S. K

differential psychology- a branch of science that studies the individual differences in the psyche of individuals and groups of people, as well as the nature, sources and consequences of these differences. This is the science of the laws of mental variation.
Individualization is a property of all living things. Even prepsychic forms of life have a significant range of differences, although these differences relate to the structure and functioning of organisms. And with the advent of the psyche as a reflection of being and orientation in it, differences began to affect all forms of activity of living beings. Individual differences in the psyche are inherent not only to people, but also to the entire animal world, and often intraspecific differences exceed interspecific ones. So, for example, the smartest rat can act more effectively in the same learning situation than the stupidest monkey, standing above the rat on the evolutionary ladder. There are manifestations of social behavior in gray geese, which were traditionally considered characteristic only of people, until the remarkable ethologist K. Lorenz paid attention to them (a triumphant cry, indicating selectivity in choosing a partner, cases of marital fidelity for forty or more years, data on friendship and jealousy among animals) (1).
On the other hand, such a property of human thinking as the ability to solve two-phase tasks (observed in primates, as was shown by the experiments of W. Koehler), is often absent in the field of social intelligence (for example, parents who “share” the right to communicate with a child after a divorce , often completely lose the ability to calculate the "two-move" and thus protect the common interests). Therefore, individual variations may indeed overlap between groups and between species. That is, a person appears first of all as an individual.
In every person there is something that is common to all people, something that makes him related to some of them, and something that is inherent only to him alone. AT Everyday life we often encounter the phenomena of individual differences, carrying out everyday psychodiagnostics of the people with whom we interact. However, scientific knowledge differs from non-scientific knowledge: by the presence of an unresolved problem, theories that can contribute to the search for a solution, a developed conceptual apparatus and the presence of objective methods for recording scientific facts, objectivity and a degree of generalization. If we compare scientific knowledge with art, which is revealed to each person to some extent, then art is based on intuition and therefore subjectively and affects emotionally. Science also differs from religion as a way of knowing the human soul in that religion follows dogma and is based on faith, while science strives for proof and is constantly updated, being in the process of self-denial. Therefore, concepts that were once recognized as false, from time to time again return to science (3, 4).
Until recently, psychology, like every young science, sought to identify the general patterns of the mental, to develop problems from a common position. And in the search for the common, as a rule, the originality of the individual was lost. However, each researcher came across individual variations of the mental, which were first considered as a source of observational errors, and then the problem of the variability of human mental manifestations began to arise from this source of errors. And the very logic of the development of science led to the allocation of the differential-psychological aspect (9).
Tasks differential psychology are to establish patterns of occurrence and manifestation of individual differences in the human psyche, to develop the theoretical foundations of psychodiagnostic research and psychocorrection programs. Today, this is a field of knowledge that is maximally deployed to the needs of practice and therefore is developing very rapidly. And, just as there was no humiliation for physics that a microscope, telephone, X-ray therapy entered practice from its depths, so psychology will by no means lose its truly scientific character if it takes part in solving practical problems, V. Stern believed. When a new concept is born (for example, character accentuation, behavioral style), this process is carried out in the bosom of differential psychology, but when a test is created to diagnose this quality, the relay task is transferred to specialists in the field of psychodiagnostics and differential psychometrics and (although there have been observed and reverse processes, when a test that works in practice did not acquire its theoretical understanding, which was observed, in particular, in the development of factor models of intelligence).
Differential psychology has areas of intersection with various other branches of psychological knowledge. Thus, it differs from general psychology in that the latter focuses on the study of the general laws of the psyche (including the psyche of animals). Comparative psychology (once this term was used as a synonym for differential psychology, which is a literal translation of the word) is currently studying the characteristics of the psyche of living beings located at different steps of the evolutionary ladder. She often uses the knowledge of zoopsychology, deals with the problems of anthropogenesis and the formation of human consciousness. Age-related psychology studies the characteristics of a person through the prism of patterns inherent in the age stage of his development. Social Psychology considers the features acquired by a person by virtue of his belonging to some social group, large or small. Finally, differential psychophysiology analyzes the individual characteristics of the human psyche from the point of view of their conditionality nervous system (3, 8).
From the very beginning of its formation, differential psychology drew attention to itself by the heterogeneity of its subject matter. So, even V. Stern noted that she studies mental and physical phenomena(phenomena), actions(which he defined as phenomena having a temporal extension) and inclinations(phenomena that are chronic and potential). That is, one can try to study not only what is hidden and cannot be objectively observed, but also what is manifested in behavior and intentions, attitudes, in other words, realized and unrealized abilities. Phenomena in the traditional sense are objects of direct experience, while actions and tendencies are objects of mediated experience.
At present, differential psychology studies the individual, subject-content and spiritual-worldview qualities of individuality, features of self-consciousness, style characteristics of the individual and the implementation of various types of activities (professional, educational, communication, etc.).

Stages of development of differential psychology

In its development, psychology, like all other scientific disciplines, has passed (more precisely, is in the process of passing) through three stages: pre-scientific knowledge, the natural science paradigm of cognition and the humanitarian paradigm. pre-scientific knowledge characterized by the predominance of the method of observation, the accumulation of worldly knowledge and a low level of generalization. Natural science paradigm proclaims the need to establish causal patterns based on experimental data and generalizes these patterns (an approach that reflects the general properties of phenomena is called nomothetic). The genesis of properties and regularities is not always considered in this case. Disregard for scientific "incidents" is usually regarded as evidence of the youth of science, for which a single phenomenon is valuable insofar as it may turn out to be a representative of a certain tad of phenomena, and can lead to the discovery of a universal principle or pattern. Therefore, the individual has a relative value for the development of knowledge.
Humanitarian paradigm, in contrast, focuses on the uniqueness of the phenomenon under consideration, without setting itself the task of statistically confirming the reliability of the data (the approach that affirms the individual features of the phenomenon as the main value is called idiographic).“...Differential psychology will only then have the prospect of reaching a phase of calm development, when it is emancipated from the science that gave birth to it - general psychology,” wrote V. Stern in 1911 (11, p. 6). We can say that this has already happened. And here the historical approach turns out to be absolutely inevitable - consideration of the phenomenon in its formation, analysis and forecast of the consequences.
The dominance of the humanitarian paradigm testifies to the maturity of the scientific discipline and is noted not only in torments about society and man, but also in the sciences of nature. Modern psychology allows itself to strive for psychography, knowledge - for understanding and description. Thus, differential psychology naturally emerged from general psychology, within which it existed for a long time under the name of the psychology of individual differences. Since the significance of the special in general becomes greater, then the goal of the study becomes individuality (compare with the Marxist definition of personality not as an abstract inherent in an individual, but as a set of social relations) (7, 11).
Differential psychology also has a prehistory of formation, during which some areas of pre-scientific, empirical thought even managed to acquire their own names. So, characterology strove to reduce the differences between people to simple types, that is, she was engaged in compiling classifications on various grounds, both anatomical and physiological, and psychological, like, for example, a person’s ability to accept suffering. Representatives of characterology were I. Kant, I. Banzen. Another direction psychognostics, identified and established relationships between certain movements, anatomical characteristics and properties of a person's character. At the same time, naturally, various natural properties of a person fell into the focus of attention. Yes, within the framework physiognomy founded by I.K. Lavater, personality traits, facial expressions, and even just the image of a person's silhouette served as the basis for predicting his behavior. Proponents of phrenology ( cranioscopy) developed by F.A. Hallem, sought to determine the characteristics of a person by the shape of the structure of the skull. And the adherents graphology, the science of handwriting, which Abbé I. Michon was more involved in, diagnosed signs of individuality in writing letters, inclination, pressure and other characteristics of the precise movements of a person reflected in his handwriting. All these areas of pre-scientific cognition, once recognized as unreliable and rejected by positivist science, are now returning, on new grounds, to the psychology of individual differences. The task of future research is to validate these methods of empirical generalization and connect them with modern scientific results.
The term "Differential Psychology" was introduced by the German psychologist W. Stern in his work "The Psychology of Individual Differences", published in 1900. For some time, the following concepts were used as synonyms: characterology (I. Banzen, B. Luca), which today belongs to the field of knowledge about character; ethology (J. St. Mill), currently studying the science of behavior; individual psychology (A. Binet, E. Kraepelin), today denoting the Adlerian direction of psychoanalysis; special psychology (G. Heymans), which also means medical psychology (11).
The first major representatives of the new scientific direction were A. Binet, J. Cattell, F. Galton, V. Stern, in Russia - A.F. Lazursky. The main research method at first was individual and group tests, tests of differences in mental abilities "and later - projective techniques to measure attitudes and emotional reactions (1, 2, 5).
The psychology of individual differences has always been influenced by practice - pedagogy, medicine, labor psychology. And its registration as a separate science became possible due to the following prerequisites (3, 8).
1. Introduction to psychology of the experimental method. The most important event here was the opening of the first experimental psychological laboratory by W. Wundt in 1879, where he began, under experimental conditions (albeit using the method of introspection), the study of mental processes, in particular apperception. Very quickly after that, similar laboratories began to open in other countries of Europe and America. No less important for the development of positivist psychology was the derivation of the basic psychophysical law of Fechner - Weber (E = const In R, where Empfindung is the magnitude of sensation, and Reiz is the magnitude of the stimulus), due to which the "light" and "shadow" sides of life turned out to be interconnected a fairly simple algebraic relationship. This scientific fact- an expressive illustration of the inscrutable scientific ways, because Fechner, according to his convictions, "a terry idealist", as they wrote about him in pre-perestroika times, least of all sought to strengthen the positions of materialism with his research.
Back in 1796, thanks to an alleged oversight by an assistant at the Greenwich Observatory, Kinnybrook, reaction time was discovered as a psychological phenomenon (observations were based on the “eye and ear” method, which requires coordination of visual and auditory information). Twenty years later, the Koenigsberg astronomer Bessel read about this case in scientific reports and became interested in the question of individual variations in the testimony of different observers. This was the main argument in favor of starting to consider the mental as a process that has a temporal extension, having a beginning, middle and end, and not as a simultaneous (one-time) phenomenon. Later, the Dutch researcher F. Donders developed a special scheme for calculating reaction time, and an increase in reaction time began to be perceived as an indicator of the complication of mental processes. Today it is difficult to truly appreciate these discoveries, but against the background of the complete absence of ways to objectively observe the mental, they had a truly revolutionary sound - it became possible to change, measure and evaluate the psyche.
However, having freed psychology from an inferiority complex in connection with the recognition of itself as a science, the experimental method, according to the well-known modern researcher A. Anastasi, somewhat slowed down the development of interest in individual phenomena of the psyche, which were actively studied at the prescientific stage.
2. The next prerequisite for the transformation of differential psychology into a full-fledged science was use of statistical analysis methods. Each mental quality, any feature of the psyche can be considered as a point on a continuum expressing the change of this feature from a minimum to a maximum. Almost every time the quality in question is the result of the action of many variables, a normal distribution curve is obtained, that is, small (subnormal) and large (supernormal) values \u200b\u200bare usually less than the mean (normal) values.
It should be noted, however, that not all regularities are subject to the law of normal distribution; for example, there is Zipf's law, which determines the distribution of the number of settlements of different sizes. This law expresses a linear relationship: there are many villages and towns, and few highly populated cities. Therefore, it is always necessary to make sure that the phenomenon under study is described by a normal distribution.
The first to draw attention to the possibility of applying the theory of probability to socio-psychological phenomena were the Belgian sociologist Adolf Quetelet and Francis Galton. Quetelet studied large groups and drew attention to the rhythm of social processes, on the basis of which he created the theory of the “average person” (man tends to act as most people do), which is repeatedly criticized by Russian psychologists. F. Galton, on the contrary, focused not on average characteristics, but on supernormal values: the subject of his attention was special abilities, which he wrote about in the book Hereditary Genius, published in 1869. Galton sought to study supermen and showed through his work that genius is a quality that is hereditary.
Statistical methods are applied mathematics techniques used by psychology to increase the objectivity and reliability of the data obtained, to process experimental results. The idea of correlation analysis was born from F. Galton's attempts to investigate the patterns of inheritance by children of the psychological and physical characteristics of their parents. He developed several variants of factor analysis for studying intellectual abilities, a number of methods were proposed specifically for testing newly created tests.
Now there are several areas of using statistical methods in psychology: a) descriptive statistics, including grouping, classification, graphical presentation of data; b) the theory of statistical inference used to predict outcomes from survey data; c) the theory of planning experiments, which serves to discover and test causal relationships between variables.
The following methods of statistical analysis are usually used. Analysis of variance allows you to determine the measure of individual variation of indicators (for example, it is clear that with the same average indicators, the range of distribution can vary significantly). For some research and practical problems, it is the dispersion that provides the main information. So, for example, imagine that the average score obtained by schoolchildren on an algebra test is 4 for both boys and girls. But the boys have both triples and fives, and all the girls actively cheated from each other and as a result received four. It is clear that the result is the same in each group, but the psychological and pedagogical meaning behind the average score is completely different.
Correlation analysis certifies the existence of a connection, dependence between the studied variables. At the same time, the simultaneity of the manifestation of these signs is confirmed, but not at all their causal conditionality. For example, it is noted that marital satisfaction among spouses is negatively correlated with anxiety (meaning: the more satisfied they family life, the more relaxed they feel). However, based on this fact, we cannot know whether they are calm because everything is in order at home, or whether they are satisfied with their life together because they have low anxiety and a generally positive attitude towards life. There are several formulas for calculating correlation coefficients, which can take values from +1 to -1. Correlations close to zero cannot confirm the existence of a relationship between variables.
And finally factor analysis is a group of methods designed to determine properties that cannot be observed and measured directly. The task of factor analysis is, in its most general form, to reduce the number of variables, to reduce all their diversity to a few common factors. In the event that, according to the results of calculating the correlation coefficients, there are particularly tight connections between several indicators (correlation pleiades), it can be assumed that they are behind a common factor - a variable of a higher level of generalization. Factor models are used everywhere now, but are especially popular in the psychology of personality and intelligence.
To use the methods of statistical analysis, you need to be sure that the distribution of the studied quality is normal; but even under this condition, there is a possibility that the results obtained will turn out to be random. This probability is called the "significance level".
3. The third prerequisite for the formalization of differential psychology into truly scientific knowledge was use of psychogenetic data- a field of psychology bordering on genetics, the subject of which is the origin of individual psychological characteristics human, the role of the environment and genotype in their formation. The most informative was the twin method in its variants, which allows you to maximally equalize the impact of the environment and differentiate, depending on the source, the dispersion of the studied qualities into additive (passed down from generation to generation), non-additive (present in siblings, which is important only for relatives of the same generation) and dispersion. associated with the difference in the environment. Recently, however, genetic analysis has also been used (5, 9).

The concept of psychological norm

The main consumer of differential psychological knowledge is psychodiagnostics. In the psychology of individual differences, concepts are born, for the measurement of which methods are then created or selected. Here, an idea arises about the methods for evaluating and interpreting the results obtained. In this regard, the concept of psychological norm, which is highly heterogeneous in content and is influenced by at least four factors.
1. Norm - statistical concept. What is considered normal is that which is a lot, which belongs to the middle of the distribution. And its “tail” parts, respectively, indicate the region of low (“subnormal”) or high (“supernormal”) values. To assess quality, we must correlate a person's score with the scores of others and thus determine his place on the normal distribution curve. Obviously, the prefixes "sub" and "super" do not give an ethical or pragmatic assessment of quality (after all, if a person has a "super-normal" indicator of aggressiveness, this is hardly good for others and for himself).
Norms are not absolute, they develop and are obtained empirically for a given group (age, social, and others). So, for example, during recent years the masculinity index according to the MMPI questionnaire among girls is steadily increased; however, this does not mean that they are all behaving like young men, but the need to revise outdated norms.
2. Norms are conditional social stereotypes. If a person's behavior does not correspond to the generally accepted in a given society, it is perceived as deviant. For example, in Russian culture it is not customary to put your feet on the table, but in American it is not condemned by anyone.

Rice. 1. Hypothetical distribution of 600 female college students on a dominance test. The 1st quartile (the area of subnormal values, in which girls avoiding being leaders), the 2nd and 3rd quartiles (the area of normal values) and the 4th quartile are located, in which the indicators of girls persistently striving for leadership are located

3. Norms are associated with mental health. Anything that requires a referral to a clinician may be considered abnormal. It should be noted, however, that in psychiatry the evaluative approach is also discussed, and as the most significant indications of a deviation from the norm, a violation of the productivity of activity and the ability to self-regulate is taken. So, for example, when old man, realizing the weakness of his memory, uses auxiliary means (a notebook, laying out the necessary objects in his field of vision), then this behavior corresponds to the norm, and if he, treating himself uncritically, refuses the need to "prosthetic" his living space, then this leads to ultimately to the inability to solve tasks and indicates a violation of mental health.
4. Finally, the idea of norms is determined by expectations, one’s own non-general experience and other subjective variables: so, for example, if the first child in the family began to speak at the age of one and a half years, then the second, who had not yet learned to speak freely by the age of two, is perceived as endowed with signs of lagging behind.
V. Stern, calling for caution in evaluating a person, noted that, firstly, psychologists do not have the right to draw a conclusion about the anomaly of the individual himself as a carrier of this property from the established anomaly of a property and, secondly, it is impossible to establish an anomaly of personality reduced to a narrow sign as its only root cause. In modern diagnostics, the concept of "norm" is used in the study of non-personal characteristics, and when it comes to personality, the term "features" is used, thereby emphasizing the deliberate rejection of the normative approach.
So, norms are not a frozen phenomenon, they are constantly updated and changed. The standards of psychodiagnostic methods must also be reviewed regularly (5, 9).

Directions of differential psychological research

The book "140 Questions for a Family Psychologist" is devoted to the most pressing problems of child and family psychology.

The material is presented in the form of answers to the most typical questions from parents' letters. Psychological difficulties caused by the natural development of the child and the family as a whole, regulatory crises, extreme situations and individual characteristics of people are considered.

Children in the divorce carousel

The book brought to your attention is a psychological guide to situations that arise in a family after a divorce. The main attention of the authors - a psychologist, sociologist, philosopher and psychotherapist - is given to the communication of parents with a child.

With the help of popular science tests, real cases from counseling practice and practical advice, a palette of possible ways of dealing with a post-divorce crisis is revealed to readers, helping them choose the best solutions for a given family. All factual material is borrowed from Russian reality.

differential psychology

The book is one of the first domestic manuals on the psychology of individual differences. Reflects modern ideas about the sources of individual variations of the psyche (environment and heredity), introduces readers to the classical and latest typologies of individuality.

Psychological signs of different nature (formal-dynamic, subject-content, spiritual-ideological), their interaction and development are considered. Well-structured and equipped with didactic material, the manual prepares students for the study of a cycle of practical and applied disciplines: psychodiagnostics, counseling, psychotherapy.

For students of psychological and pedagogical specialties and all those interested in the peculiarities of the inner world of a person.

The family psychologist is responsible

A popular publication dedicated to the most pressing problems of child and family psychology, built in the form of questions and answers.

Psychological difficulties caused by the natural development of the child and the family as a whole, regulatory crises, extreme situations and individual characteristics of people are considered.

Sovereign Man: A Psychological Study of the Subject in His Being

For the first time in Russian psychology, the book systematically explores the phenomenology and the formation of the psychological sovereignty of the individual as one of the forms of human freedom. A fundamentally new methodological view of understanding human being is substantiated — the subject-environment approach proposed by the author, the key construct of which is the “Psychological space of the personality”.

Various ontological languages of self-expression are considered, corresponding to the dimensions of the psychological space: body language, territory, things, social attachments, temporary habits, tastes and values. The intra-family interaction is analyzed from the point of view of maintaining personal sovereignty, boundaries and optimal psychological distance in relation to loved ones. A new psychological interpretation of the phenomena of trust and tolerance will be given.

Individualization is a property of all living things. Even prepsychic forms of life have a significant range of differences, although these differences relate to the structure and functioning of organisms. And with the advent of the psyche as a reflection of being and orientation in it, differences began to affect all forms of activity of living beings. Individual differences in the psyche are inherent not only to people, but also to the entire animal world, and often intraspecific differences exceed interspecific ones. So, for example, the smartest rat can act more effectively in the same learning situation than the stupidest monkey, standing above the rat on the evolutionary ladder. There are manifestations of social behavior in gray geese, which were traditionally considered characteristic only of people, until the remarkable ethologist K. Lorenz paid attention to them (a triumphant cry, indicating selectivity in choosing a partner, cases of marital fidelity for forty or more years, data on friendship and jealousy among animals) (1).

On the other hand, such a property of human thinking as the ability to solve two-phase tasks (observed in primates, as was shown by the experiments of W. Koehler), is often absent in the field of social intelligence (for example, parents who “share” the right to communicate with a child after a divorce , often completely lose the ability to calculate the "two-move" and thus protect the common interests). Therefore, individual variations may indeed overlap between groups and between species. That is, a person appears first of all as an individual.

In every person there is something that is common to all people, something that makes him related to some of them, and something that is inherent only to him alone. In everyday life, we often encounter the phenomena of individual differences, carrying out everyday psychodiagnostics of the people with whom we interact. However, scientific knowledge differs from non-scientific knowledge: by the presence of an unresolved problem, theories that can contribute to the search for a solution, a developed conceptual apparatus and the presence of objective methods for recording scientific facts, objectivity and a degree of generalization. If we compare scientific knowledge with art, which is revealed to each person to some extent, then art is based on intuition and therefore subjectively and affects emotionally. Science also differs from religion as a way of knowing the human soul in that religion follows dogma and is based on faith, while science strives for proof and is constantly updated, being in the process of self-denial. Therefore, concepts that were once recognized as false, from time to time again return to science (3, 4).

Until recently, psychology, like every young science, sought to identify the general patterns of the mental, to develop problems from a common position. And in the search for the common, as a rule, the originality of the individual was lost. However, each researcher came across individual variations of the mental, which were first considered as a source of observational errors, and then the problem of the variability of human mental manifestations began to arise from this source of errors. And the very logic of the development of science led to the allocation of the differential-psychological aspect (9).

Tasks differential psychology are to establish patterns of occurrence and manifestation of individual differences in the human psyche, to develop the theoretical foundations of psychodiagnostic research and psychocorrection programs. Today, this is a field of knowledge that is maximally deployed to the needs of practice and therefore is developing very rapidly. And, just as there was no humiliation for physics that a microscope, telephone, X-ray therapy entered practice from its depths, so psychology will by no means lose its truly scientific character if it takes part in solving practical problems, V. Stern believed. When a new concept is born (for example, character accentuation, behavioral style), this process is carried out in the bosom of differential psychology, but when a test is created to diagnose this quality, the relay task is transferred to specialists in the field of psychodiagnostics and differential psychometrics and (although there have been observed and reverse processes, when a test that works in practice did not acquire its theoretical understanding, which was observed, in particular, in the development of factor models of intelligence).

Differential psychology has areas of intersection with various other branches of psychological knowledge. Thus, it differs from general psychology in that the latter focuses on the study of the general laws of the psyche (including the psyche of animals). Comparative psychology (once this term was used as a synonym for differential psychology, which is a literal translation of the word) is currently studying the characteristics of the psyche of living beings located at different steps of the evolutionary ladder. She often uses the knowledge of zoopsychology, deals with the problems of anthropogenesis and the formation of human consciousness. Age psychology studies the characteristics of a person through the prism of patterns inherent in the age stage of his development. Social psychology considers the features acquired by a person by virtue of his belonging to a certain social group, large or small. Finally, differential psychophysiology analyzes the individual characteristics of the human psyche from the point of view of their dependence on the properties of the nervous system (3, 8).

From the very beginning of its formation, differential psychology drew attention to itself by the heterogeneity of its subject matter. So, even V. Stern noted that she studies mental and physical phenomena(phenomena), actions(which he defined as phenomena having a temporal extension) and inclinations(phenomena that are chronic and potential). That is, one can try to study not only what is hidden and cannot be objectively observed, but also what is manifested in behavior and intentions, attitudes, in other words, realized and unrealized abilities. Phenomena in the traditional sense are objects of direct experience, while actions and tendencies are objects of mediated experience.

At present, differential psychology studies the individual, subject-content and spiritual-worldview qualities of individuality, features of self-consciousness, style characteristics of the individual and the implementation of various types of activities (professional, educational, communication, etc.).

Stages of development of differential psychology

Current page: 1 (total book has 20 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 12 pages]

Sofia Kimovna Nartova-Bochaver
differential psychology

Chapter 1
Subject, history and main directions of differential psychology

Differential psychology as a science

Stages of development of differential psychology

Humanitarian paradigm, in contrast, focuses on the uniqueness of the phenomenon under consideration, without setting itself the task of statistically confirming the reliability of the data (the approach that affirms the individual features of the phenomenon as the main value is called idiographic).“...Differential psychology will only then have the prospect of reaching a phase of calm development, when it is emancipated from the science that gave birth to it - general psychology,” wrote V. Stern in 1911 (11, p. 6). We can say that this has already happened. And here the historical approach turns out to be absolutely inevitable - consideration of the phenomenon in its formation, analysis and forecast of the consequences.

The dominance of the humanitarian paradigm testifies to the maturity of the scientific discipline and is noted not only in torments about society and man, but also in the sciences of nature. Modern psychology allows itself to strive for psychography, knowledge - for understanding and description. Thus, differential psychology naturally emerged from general psychology, within which it existed for a long time under the name of the psychology of individual differences. Since the significance of the special in general becomes greater, then the goal of the study becomes individuality (compare with the Marxist definition of personality not as an abstract inherent in an individual, but as a set of social relations) (7, 11).

Differential psychology also has a prehistory of formation, during which some areas of pre-scientific, empirical thought even managed to acquire their own names. So, characterology strove to reduce the differences between people to simple types, that is, she was engaged in compiling classifications on various grounds, both anatomical and physiological, and psychological, like, for example, a person’s ability to accept suffering. Representatives of characterology were I. Kant, I. Banzen. Another direction psychognostics, identified and established relationships between certain movements, anatomical characteristics and properties of a person's character. At the same time, naturally, various natural properties of a person fell into the focus of attention. Yes, within the framework physiognomy founded by I.K. Lavater, personality traits, facial expressions, and even just the image of a person's silhouette served as the basis for predicting his behavior. Proponents of phrenology ( cranioscopy) developed by F.A. Hallem, sought to determine the characteristics of a person by the shape of the structure of the skull. And the adherents graphology, the science of handwriting, which Abbé I. Michon was more involved in, diagnosed signs of individuality in writing letters, inclination, pressure and other characteristics of the precise movements of a person reflected in his handwriting. All these areas of pre-scientific cognition, once recognized as unreliable and rejected by positivist science, are now returning, on new grounds, to the psychology of individual differences. The task of future research is to validate these methods of empirical generalization and connect them with modern scientific results.

The term "Differential Psychology" was introduced by the German psychologist W. Stern in his work "The Psychology of Individual Differences", published in 1900. For some time, the following concepts were used as synonyms: characterology (I. Banzen, B. Luca), which today belongs to the field of knowledge about character; ethology (J. St. Mill), currently studying the science of behavior; individual psychology (A. Binet, E. Kraepelin), today denoting the Adlerian direction of psychoanalysis; special psychology (G. Heymans), which also means medical psychology (11).

The first major representatives of the new scientific direction were A. Binet, J. Cattell, F. Galton, V. Stern, in Russia - A.F. Lazursky. Initially, the main research method was individual and group tests, tests of differences in mental abilities, and later - projective methods for measuring attitudes and emotional reactions (1, 2, 5).

The psychology of individual differences has always been influenced by practice - pedagogy, medicine, labor psychology. And its registration as a separate science became possible due to the following prerequisites (3, 8).

1. Introduction to psychology of the experimental method. The most important event here was the opening of the first experimental psychological laboratory by W. Wundt in 1879, where he began, under experimental conditions (albeit using the method of introspection), the study of mental processes, in particular apperception. Very quickly after that, similar laboratories began to open in other countries of Europe and America. No less important for the development of positivist psychology was the derivation of the basic psychophysical law of Fechner - Weber (E = const In R, where Empfindung is the magnitude of sensation, and Reiz is the magnitude of the stimulus), due to which the "light" and "shadow" sides of life turned out to be interconnected a fairly simple algebraic relationship. This scientific fact is an expressive illustration of the inscrutable nature of scientific paths, because Fechner, in his convictions a “terry idealist”, as they wrote about him in pre-perestroika times, least of all sought to strengthen the positions of materialism with his research.

Back in 1796, thanks to an alleged oversight by an assistant at the Greenwich Observatory, Kinnybrook, reaction time was discovered as a psychological phenomenon (observations were based on the “eye and ear” method, which requires coordination of visual and auditory information). Twenty years later, the Koenigsberg astronomer Bessel read about this case in scientific reports and became interested in the question of individual variations in the testimony of different observers. This was the main argument in favor of starting to consider the mental as a process that has a temporal extension, having a beginning, middle and end, and not as a simultaneous (one-time) phenomenon. Later, the Dutch researcher F. Donders developed a special scheme for calculating reaction time, and an increase in reaction time began to be perceived as an indicator of the complication of mental processes. Today it is difficult to truly appreciate these discoveries, but against the background of the complete absence of ways to objectively observe the mental, they had a truly revolutionary sound - it became possible to change, measure and evaluate the psyche.

However, having freed psychology from an inferiority complex in connection with the recognition of itself as a science, the experimental method, according to the well-known modern researcher A. Anastasi, somewhat slowed down the development of interest in individual phenomena of the psyche, which were actively studied at the prescientific stage.

2. The next prerequisite for the transformation of differential psychology into a full-fledged science was use of statistical analysis methods. Each mental quality, any feature of the psyche can be considered as a point on a continuum expressing the change of this feature from a minimum to a maximum. Almost every time the quality in question is the result of the action of many variables, a normal distribution curve is obtained, that is, small (subnormal) and large (supernormal) values \u200b\u200bare usually less than the mean (normal) values.

It should be noted, however, that not all regularities are subject to the law of normal distribution; for example, there is Zipf's law, which determines the distribution of the number of settlements of different sizes. This law expresses a linear relationship: there are many villages and towns, and few highly populated cities. Therefore, it is always necessary to make sure that the phenomenon under study is described by a normal distribution.

The first to draw attention to the possibility of applying the theory of probability to socio-psychological phenomena were the Belgian sociologist Adolf Quetelet and Francis Galton. Quetelet studied large groups and drew attention to the rhythm of social processes, on the basis of which he created the theory of the “average person” (man tends to act as most people do), which is repeatedly criticized by Russian psychologists. F. Galton, on the contrary, focused not on average characteristics, but on supernormal values: the subject of his attention was special abilities, which he wrote about in the book Hereditary Genius, published in 1869. Galton sought to study supermen and showed through his work that genius is a quality that is hereditary.

Statistical methods are applied mathematics techniques used by psychology to increase the objectivity and reliability of the data obtained, to process experimental results. The idea of correlation analysis was born from F. Galton's attempts to investigate the patterns of inheritance by children of the psychological and physical characteristics of their parents. He developed several variants of factor analysis for studying intellectual abilities, a number of methods were proposed specifically for testing newly created tests.

Now there are several areas of using statistical methods in psychology: a) descriptive statistics, including grouping, classification, graphical presentation of data; b) the theory of statistical inference used to predict outcomes from survey data; c) the theory of planning experiments, which serves to discover and test causal relationships between variables.

The following methods of statistical analysis are usually used. Analysis of variance allows you to determine the measure of individual variation of indicators (for example, it is clear that with the same average indicators, the range of distribution can vary significantly). For some research and practical problems, it is the dispersion that provides the main information. So, for example, imagine that the average score obtained by schoolchildren on an algebra test is 4 for both boys and girls. But the boys have both triples and fives, and all the girls actively cheated from each other and as a result received four. It is clear that the result is the same in each group, but the psychological and pedagogical meaning behind the average score is completely different.

Correlation analysis certifies the existence of a connection, dependence between the studied variables. At the same time, the simultaneity of the manifestation of these signs is confirmed, but not at all their causal conditionality. For example, it is noted that satisfaction with marriage among spouses is negatively correlated with anxiety (this means that the more they are satisfied with family life, the calmer they feel). However, based on this fact, we cannot know whether they are calm because everything is in order at home, or whether they are satisfied with their life together because they have low anxiety and a generally positive attitude towards life. There are several formulas for calculating correlation coefficients, which can take values from +1 to -1. Correlations close to zero cannot confirm the existence of a relationship between variables.

And finally factor analysis is a group of methods designed to determine properties that cannot be observed and measured directly. The task of factor analysis is, in its most general form, to reduce the number of variables, to reduce all their diversity to a few common factors. In the event that, according to the results of calculating the correlation coefficients, there are particularly tight connections between several indicators (correlation pleiades), it can be assumed that they are behind a common factor - a variable of a higher level of generalization. Factor models are used everywhere now, but are especially popular in the psychology of personality and intelligence.

To use the methods of statistical analysis, you need to be sure that the distribution of the studied quality is normal; but even under this condition, there is a possibility that the results obtained will turn out to be random. This probability is called the "significance level".

3. The third prerequisite for the formalization of differential psychology into truly scientific knowledge was use of psychogenetic data- a field of psychology bordering on genetics, the subject of which is the origin of individual psychological characteristics of a person, the role of the environment and genotype in their formation. The most informative was the twin method in its variants, which allows you to maximally equalize the impact of the environment and differentiate, depending on the source, the dispersion of the studied qualities into additive (passed down from generation to generation), non-additive (present in siblings, which is important only for relatives of the same generation) and dispersion. associated with the difference in the environment. Recently, however, genetic analysis has also been used (5, 9).

DIFFERENTIAL

PSYCHOLOGY

Tutorial

CHAPTER 1. SUBJECT, HISTORY AND MAIN DIRECTIONS OF DIFFERENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY

CHAPTER 2. METHODS OF DIFFERENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY

CHAPTER 3. SOURCES OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES. PERSONALITY, INDIVIDUALITY, INDIVIDUALITY

CHAPTER 4. INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS: ASYMMETRY OF THE HEMISPHERES AND TEMPERAMENT

CHAPTER 5. PSYCHOLOGY OF CHARACTER

CHAPTER 6. PSYCHOLOGY OF ABILITIES

CHAPTER 7. TYPOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER

CHAPTER 8. SUBJECT-CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS: PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONALITIES

CHAPTER 9. PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX

CHAPTER 10. PERSON AND PROFESSION

CHAPTER 11. MAN AND OTHER PEOPLE

CHAPTER 12. STYLE FEATURES OF INDIVIDUALITY

CONCLUSION

GLOSSARY OF BASIC CONCEPTS

LITERATURE

CHAPTER 1.

SUBJECT, HISTORY AND MAIN TRENDS OF DIFFERENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY. DIFFERENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY AS A SCIENCE

Differential psychology is a branch of science that studies the individual differences in the psyche of individuals and groups of people, as well as the nature, sources and consequences of these differences. This is the science of the laws of mental variation.

Individual differences in the psyche are inherent not only to people, but also to the entire animal world, and often intraspecific differences exceed interspecific ones. So, for example, the smartest rat can act more effectively in the same learning situation than the stupidest monkey, standing above the rat on the evolutionary ladder. There are manifestations of social behavior in gray geese, which were traditionally considered characteristic only of people, until the remarkable ethologist K. Lorenz paid attention to them (a triumphant cry, indicating selectivity in choosing a partner, cases of marital fidelity for forty or more years, data on friendship and jealousy among animals) (1).

On the other hand, such a property of human thinking as the ability to solve two-phase tasks (observed in primates, as was shown by the experiments of W. Köhler), is often absent in the field of social intelligence (for example, parents who, after a divorce, “share” the right to communicate with a child , often completely lose the ability to calculate the "two-move" and thus protect the common interests). Therefore, individual variations may indeed overlap between groups and between species. That is, a person appears first of all as an individual.

The tasks of differential psychology are to establish the patterns of occurrence and manifestation of individual differences in the human psyche, to develop the theoretical foundations of psychodiagnostic research and psychocorrection programs. Today, this is a field of knowledge that is maximally deployed to the needs of practice and therefore is developing very rapidly. And, just as there was no humiliation for physics that a microscope, telephone, X-ray therapy entered practice from its depths, so psychology will by no means lose its truly scientific character if it takes part in solving practical problems, V. Stern believed . When a new concept is born (for example, character accentuation, behavioral style), this process is carried out in the bosom of differential psychology, but when a test is created to diagnose this quality, the relay task is transferred to specialists in the field of psychodiagnostics and differential psychometrics (although reverse processes have also been observed). when a test that works in practice has not acquired its theoretical understanding, which was observed, in particular, in the development of factor models of intelligence).

From the very beginning of its formation, differential psychology drew attention to itself by the heterogeneity of its subject matter. So, even V. Stern noted that it studies mental and physical phenomena (phenomena), actions (which he defined as phenomena that have a temporary duration) and inclinations (phenomena that have a chronic and potential character). That is, one can try to study not only what is hidden and cannot be objectively observed, but also what is manifested in behavior and intentions, attitudes, in other words, realized and unrealized abilities. Phenomena in the traditional sense are objects of direct experience, while actions and tendencies are objects of mediated experience.

Stages of development of differential psychology

The humanitarian paradigm, in contrast, focuses on the uniqueness of the phenomenon under consideration, without setting itself the task of statistically confirming the reliability of data (the approach that affirms the individual characteristics of the phenomenon as the main value is called idiographic). “...Differential psychology will only then have the prospect of reaching a phase of calm development, when it is emancipated from the science that gave birth to it - general psychology,” W. Stern wrote in 1911 (11, p.6). We can say that this has already happened. And here the historical approach turns out to be absolutely inevitable - consideration of the phenomenon in its formation, analysis and forecast of the consequences.

The dominance of the humanitarian paradigm testifies to the maturity of the scientific discipline and is noted not only in the sciences of society and man, but also in the sciences of nature. Modern psychology allows itself to strive for psychography, knowledge - for understanding and description. Thus, differential psychology naturally emerged from general psychology, within which it existed for a long time under the name of the psychology of individual differences. Since the significance of the special in general becomes greater, then the goal of the study becomes individuality (compare with the Marxist definition of personality not as an abstract inherent in an individual, but as a set of social relations) (7, 11).

Differential psychology also has a prehistory of formation, during which some areas of pre-scientific, empirical thought even managed to acquire their own names. Thus, characterology sought to reduce the differences between people to simple types, i.e. engaged in the compilation of classifications on various grounds, both anatomical-physiological and psychological, like, for example, a person’s ability to accept suffering. Representatives of characterology were I. Kant, I. Banzen. Another direction, psychognostics, identified and established relationships between certain movements, anatomical characteristics and properties of a person's character. At the same time, naturally, various natural properties of a person fell into the focus of attention. So, within the framework of physiognomy, founded by J. Lavater, personality traits, facial expressions and even just the image of a person's silhouette served as the basis for predicting his behavior. Supporters of phrenology (cranioscopy), developed by F.A. Gall, sought to determine the characteristics of a person by the shape of the structure of the skull. And adherents of graphology, the science of handwriting, which Abbé I. Michon studied more than others, diagnosed signs of individuality by writing letters, inclination, pressure and other characteristics of the exact movements of a person reflected in his handwriting. All these areas of pre-scientific cognition, once recognized as unreliable and rejected by positivist science, are now returning, on new grounds, to the psychology of individual differences. The task of future research is to validate these methods of empirical generalization and connect them with modern scientific results.

The term "Differential Psychology" was introduced by the German psychologist W. Stern in his work "The Psychology of Individual Differences", published in 1900. For some time, the following concepts were used as synonyms: characterology (I. Banzen, E. Luca), which today belongs to the field of knowledge about character; ethology (J.St. Mill), currently studying the science of behavior; individual psychology (A. Binet, E. Kraepelin), today denoting the Adlerian direction of psychoanalysis; special psychology (G.Heymans), which also means medical psychology (11).

The first major representatives of the new scientific direction were A. Binet, J. Cattell, F. Galton, V. Stern, in Russia - A.F. Lazursky. Initially, the main research methods were individual and group tests, tests of differences in mental abilities, and later - projective methods for measuring attitudes and emotional reactions (1, 2, 5).

1. The introduction of the experimental method into psychology. The most important event here was the opening of the first experimental psychological laboratory by W. Wundt in 1879, where he began, under experimental conditions (albeit using the method of introspection), the study of mental processes, in particular apperception. Very quickly after that, similar laboratories began to open in other countries of Europe and America. No less important for the development of positivist psychology was the derivation of the basic psychophysical law of Fechner - Weber (E = const In R, where Empfindung is the magnitude of sensation, and Reiz is the magnitude of the stimulus), due to which the "light" and "shadow" sides of life turned out to be interconnected a fairly simple algebraic relationship. This scientific fact is an expressive illustration of the inscrutable nature of scientific paths, because Fechner, in his convictions a “terry idealist”, as they wrote about him in pre-perestroika times, least of all sought to strengthen the positions of materialism with his research.

Back in 1796, thanks to an alleged oversight by an assistant at the Greenwich Observatory, Kinnybrook, reaction time was discovered as a psychological phenomenon (observations were based on the “eye and ear” method, which requires coordination of visual and auditory information). Twenty years later, the Königsberg astronomer Bessel (1784 - 1846) read about this case in scientific reports and became interested in the question of individual variations in the testimony of different observers. This was the main argument in favor of starting to consider the mental as a process that has a temporal extension, having a beginning, middle and end, and not as a simultaneous (one-time) phenomenon. Later, the Dutch researcher F. Donders developed a special scheme for calculating reaction time, and an increase in reaction time began to be perceived as an indicator of the complication of mental processes. Today it is difficult to truly appreciate these discoveries, but against the background of the complete absence of ways to objectively observe the mental, they had a truly revolutionary sound - it became possible to change, measure and evaluate the psyche.

2. The next prerequisite for the transformation of differential psychology into a full-fledged science was the use of methods of statistical analysis. Each mental quality, any feature of the psyche can be considered as a point on a continuum expressing the change of this feature from a minimum to a maximum. Almost every time the quality in question is the result of the action of many variables, a normal distribution curve is obtained, that is, small (subnormal) and large (supernormal) values \u200b\u200bare usually less than the mean (normal) values.

The following methods of statistical analysis are usually used. Analysis of variance allows you to determine the measure of individual variation of indicators (for example, it is clear that with the same average indicators, the range of distribution can vary significantly). For some research and practical problems, it is the dispersion that provides the main information. So, for example, imagine that the average score obtained by schoolchildren on an algebra test is 4 for both boys and girls. But the boys have both triples and fives, and all the girls actively cheated from each other and as a result received four. It is clear that the result is the same in each group, but the psychological and pedagogical meaning behind the average score is completely different.

Correlation analysis certifies the existence of a connection, dependence between the variables being studied. At the same time, the simultaneity of the manifestation of these signs is confirmed, but not at all their causal conditionality. For example, it is noted that satisfaction with marriage among spouses is negatively correlated with anxiety (this means that the more they are satisfied with family life, the calmer they feel). However, based on this fact, we cannot know whether they are calm because everything is in order at home, or whether they are satisfied with their life together because they have low anxiety and a generally positive attitude towards life. There are several formulas for calculating correlation coefficients, which can take values from +1 to -1. Correlations close to zero cannot confirm the existence of a relationship between variables.

Finally, factor analysis is a group of methods designed to determine properties that cannot be observed and measured directly. The task of factor analysis is, in its most general form, to reduce the number of variables, to reduce all their diversity to a few common factors. In the event that, according to the results of calculating the correlation coefficients, there are especially dense connections between several indicators (correlation pleiades), it can be assumed that they are behind a common factor - a variable of a higher level of generalization. Factor models are used everywhere now, but are especially popular in the psychology of personality and intelligence.

3. The third prerequisite for the formalization of differential psychology into truly scientific knowledge was the use of data from psychogenetics - a field of psychology bordering on genetics, the subject of which is the origin of individual psychological characteristics of a person, the role of the environment and genotype in their formation. The most informative was the twin method in its variants, used for the first time by Galton, which allows you to maximally equalize the impact of the environment and differentiate, depending on the source, the dispersion of the studied qualities into additive (passed down from generation to generation), non-additive (present in siblings, which is important only for relatives). one generation) and the variance associated with the difference in the environment. Recently, however, genetic analysis has also been used (5, 9).

The concept of psychological norm

1. Norm is a statistical concept. What is considered normal is that which is a lot, which belongs to the middle of the distribution. And its “tail” parts, respectively, indicate the region of low (“subnormal”) or high (“supernormal”) values. To assess the quality, we must correlate a person's indicator with others and thus determine its place on the normal distribution curve. Obviously, the prefixes "sub" and "super" do not give an ethical or pragmatic assessment of quality (after all, if a person has a "supernormal" indicator of aggressiveness, this is hardly good for others and for himself).

Norms are not absolute, they develop and are obtained empirically for a given group (age, social, and others). So, for example, over the past years, the masculinity index according to the MMPI questionnaire among girls has been steadily increased; however, this does not mean that they are all behaving like young men, but the need to revise outdated norms.

2. Norms are driven by social stereotypes. If a person's behavior does not correspond to the generally accepted in a given society, it is perceived as deviant. For example, in Russian culture it is not customary to put your feet on the table, but in American it is not condemned by anyone.

Rice. 1. Hypothetical distribution of 600 female college students on a dominance test. The 1st quartile (the area of subnormal values, in which girls who avoid being leaders fell), the 2nd and 3rd quartiles (the area of normal values) and the 4th quartile, in which the indicators of girls persistently striving for leadership are located, are identified.

3. Norms are associated with mental health. Anything that requires a referral to a clinician may be considered abnormal. It should be noted, however, that in psychiatry the evaluative approach is also discussed, and as the most significant indications of a deviation from the norm, a violation of the productivity of activity and the ability to self-regulate is taken. So, for example, when an elderly person, realizing the weakness of his memory, uses auxiliary means (a notebook, laying out the necessary objects in his field of vision), then this behavior corresponds to the norm, and if he, treating himself uncritically, refuses the need to "prosthetic" his living space, then this ultimately leads to an inability to solve tasks and indicates a violation of mental health.

4. Finally, the idea of norms is determined by expectations, one’s own non-generalized experience and other subjective variables: for example, if the first child in the family began to speak at the age of one and a half years, then the second, who had not yet learned to speak fluently by the age of two, is perceived as endowed with signs of lagging.

V. Stern, calling for caution in evaluating a person, noted that, firstly, psychologists do not have the right to draw a conclusion about the abnormality of the individual himself as a carrier of this property from the established anomaly of a property and, secondly, it is impossible to establish an abnormality of the personality reduced to a narrow sign as its only root cause. In modern diagnostics, the concept of "norm" is used in the study of non-personal characteristics, and when it comes to personality, the term "features" is used, thereby emphasizing the deliberate rejection of the normative approach.

So, norms are not a frozen phenomenon, they are constantly updated and changed. The standards of psychodiagnostic methods must also be reviewed regularly (5, 9).

Directions of differential psychological research

At present, the object of attention of differential psychology sometimes turns out to be a separate sign - for example, anxiety, acuteness of perception, professional orientation, and sometimes - individuality as a whole. V. Stern singled out four areas of functioning of the psychology of individual differences, which continue to develop and enrich themselves. So, if we study how variable the considered quality is, how large the range of its values in a given sample, we conduct a study of the first direction. If it is interesting to identify with what other qualities the feature of interest to us is manifested at the same time, we conduct another study. At the same time, neither in the first nor in the second cases we ask ourselves the questions of the genesis and prediction of this quality, we limit ourselves to a one-time cut. If we approach individuality as a holistic phenomenon, we need to follow a historical approach, discover the causes and main points of development of the quality that interests us. We must also be historical if we are trying to reveal the multi-level and multi-factor nature of individuality - we do not know what and with what can manifest itself simultaneously, and we must provide ourselves with the possibility of applying a typological approach. Therefore, in studies of the second and third types, we carry out not transverse, but longitudinal (longitudinal) sections (11).

So, to date, the psychology of individual differences has retained its heterogeneity, which, among other things, is manifested in the predominance of particular psychological theories. So, for example, the theory of intellectual abilities has practically nothing to do with the evolutionary theory of sex, and theories of temperament have nothing to do with theories of personality traits. Therefore, the main trend of modern differential psychology is the integration of particular, heterogeneous knowledge into a unified theory of individuality.

Unfortunately, the words of V. Stern remain true today that the differential psychology of individual functions, as well as “the psychology of a woman, an artist, a criminal, etc. should remain for the time being the subject of discussion in monographs” (11, p. 8). In the future, when presenting the main content of the course, we will try to adhere to the following logic: the introduction of a category and its filling with psychological content; indication of congenital and acquired determinants of the studied quality; possibilities of psychodiagnostics in this area. However, this structure may not be observed everywhere, so sometimes we will be limited to either data on the variability of a trait, or consideration of empirical typologies.