Communication in the system of interpersonal and social relations

Introduction

Interpersonal relationships are relationships with people close to us; it is the relationship between parents and children, husband and wife, brother and sister. Of course, close personal relationships are not limited to the family; Such relationships are often entered into by people living together under the influence of various circumstances.

The common factor in these relationships are various feelings of affection, love and devotion, as well as the desire to maintain the relationship. If your boss is making your life difficult, you can say goodbye to him; if the salesperson in a store does not pay enough attention to you, you will not go there again; if an employee behaves disloyally towards you, you will prefer, if possible, not to communicate with him, etc.

But if problems arise between us and those closest to us, this usually becomes of paramount importance to us.

How many people turn to a psychologist because of a bad relationship with a hairdresser? On the other hand, we see so many people seeking advice and help due to home, family and collective troubles.

Relevance of the research topic. Problems related to interpersonal relationships have not only not lost their relevance over several centuries, but are also becoming increasingly significant for many social and human sciences. By analyzing interpersonal relationships and the possibility of achieving mutual understanding in them, it is possible to explain many social problems in the development of society, the family and the individual. Being an integral attribute of human life, interpersonal relationships play an important role in all spheres of life. At the same time, the quality of interpersonal relationships depends on communication, on the achieved level of mutual understanding.

The role of communication in interpersonal relationships, despite the increased interest in it from a number of social sciences and humanities, is still insufficiently studied. Therefore, the choice of the topic of the course work is determined by the following points:

The need to clearly distinguish the category of communication from the area of interrelated categories of attitude;
An attempt to structure interpersonal relationships in accordance with levels of communication.
The need of society to resolve interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts associated with misunderstanding.

The purpose of this course work is to understand the role of communication in interpersonal relationships, as well as in an attempt to structure interpersonal relationships in accordance with levels of communication.

In accordance with this goal, I set myself the following tasks:

Conduct a theoretical analysis of the literature on the topic “Interpersonal relationships and communication”;
Reveal the social nature and essence of interpersonal relationships;
Analyze various approaches to studying the communication process, identify the main forms, levels, functions of this process;
Study and analyze ways to resolve relationships through communication.
Interpretation and formulation of conclusions.

The object of the study is interpersonal relationships.

The subject of the study is the role of communication in interpersonal relationships.

Research hypothesis: communication training increases the social status of an individual.

The methodological and theoretical basis of the course work is the relational approach, which allows one to sufficiently fully reveal the essential foundations of interpersonal relationships and communication.

To study this topic, I researched the following methods: at the theoretical level - analysis of psychological, sociological, methodological literature, generalization, comparison; at the empirical level - conducting training sessions. Sociometry method, Spielberg-Khanin self-esteem scale, G-sign criteria method.

Place and nature of interpersonal relationships

In the socio-psychological literature, different points of view have been expressed on the question of where interpersonal relationships are “located”, primarily in relation to the system of social relations. The nature of interpersonal relationships can be correctly understood if they are not placed on a par with social relationships, but considered as a special series of relationships that arise within each type of social relationship, and not outside them.

The nature of interpersonal relationships differs significantly from the nature of social relationships: their most important specific feature is their emotional basis. Therefore, interpersonal relationships can be considered as a factor in the psychological “climate” of the group. The emotional basis of interpersonal relationships means that they arise and develop on the basis of certain feelings that people have towards each other. The domestic school of psychology distinguishes three types, or levels of emotional manifestations of personality: affects, emotions and feelings. The emotional basis of interpersonal relationships includes all types of these emotional manifestations.

Relationships between people are formed not only on the basis of direct emotional contacts. The activity itself sets another series of relationships mediated by it. Therefore, an extremely important and difficult task of social psychology is the simultaneous analysis of two series of relationships in a group - both interpersonal and mediated by joint activities, i.e. ultimately the social relations behind them.

All this raises the question of the methodological means of such analysis. Traditional social psychology paid attention mainly to interpersonal relationships, so an arsenal of methodological tools was developed much earlier and more fully to study them. The main of these tools is the method of sociometry, widely known in social psychology, proposed by the American researcher J. Moreno, for whom it is an application to his specific theoretical position. Although the inadequacy of this concept has long been criticized, the methodology developed within this theoretical framework has proven to be very popular.

Thus, we can say that interpersonal relationships are considered as a factor in the psychological “climate” of the group. But to diagnose interpersonal and intergroup relations with the aim of changing, improving and perfecting them, a sociometric technique is used, the founder of which is the American psychiatrist and social psychologist J. Moreno.

Interaction, social and psychological relations

All socio-psychological phenomena arise, function, change and manifest themselves both in the process and as a result of positive or negative interaction between people as representatives of various social communities. However, their content is determined not only by this interaction, but also by the objective conditions in which the life activity of a given community unfolds.

Domestic philosophers, sociologists and historians even believe that in the process of human development, interaction became the original form of the emergence and subsequent improvement of people as highly organized living beings with an extensive system of various connections between them and the surrounding reality.

In turn, psychological science considers interaction as a process of people influencing each other, giving rise to their mutual connections, relationships, communication and joint experiences.

It naturally follows from this that interaction should be taken as the unit of analysis in social psychology (Obozov N.N., 1979).

In addition, in the process of production and consumption of material goods, people enter into various kinds of connections with each other, which, as already mentioned, are based on the interaction of people.

This is how social relations are formed. Their character and content are largely determined by the specifics and circumstances of the interaction between individuals, the goals pursued by specific people, as well as the place and role they occupy in society.

There is a certain system of social relations. They are based on material relations; a whole series is built on top of them: social, political, ideological, etc., which together make up a whole system of social relations.

Social relations can be classified based on different criteria:

1) according to the form of manifestation, they are divided into economic (production), legal, ideological, political, moral, religious, aesthetic, etc.;
2) from the point of view of belonging to various subjects, they distinguish between national (international), class and confessional, etc. relationship;
3) based on the analysis of the functioning of connections between people in society, we can talk about vertical and horizontal relationships;
4) by the nature of regulation, social relations are official and unofficial (Bodalev A.A., 1995).

All types of social relations in turn permeate the psychological relations of people, that is, subjective connections that arise as a result of their actual interaction and are already accompanied by various emotional and other experiences of the individuals participating in them. Psychological relationships are the living “human tissue” of any social relations (Obozov N.N., 1979).

Thus, first there is interaction between people, and then, as a consequence, their social and psychological relationships.

The difference between social and psychological relations is that the former are, so to speak, “material” in nature, are a consequence of a certain property, social and other distribution of roles in society and in most cases are taken for granted, are in a certain sense impersonal character.

In social relations, first of all, the essential features of social connections between spheres of people’s life activities, types of work and communities are revealed.

The essence of interpersonal relationships

Interpersonal relationships are a set of connections formed between people in the form of feelings, judgments and appeals to each other.

Interpersonal relationships include:

people's perception and understanding of each other;
interpersonal attraction (attraction and sympathy);
interaction and behavior (especially role-playing).

Components of interpersonal relationships:

1) cognitive component - includes all cognitive mental processes: sensation, perception, representation, memory, thinking, imagination. Thanks to this component, knowledge of the individual psychological characteristics of partners in joint activities and mutual understanding between people occurs. The characteristics of mutual understanding are:

adequacy - the accuracy of the mental reflection of the perceived personality;
identification - identification by an individual of his personality with the personality of another individual;

2) emotional component - includes positive or negative experiences that arise in a person in the process of interpersonal communication with other people:

sympathy or antipathy;
satisfaction with oneself, partner, work, etc.;
empathy is an emotional response to the experiences of another person, which can manifest itself as sympathy (experience of the feelings that another experiences), sympathy (personal attitude towards the experiences of another) and complicity (sympathy accompanied by help);

3) the behavioral component includes facial expressions, gestures, pantomime, speech and actions that express a person’s attitude towards other people and the group as a whole. He plays a leading role in regulating relationships. The effectiveness of interpersonal relationships is assessed by the state of satisfaction - dissatisfaction of the group and its members.

Types of interpersonal relationships:

1) industrial relations - develop between employees of organizations when solving production, educational, economic, household, etc. problems and imply fixed rules of behavior of workers in relation to each other. They are divided into relationships

vertically - between managers and subordinates;
horizontally - relations between employees with the same status;
along the diagonal - the relationship between the managers of one production unit and ordinary employees of another unit;

2) everyday relationships - relationships that develop outside of work, on vacation and at home;

3) formal (official) relations - normatively established relations recorded in official documents;

4) informal (unofficial) relationships - relationships that actually develop in the process of relationships between people and are manifested in preferences, likes or dislikes, mutual assessments, authority, etc.

The nature of interpersonal relationships is influenced by such personal characteristics as gender, nationality, age, temperament, health, profession, experience of communicating with people, self-esteem, need for communication, etc. Stages of development of interpersonal relationships:

stage of acquaintance - the first stage - the emergence of mutual contact, mutual perception and assessment of each other, which largely determines the nature of the relationship between them;
stage of friendly relations - the emergence of interpersonal relationships, the formation of the internal attitude of people towards each other on the rational (awareness by interacting people of each other’s advantages and disadvantages) and emotional levels (the emergence of corresponding experiences, emotional response, etc.)
camaraderie - coincidence of views and support for each other; characterized by trust.

Interpersonal communication among youth

Adolescence and young adulthood are a critical period in the process of interpersonal evolution. From the age of 14, the formation of interpersonal relationships begins, in which attitudes towards subjects of reality play a different role: to older people, to parents, to classmates, to teachers, to friends, to one’s own personality, to representatives of other religions and nationalities, to patients and drug addicts.

The psychological world of a teenager is often turned to inner life; the young man is often thoughtful and fantasizing. The same period is marked by intolerance, irritability, and a tendency to aggression. By the age of 16, the stage of self-knowledge and self-affirmation begins, which is noted in increased observation. Gradually, among young people, the degree of what is unacceptable, as well as what is not accepted, tends to increase. This comes from the fact that young people become very critical of reality.

Problems of interpersonal communication among young people manifest themselves in the form of conflicts among students, which destabilize the emotional background in the team, in the group. Often, conflicts and quarrels among young people occur due to inability or lack of compassion and unwillingness to respect others. Often protests occur due to a lack of education, as well as a violation of the culture of behavior. Often the protest is targeted, i.e. directed against the culprit of the conflict situation. As soon as the conflict is resolved, the young man calms down.

In order to avoid such situations, adults are advised to maintain a calm, polite tone in communication. You should refrain from making categorical judgments about a teenager, especially when it comes to issues of fashion and music.

Adults need to try to compromise, give in in an argument, avoiding the red rag syndrome. It is especially painful if the scandal is observed by the young man’s friends or peers, so adults should give in and not be sarcastic, because only good relationships contribute to the improvement of relationships.

The essence of communication

Interpersonal communication is a necessary condition for human existence, without which it is impossible to fully form not only individual mental functions, processes and properties of a person, but also the personality as a whole. That is why the study of this complex mental phenomenon as a systemic formation, which has a multi-level structure and its inherent characteristics, is relevant for psychological science.

The essence of interpersonal communication lies in the interaction of person with person. This is what distinguishes it from other types of activity when a person interacts with any object or thing.

At the same time, interacting persons satisfy their need to communicate with each other, exchange information, etc. For example, a discussion between two passers-by about a conflict situation that they have just witnessed, or communication when young people get to know each other.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, interpersonal communication is almost always woven into the activity and acts as a condition for its implementation.

Interpersonal communication is not only a necessary component of human activity, the implementation of which involves their cooperation, but also a condition for the normal functioning of their communities (for example, a school class or a production team of workers). When comparing the nature of interpersonal communication in these associations, both similarities and differences between them attract attention.

The similarity lies in the fact that communication in them acts as a necessary condition for the existence of these associations, a factor on which the success of solving the problems facing them depends.

Communication is influenced not only by the main activity for a given community, but also by what that community itself is. For example, if this is a school class, then it is important to know how it is formed as a collective, what evaluative norms prevail in it, if this is a collective, then what is the degree of development of labor activity, the level of production qualifications of each employee, etc.

The characteristics of interpersonal interaction in any community are largely determined by how its members perceive and understand each other, what emotional response they generally evoke from each other, and what style of behavior they choose.

The communities to which a person belongs form communication standards and set patterns of behavior that a person learns to follow every day when interacting with other people. These communities have a direct influence on the formation of his assessments, which determine his perception of other people, relationships and style of communication with them. And the stronger this influence, the more authoritative the community is in a person’s eyes.

When interacting with other people, a person can act both as a subject and as an object of communication. As a subject, he studies his partner, determines his attitude towards him (this could be interest, indifference or hostility), influences him to solve a specific problem. In turn, he himself is an object of knowledge for the one with whom he communicates. The partner addresses his feelings to him and tries to influence him. It should be emphasized that being simultaneously in two “hypostases” - an object and a subject - is characteristic of any type of direct human communication, be it communication between one student and another or between a student and a teacher.

Communication, being one of the main types of human activity, not only constantly reveals the essential characteristics of a person as an object and subject of communication, but also influences the entire course of its further formation, primarily on such blocks of properties that express a person’s attitude towards other people and to to myself. In turn, the changes that occur in people under the pressure of unfolding communication influence, to a greater or lesser extent, such basic properties of the individual, which manifest their attitude to various social institutions and communities of people, nature, public and personal property, and work.

Topic 2. Communication in the system of human relations.

Communication is an interpersonal or group process (subject - subject) based on the exchange between people of certain information, thoughts, attitudes, feelings and other results of mental activity. As a result, a cat. Perception and understanding are realized. people of each other, mutual regulation of behavior and d-ti. (Bekhterev (the founder of the study of the psychology of communication), Lazursky. Vygotsky. Myasishchev, Leontv, Lomov). The following parameters are inherent in communication as a process: 1- procedurality; 2- dynamism; 3- continuity; 4- individualization.

Communication as an object of social-psychology. research . If we proceed from the fact that social psychology primarily analyzes those patterns of human behavior and activity that are determined by the fact that people are included in real social groups, then the first empirical fact that this science encounters is the fact of communication and interaction between people.

The main task facing social psychology is to reveal the specific mechanism of “weaving” the individual into the fabric of social reality. This is necessary if we want to understand what is the result of the influence of social conditions on the activity of the individual. But the difficulty is that this result cannot be interpreted to mean that there is some kind of “non-social” behavior and then something “social” is superimposed on it. You cannot first study a personality and only then fit it into the system of social connections. The personality itself, on the one hand, is already a “product” of these social connections, and on the other hand, it is their creator, an active creator. The interaction of the individual and the system of social connections (both the macrostructure - society as a whole, and the microstructure - the immediate environment) is not the interaction of two isolated independent entities located one outside the other. The study of personality is always another side of the study of society.

This means that it is important from the very beginning to consider the individual in the general system of social relations, which is society, i.e. in some "social context". This “context” is represented by a system of real relationships between the individual and the outside world. The problem of relationships occupies a large place in psychology; in our country it was largely developed in the works of V.N. Myasishchev (Myasishchev, 1949). Fixing relationships means the implementation of a more general methodological principle - the study of natural objects in their connection with the environment. For a person, this connection becomes a relationship, since a person is given in this connection as a subject, as an actor, and, therefore, in his connection with the world, the roles of the objects of communication, according to Myasishchev, are strictly distributed. Animals also have a connection with the outside world, but the animal, in Marx’s famous expression, does not “relate” to anything and does not “relate” at all. Where any relation exists, it exists “for me,” i.e. it is defined as a human relationship, it is directed due to the activity of the subject.

But the whole point is that the content, the level of these relationships between a person and the world are very different: each individual enters into relationships, but entire groups also enter into relationships with each other, and thus a person turns out to be the subject of numerous and varied relationships. In this diversity, it is necessary, first of all, to distinguish between two main types of relations: social relations and what Myasishchev calls “psychological” relations of the individual.

The structure of social relations is studied by sociology. Sociological theory reveals a certain subordination of various types of social relations, where economic, social, political, ideological and other types of relations are highlighted. All this together represents a system of social relations. Their specificity lies in the fact that they not only “meet” individual with individual and “relate” to each other, but individuals as representatives of certain social groups (classes, professions or other groups that have developed in the sphere of division of labor, as well as groups established in the sphere of political life, for example, political parties, etc.). Such relationships are built not on the basis of likes or dislikes, but on the basis of a certain position occupied by each person in the social system. Therefore, such relations are conditioned objectively; they are relations between social groups or between individuals as representatives of these social groups. This means that social relations are impersonal; their essence is not in the interaction of specific individuals, but rather in the interaction of specific social roles.

A social role is a fixation of a certain position that one or another individual occupies in the system of social relations. More specifically, a role is understood as “a function, a normatively approved pattern of behavior expected of everyone occupying a given position” (Kohn, 1967, pp. 12-42). These expectations, which determine the general contours of the social role, do not depend on the consciousness and behavior of a particular individual; their subject is not the individual, but society. To this understanding of the social role, it should also be added that what is essential here is not only and not so much the fixation of rights and responsibilities (which is expressed by the term “expectation”), but rather the connection of the social role with certain types of social activities of the individual. We can therefore say that a social role is “a socially necessary type of social activity and a way of individual behavior.” In addition, a social role always bears the stamp of social evaluation: society can either approve or disapprove of some social roles (for example, such a social role as “criminal” is not approved); sometimes this approval or disapproval can differentiate among different social groups , role assessment can take on completely different meanings in accordance with the social experience of a particular social group. It is important to emphasize that it is not a specific person who is approved or disapproved, but primarily a certain type of social activity. Thus, by pointing to a role, we “attribute” a person to a certain social group and identify him with the group.

In reality, each individual performs not one, but several social roles: he can be an accountant, a father, a trade union member, a football team player, etc. A number of roles are assigned to a person at birth (for example, to be a woman or a man), others are acquired during life. However, the social role itself does not determine the activity and behavior of each specific bearer in detail: everything depends on how much the individual learns and internalizes the role. The act of internalization is determined by a number of individual psychological characteristics of each specific bearer of a given role. Therefore, social relations, although in essence they are role-based, impersonal relations, in reality, in their specific manifestation, acquire a certain “personal coloring”. Although at some levels of analysis, for example in sociology and political economy, this “personal coloring” can be abstracted, it exists as a reality, and therefore in special fields of knowledge, in particular in social psychology, must be studied in detail. Remaining individuals in a system of impersonal social relations, people inevitably enter into interaction and communication, where their individual characteristics inevitably appear. Therefore, each social role does not mean an absolute set of behavior patterns; it always leaves a certain “range of possibilities” for its performer, which can be conditionally called a certain “style of playing the role.” It is this range that is the basis for building the second row of relationships within the system of impersonal social relations - interpersonal (or, as they are sometimes called, for example, by Myasishchev, psychological).

Communication in the system of interpersonal and social relations. Analysis of the connection between social and interpersonal relations allows us to place the correct emphasis on the question of the place of communication in the entire complex system of human connections with the outside world. However, first it is necessary to say a few words about the problem of communication in general. The solution to this problem is very specific within the framework of domestic social psychology. The term “communication” itself does not have an exact analogue in traditional social psychology, not only because it is not entirely equivalent to the commonly used English term “communication,” but also because its content can only be considered in the conceptual dictionary of a special psychological theory, namely the theory activities.

Both sets of human relationships—social and interpersonal—are revealed and realized precisely in communication. Thus, the roots of communication are in the very material life of individuals. Communication is the realization of the entire system of human relations. “Under normal circumstances, a person’s relationship to the objective world around him is always mediated by his relationship to people, to society” i.e. included in communication. Here it is especially important to emphasize the idea that in real communication not only interpersonal relationships of people are given, i.e. not only their emotional attachments, hostility, etc. are revealed, but social ones are also embodied in the fabric of communication, i.e. impersonal in nature, relationships. The diverse relationships of a person are not covered only by interpersonal contact: a person’s position outside the narrow framework of interpersonal connections, in a broader social system, where his place is not determined by the expectations of the individuals interacting with him, also requires a certain construction of the system of his connections, and this process can also only be realized in communication. Without communication, human society is simply unthinkable.

Naturally, each series of relationships is realized in specific forms of communication. Communication as the implementation of interpersonal relationships is a process more studied in social psychology, while communication between groups is more likely to be studied in sociology. Communication, including in the system of interpersonal relations, is forced by the joint life activity of people, therefore it is necessary to carry out a wide variety of interpersonal relationships, i.e. given both in the case of a positive and in the case of a negative attitude of one person towards another. The type of interpersonal relationship is not indifferent to how communication will be built, but it exists in specific forms, even when the relationship is extremely strained. The same applies to the characterization of communication at the macro level as the implementation of social relations. And in this case, whether groups or individuals communicate with each other as representatives of social groups, the act of communication must inevitably take place, is forced to take place, even if the groups are antagonistic. This dual understanding of communication - in the broad and narrow sense of the word - follows from the very logic of understanding the connection between interpersonal and social relations. In this case, it is appropriate to appeal to Marx’s idea that communication is an unconditional companion of human history (in this sense, we can talk about the significance of communication in the “phylogenesis” of society) and at the same time an unconditional companion in everyday activities, in everyday contacts of people (see. A.A. Leontiev, 1973). In the first plan, one can trace the historical change in forms of communication, i.e. changing them as society develops along with the development of economic, social and other public relations. Here the most difficult methodological question is being resolved: how does a process figure in the system of impersonal relations, which by its nature requires the participation of individuals? Acting as a representative of a certain social group, a person communicates with another representative of another social group and simultaneously realizes two types of relationships: both impersonal and personal. A peasant, selling a product on the market, receives a certain amount of money for it, and money here acts as the most important means of communication in the system of social relations. At the same time, this same peasant bargains with the buyer and thereby “personally” communicates with him, and the means of this communication is human speech. On the surface of phenomena there is a form of direct communication - communication, but behind it there is communication forced by the system of social relations itself, in this case the relations of commodity production. In socio-psychological analysis, one can abstract from the “secondary plan”, but in real life this “secondary plan” of communication is always present. Although in itself it is a subject of study mainly by sociology, it should also be taken into account in the socio-psychological approach.

Social role is the position of a person in an interpersonal community. Group connections (not in social relations) based on individual mental characteristics of personalities, i.e. social role - a certain expression of social and mental relations.

Unity of communication and activity. However, with any approach, the fundamental question is the connection between communication and activity. In a number of psychological concepts there is a tendency to contrast communication and activity. So, for example, E. Durkheim ultimately came to such a formulation of the problem when, arguing with G. Tarde, he paid special attention not to the dynamics of social phenomena, but to their statics. Society looked to him not as a dynamic system of active groups and individuals, but as a collection of static forms of communication. The factor of communication in determining behavior was emphasized, but the role of transformative activity was underestimated: the social process itself was reduced to the process of spiritual speech communication. This gave rise to A.N. Leontyev notes that with this approach the individual appears more “as a communicating than as a practically acting social being.”

In contrast to this, domestic psychology accepts the idea of the unity of communication and activity. This conclusion logically follows from the understanding of communication as the reality of human relations, which assumes that any forms of communication are included in specific forms of joint activity: people not only communicate in the process of performing various functions, but they always communicate in some activity, “about” it. Thus, an active person always communicates: his activities inevitably intersect with the activities of other people. But it is precisely this intersection of activities that creates certain relationships of an active person not only to the subject of his activity, but also to other people. It is communication that forms a community of individuals performing joint activities. Thus, the fact of the connection between communication and activity is stated in one way or another by all researchers.

However, the nature of this connection is understood in different ways. Sometimes activity and communication are considered not as parallel existing interconnected processes, but as two sides of a person’s social existence; his way of life. In other cases, communication is understood as a certain aspect of activity: it is included in any activity, is its element, while the activity itself can be considered as a condition of communication. Finally, communication can be interpreted as a special type of activity. Within this point of view, two of its varieties are distinguished: in one of them, communication is understood as a communicative activity, or a communication activity that occurs independently at a certain stage of ontogenesis, for example, in preschoolers and especially in adolescence (Elkonin, 1991). In the other, communication in a general sense is understood as one of the types of activity (meaning, first of all, speech activity), and in relation to it all the elements characteristic of activity in general are sought: actions, operations, motives, etc.

It is unlikely that it will be very important to clarify the advantages and comparative disadvantages of each of these points of view: none of them denies the most important thing - the undoubted connection between activity and communication, everyone recognizes the inadmissibility of separating them from each other during analysis. Moreover, the divergence of positions is much more obvious at the level of theoretical and general methodological analysis. As for experimental practice, all researchers have much more in common than different. This common thing is the recognition of the fact of the unity of communication and activity and attempts to fix this unity. In our opinion, it is advisable to have the broadest understanding of the connection between activity and communication, when communication is considered both as an aspect of joint activity (since activity itself is not only work, but also communication in the process of work), and as its unique derivative. Such a broad understanding of the connection between communication and activity corresponds to a broad understanding of communication itself: as the most important condition for an individual to appropriate the achievements of the historical development of mankind, be it at the micro level, in the immediate environment, or at the macro level, in the entire system of social connections.

If communication is understood as an aspect of activity, as a unique way of organizing it, then analyzing the form of this process alone is not enough. An analogy can be drawn here with the study of the activity itself. The essence of the principle of activity lies in the fact that it is also considered not just from the side of form (i.e., the individual’s activity is not simply stated), but from the side of its content (i.e., exactly the object to which this activity is directed is revealed). An activity, understood as an objective activity, cannot be studied outside of the characteristics of its subject. Likewise, the essence of communication is revealed only when not just the fact of communication itself, or even the method of communication, is stated, but its content.

The idea of “wovenness” of communication into activity also allows us to consider in detail the question of what exactly in activity can “constitute” communication. In the most general form, the answer can be formulated in such a way that through communication, activity is organized and enriched. Building a plan for joint activities requires each participant to have an optimal understanding of its goals, objectives, understanding the specifics of its object and even the capabilities of each participant. The inclusion of communication in this process allows for “coordination” or “mismatch” of the activities of individual participants.

Structure of communication. The structure of communication can be approached in different ways, as well as the definition of its functions. We propose to characterize the structure of communication by identifying three interrelated aspects in it: communicative, interactive and perceptual.

The communicative side of communication, or communication in the narrow sense of the word, consists of the exchange of information between communicating individuals. The interactive side consists in organizing interaction between communicating individuals, i.e. in the exchange of not only knowledge, ideas, but also actions. The perceptual side of communication means the process of perception and cognition of each other by communication partners and the establishment of mutual understanding on this basis. Naturally, all these terms are very conditional. Sometimes others are used in a more or less similar sense. For example, in communication there are three functions: information-communicative, regulatory-communicative, affective-communicative. The task is to carefully analyze, including at the experimental level, the content of each of these aspects or functions. Of course, in reality, each of these sides does not exist in isolation from the other two, and their isolation is possible only for analysis, in particular for constructing a system of experimental research. All aspects of communication identified here are revealed in small groups, i.e. in conditions of direct contact between people

Myasishchev V.N. prev.next.page O..Stages: 1- reflection of information about the partner, from the partner; 2- rating for this info. And the development of an attitude towards a partner; 3 - a way of reacting, SP.treatment with another person, which is.a consequence of the relationship developed towards this person, i.e. the way of manifestations.

The second level of analysis of O. functions involves the identification of local functions. The approach is called – target: 1f.- contact, respectively, establishing contacts as a state of mutual readiness to receive the transmission of infection; 2f. - informational, the goal is the exchange of opinions, messages, decisions that are shared with the partner to perform a number of actions; 4th - coordination, goal - mutual orientation and coordination of actions.; 5ph. - understanding, connected with the perception and understanding of not only the meaning of the message, but also understanding of the communication partner as a person; 6ph. - establishing relationships, the goal is cat. Awareness and fixation of one’s place in the system of field, status, business and other connections; 7th - exerting influence, the purpose of the phenomenon. Changing the states, behavior, personal and semantic formations of interaction partners, i.e. his attitudes, beliefs, etc.

Theoretical approaches to the study of communication

Information approaches are based on three main principles:

information content can be converted into various symbols;
a person is a kind of screen onto which the transmitted information is “projected” after its perception and processing;
there is a certain space in which discrete organisms and objects of limited volume interact. Within the framework of the information approach, two main models have been developed:

model by K. Shannon and W. Weaver, representing the change of messages into various images, signs, signals, symbols, languages or codes and their subsequent decoding. The model included five elements organized in a linear order: source of information - transmitter of information (encoder) - channel for transmitting signals - receiver of information (decoder) - receiver of information. Later it was supplemented by such concepts as “feedback” (reaction of the information receiver), “noise” (distortions and interference in the message as it passes through the channel), “filters” (converters of the message when it reaches the encoder or leaves the decoder) etc. The main disadvantage of this model was the underestimation of other approaches in studying the problem of communication;
model of communication exchange, which included: communication conditions;
communicative behavior;
communicative restrictions on the choice of communication strategy;
interpretive criteria that define and guide the way people perceive and evaluate their behavior towards each other.

Interactive approaches - consider communication as a situation of joint presence, which is mutually established and maintained by people through various forms of behavior and external attributes (appearance, objects, environment, etc.). Within the framework of interactive approaches, five models of organizing communication have been developed:

1) a linguistic model, according to which all interactions are formed and combined from 50-60 elementary movements and postures of the human body, and behavioral acts formed from these units are organized according to the principle of organizing sounds into words;

2) the social skills model is based on the idea of learning to communicate through communication itself;

3) the equilibrium model assumes that any change in behavior is usually compensated by another change, and vice versa (for example, dialogue - monologue, a combination of questions and answers);

4) The program model of social interaction postulates that the general structure of interpersonal interaction is formed as a result of the action of at least three types of programs:

a program dealing with simple coordination of movements;
a program that controls changes in the activities of individuals when anxiety or uncertainty arises;
a program that manages the complex task of meta-communication.

These programs are acquired by individuals as they learn and allow them to organize heterogeneous behavioral material. They are “triggered” depending on the content context of a specific situation, task and social organization;

5) the system model considers interaction as a configuration of behavioral systems that regulate the exchange of verbal statements and the use of space and territory of interaction.

The relational approach is based on the fact that communication is a system of relationships that people establish with each other, with society and the environment in which they live. Information, on the other hand, refers to any change in any part of that system that causes a change in other parts. Humans, animals or other organisms are an integral part of the communication process from the moment of birth to the moment of death.