them a way of revealing itself (schizophrenic, hysterical, etc.).

The main interest of phenomenology is in form; as for the content, it seems rather random. On the other hand, for an understanding psychology, the content is always essential, and the form can sometimes be unimportant.

(c) Transitions between phenomena

It seems that many patients are able to see with their spiritual gaze the same content in the form of various phenomenological forms rapidly replacing each other. So, in acute psychosis, the same content - for example, jealousy - can take on a variety of forms (emotional state, hallucinations, delusional idea). It would be wrong to talk about "transitions" from one form to another. The word "transition" as a general term is nothing more than a disguise for defects in analysis. The truth is that at every moment any experience is woven from a multitude of phenomena that we share in describing. For example, when a hallucinatory experience is imbued with delusional belief, the perceptual elements gradually disappear and eventually it becomes difficult to determine whether they existed at all, and if so, in what form. Thus, there are clear differences between phenomena - real phenomenological gaps (for example, between physically real and imaginary events) or phenomenological transitions (for example, from awareness of reality to hallucinations). One of the most important tasks of psychopathology is to capture all these differences, to deepen, expand and systematize them; only under this condition can we achieve success in the analysis of each individual case.

(d) Classification of groups of phenomena

Below we give a consistent description of abnormal mental phenomena - from specific experiences to the experience of space and time, then to awareness of one's own corporality, awareness of reality and delusional ideas. Next, we will turn to emotional states, drives, will, etc., up to the person's awareness of his "I", and at the end we will present the phenomena of reflection. The breakdown into paragraphs is determined by the distinctive properties and visual characteristics of the relevant phenomena; it does not follow any predetermined scheme, since at present our phenomenological data cannot be classified in any satisfactory way. Being one of the foundations of psychopathology, phenomenology is still very poorly developed. Our attempt at description cannot hide this defect; nevertheless, we must give at least some - albeit tentative - classification. In frontal conditions, the best classification is the one that captures the natural practical consequences of the facts being discovered. The inevitable defects of such a classification will stimulate our desire to comprehend the totality of phenomena - and not so much through purely logical operations, but through the consistent Deepening and expansion of our ability to see phenomena in all their diversity.

The philosophical term “phenomenon” comes from the Greek “φαινόμενον”, which means “appearing”, “rare fact”, “unusual phenomenon”. If you look around, you can see many objects, feel smells, warmth or cold, see beauty and admire it, hear music and be delighted with its melodic sounds. All these objects and phenomena in philosophy are called this term. In a word, they are all phenomena. These are philosophical concepts that denote those phenomena that can be comprehended in sensory experience. All of them can become an object of contemplation and scientific observation.

Types of phenomena

Based on the foregoing, these objects and phenomena can be divided into physical and mental. According to the theory of the Austrian philosopher Franz Brentano, the former include sounds, smells, the natural landscape, precipitation, fields, forests, mountains and valleys, trees and shrubs, and other objects of the world around us. All of them are given to us in experience, that is, we have the opportunity to see, hear, touch and feel them. But mental phenomena are all our mental activity, that is, all those ideas that arise in our minds through sensations or imagination. These include acts of hearing, imagining, seeing, feeling, fantasizing, as well as such as remembering, doubting, judging; emotional experiences: joy, sadness, fear, hope, despair, courage, cowardice, love, anger, hatred, surprise, desire, excitement, admiration, etc.

cultural phenomenon

The word "culture" has a great variety of meanings. It is an object of knowledge of various sciences: philosophy, sociology, aesthetics, cultural studies, ethnography, political science, psychology, pedagogy, history, art history, etc. In a broad sense, culture is all human activity that can have a variety of manifestations. It includes all the ways and forms of self-knowledge and self-expression that have been accumulated by society, and even by an individual. In a narrow sense, culture is a set of codes (norms of behavior, rules, stereotypes, customs and rituals, etc.) adopted in a given society and which govern human behavior. In a word, culture is material and on our planet the first of them have a special meaning only for man, since they are consecrated by customs, art, religion, in a word - culture. As for spiritual values, everything is not so simple here. We have already witnessed more than once that our smaller brothers are also able to show such feelings as devotion, love, affection, joy, sadness, resentment, gratitude, etc., etc.

Culture and society

In the sociocultural context, the concept of “phenomenon” receives the status of a category. This is a phenomenon that is being explored in culture. Today, it is increasingly becoming the object of various scientific works: dissertations, reports, theses and term papers. However, it is extremely difficult for their authors to give a precise definition of this phenomenon. Everyone interprets it in their own way. The combination of such two concepts as “society” and “culture” is ubiquitous. Culture is involved or present in almost all spheres of human life without exception. Our vocabulary constantly includes such expressions as “sociocultural space”, “cultural policy”, “personal culture”, etc. Many of these concepts have become so familiar to us that we do not even notice how often we use them. So how to understand the phenomenon of culture? This is, first of all, a special way of human life, where the objective and subjective act as a whole. Through culture, the organization and regulation of human life occurs, which leads to an increase in the level of his activity as a member of society.

Sociocultural in the works of Petirim Sorokin and F. Tenbrook

P. also investigated this phenomenon. According to him, a sociocultural phenomenon is everything that people get from their environment due to their connection with culture, which, in turn, is the bearer of “supraorganic” values. Under the latter, he understood everything that produces, for example, it can be languages, religion, philosophy, art, ethics, law, manners, habits, etc., etc. In a word, according to Sorokin, "sociocultural" is the basic category of the social world, which implies the inseparability of personality, culture and society. And the German philosopher F. Tenbruck called this connection a “seamless connection” of three components: the individual, society and the system of moral and material values, that is, culture.

What can be considered a socio-cultural phenomenon?

Let's first list those phenomena that fall under the definition. This is a whole set of concepts that affect a person living in a society of his own kind. Of course, this is not a complete list, but here are some of them:

And this is a list of sociocultural phenomena. It is more extensive. These phenomena are cultural and social phenomena combined into one whole. Here they are:

• education;
• the science;
• policy;
• tourism;
• spirituality;
• physicality;
• upbringing;
• family;
• fashion;
• brand;
• religion;
• myth, legend;
• confidence;
• happiness;
• grief;
• legal validity;
• motherhood;
• tolerance;
• kitsch, etc.

This list can be continued indefinitely.

Sociocultural phenomenon of development

In our world, nothing is permanent and does not stand still. All phenomena are either improved or destroyed, moving towards their final death. Perfection is a sociocultural phenomenon of development. It is a process aimed at positively changing both material and spiritual objects with the sole purpose of becoming better. From the course of philosophy it is known that the ability to change is a universal property of both matter and consciousness. This is the principle of existence common to all (nature, knowledge and society).

Personality as a psychological phenomenon

A being that possesses, that is, a living person, is a person. It has a very complex structure, which is an integral systemic formation, a set of actions, relationships, significant, from the point of view of society, mental properties of the individual, which were formed as a result of ontogenesis. They define his actions and deeds as the behavior of the subject of communication and activity, possessing consciousness. A person is capable of self-regulation, as well as dynamic functioning in society. At the same time, its properties, relations and actions harmoniously interact with each other. Surely everyone is familiar with such an assessment of a person as a “core”. This property is endowed with those individuals who have a strong character. However, in psychology, the "core" education of the individual is explained differently - this is his self-esteem. It is built on the basis of the relationship of the individual to himself. It is also affected by how a person evaluates other people. In the traditional sense, a person is an individual who acts as a subject of public (social) relations and spiritual activity. This structure also includes the physical and physiological characteristics of the human body, as well as its psychological characteristics. Thus, in addition to social and socio-cultural phenomena, there is a psychological phenomenon. These are the phenomena that relate to an individual and his inner world: these are feelings, emotions, experiences, etc. So, a psychological phenomenon can be love, hatred, aggression, sympathy, manipulation, etc.

Conclusion

Regardless of which category they belong to, phenomena are everything that can become an object of observation for the purpose of knowledge.