Scientific and everyday psychology: what is the difference?

They say that bartenders and taxi drivers are excellent psychologists. Yes, this is partly true, but then they are everyday psychologists. They communicate a lot with different people; extensive life experience allows them to better understand society and give advice. However, their advice and judgments are not always fair from a scientific point of view. You and I have to understand everyday and scientific psychology, their differences and relationships, and define both types.

Differences between everyday and scientific psychology

The presence of everyday psychology raises the question of its relationship with scientific psychology. In addition to academic interest, this question also has practical meaning. Human life is permeated with psychological connections and relationships, so if everyday psychology exists in some specific forms, then people are its carriers. And if this is so, then it is quite possible to assume that by learning the psychological lessons of everyday life, people become or do not become psychologists.

One can name a number of differences between everyday psychological knowledge and scientific psychology:

Knowledge of everyday psychology is specific, dedicated to a specific situation, specific people. For example, a child in a family, solving specific pragmatic problems, knows exactly how to behave with one or another parent in order to achieve the desired goal.
Scientific psychology strives for generalizations, like any science. To achieve results, scientific concepts are used, and their development is the most important function of science. Scientific psychological concepts have one feature, which is their frequent coincidence with everyday concepts, i.e. expressed in the same words, but the internal content is still different;
Everyday psychological knowledge is intuitive in nature, which depends on the method of obtaining it. The result is achieved mainly through practical trials. Children have well-developed psychological intuition, acquired by the tests to which they subject adults every day and hourly. As a result, it turns out that children know very well who they can “twist the ropes” from. Teachers and trainers can follow a similar path, finding effective ways of education and training;
Scientific psychological knowledge is distinguished by its rationality and awareness. The scientific path consists of putting forward verbally formulated hypotheses and testing the consequences arising from them;
Methods and possibilities for knowledge transfer. This possibility is limited in the field of practical psychology, which follows from their specific and intuitive nature of everyday psychological experience. The life experience of the older generation is passed on to the younger generation to a small extent and with great difficulty, so the problem of “fathers and sons” will be eternal. Each new generation, in order to gain this experience, is forced to “pull their weight” on their own;
Scientific psychological knowledge is accumulated and transmitted with a high efficiency, because it is crystallized in concepts and laws and recorded in scientific literature. Their transmission occurs through verbal means - speech and language;

A comparative analysis of everyday and scientific psychology in a condensed version is shown in the table below.

It's no secret that psychology received the status of a science back in 1879, and from that moment it grew stronger and developed as a scientific discipline. But at the same time, the everyday understanding of psychology also lives very close to the scientific direction.

In this article we will highlight the main differences between everyday and scientific psychology, and also consider what advantages and disadvantages each of these areas brings. After all, many people do not even understand how these fundamentally different approaches to understanding a person and his psyche differ.

Personal experience or everyday psychology?

There is such a concept as “everyday psychology”. Roughly speaking, all people have a certain set of psychological knowledge. Those. All of us, some more, some less, but understand the relationships between people and have our own view of the world.

I want to especially emphasize this: every person is a psychologist to varying degrees. And the richer his personal life experience as a person, the better psychologist he is! The same applies to professional psychologists.

Ordinary life experience plays a huge role in practice. In many countries, a person under thirty years of age cannot obtain a psychotherapist license. It is no coincidence that training to become a psychotherapist lasts for 7 years.

But it is important to note that the personal experience of one person is significantly different from the experience of another.

You can meet an old man who stopped in his development for about 16 years and since then has not learned anything new from his life.

It becomes clear that biological age, although important, is not of paramount importance. The main criterion for development will be a person’s openness to new experiences and complete trust in his body.

This is when you begin to notice that your own body is trustworthy, that it is the appropriate tool for finding the most appropriate behavior in each immediate situation.

Imagine that you are faced with a choice: “Should I spend my vacation alone or with my family?”, “Should I drink the third cocktail offered?”, “Is this the person I want as a partner in life or in love? "

How will you behave if you act automatically? You will behave as your social environment requires! How will a person who trusts himself behave? Right! He will behave the way he needs.

Of course, such people exist in nature. But extremely rarely! Basically, you have to deal with people who just declare their own sincerity and spontaneity.

But in reality, hundreds of social stereotypes are captive.

The majority act according to established stereotypes of “good” or “bad” and rarely make decisions meaningfully. That is, of course, you think that you made a meaningful independent decision... But in fact, 99% of people would do the same. Simply because it is accepted in society.

Look what happens. If every person is a psychologist by nature, naturally he has his own everyday psychology. It is absolutely subjective for each of us. This means that we think that I am always right, and others simply do not understand anything.

Now you thought: “Nothing like that! I can always take the place of another and understand his point of view!” Well done. This also happens. But it also happens that you are simply furious with anger, resentment and a sense of injustice? Just remember today and your trip on public transport.

Those who have a car, remember the next goat who cut you off on a turn. And such situations haunt us in life endlessly. And our everyday psychology fails us time after time. This is where we come to the main point.

So what do psychologists know that helps them not only in their work, but also in their own lives?

The main thing in this matter lies in presenting yourself. And this is nothing more than a process of self-discovery and self-understanding.

First, a little theory. A little bit. The most effective model for self-disclosure is the Jogari Window, named after its inventors Joseph Luft and Harry Ingram. According to the Jogari model, we can imagine that each person contains four zones of personality: “arena”, “visible”, “blind spot” and “unknown”.

“Arena” is the zone of our “I”, which I know about and others know about. This is a personal space open to me and to others.

“Visible” is what I know about myself, but others do not (love affair, fear of the boss, etc.).

A “blind spot” is something that others know about me, but I don’t notice about myself. If this is pointed out to me, I usually disagree and get very angry or offended.

The “unknown” is what is hidden from me and others. This also includes the hidden potentials of any personality. Conventionally, this zone coincides with the zone of the unconscious.

I will not go into the weeds, but will simply point out a number of points that you can use individually or in conjunction with each other in order to objectively understand any difficult situation in your life.

Based on my practice, I can conclude that the areas that annoy us most in life are the “blind spot” and the “unknown.”

They cause most of the troubles, and that means they need to be dealt with first.

In other words: the more truth you know about yourself, the better you will feel in this life and the faster you will adapt to absolutely any life situation.

How to get to these zones? Well, at least in the “blind spot” for a start? For now, I’m generally silent about the subconscious...

The easiest way is to ask someone! Let’s look around, grab our closest relative or friend by the scruff of the neck and ask him the following question: “Tell me, darling, what do you really think about me? Give me the whole truth, I won’t be offended!” What do you think he will say? No matter how it is! His own life is still dear to him, and he is not going to spoil the relationship with you. He likes you, otherwise he wouldn’t communicate with you at all...

Because if you hear what he really thinks about you, you will not only be offended, you will also get angry and complain about injustice and ungrateful people. So what to do? How can you still find out about yourself what prevents you from living a normal life? The answer is simple - from strangers. And from a psychologist as well.

These two sources can be combined into one. You won't run down the street and pester people, will you? Although this is a surefire way to hear the truth, it can end in injury. So let's not take risks and turn to proven ways to study ourselves.

This method is called a “psychological group” and is constantly used by professional psychologists to study the depths of their own personality. But this form of work is available to everyone.

This is a place where people gather who are eager to understand themselves in order to sort out their lives.

They are ready for the fact that they will have to hear about their shortcomings in order to say goodbye to them once and for all.

You can use such a group as a tool to solve absolutely any problems in your life. To do this, you just need to spend a little time in it. As a rule, this takes from six months to several years, depending on the level of neglect, with a frequency of classes once a week. Again, if problems of a different kind arise, you can start going to the group again.

As you remember, the problems don't end there. It’s just that if you have learned to cope with certain difficulties, they no longer seem like a problem to you! And something else comes to the fore that you didn’t pay attention to before.

And this process is absolutely natural. You are constantly learning something new: driving a car, cooking new food, mastering a computer, etc. So it is here: you can constantly learn to solve your own difficulties instead of whining about ungrateful people, difficult circumstances and a bad economy.

Comparison of everyday and scientific psychology

“Take my advice,” says your friend. “I want to share my experience to help others overcome this difficult situation,” says the blogger. In both cases we are dealing with amateurs, not professionals. The key difference between everyday and scientific psychology is that the first is private, concrete. What helped one person may be completely useless to another, and may even harm a third. This is not the only difference in directions. Let's look at them in more detail, and also talk about the connection between the directions.

Differences between everyday and scientific psychology

The two types differ in the nature of knowledge, content and methods of transferring experience. Let's look at the basics:

The amateur type is the experience of one person, with all its nuances. Psychological knowledge is chaotic and based on intuition. The individual receives them by chance. The experience of science is always systematized, obtained through special experiments, extensive in application, and reflects general laws and patterns.
Amateur knowledge lives only in the sphere where a person received it, only in the life of this person. An individual can convey his knowledge orally or in writing to other people, but still it will only be his experience, his guesses, his considerations. Traditions, rituals, sayings, aphorisms, folk wisdom, proverbs - all these are examples of storing amateur psychology. Often several sources of information contradict each other. For example, for every proverb you can find an “anti-proverb”: “Teaching is light, not teaching is darkness”, “Live forever, learn – you will die a fool.” Information from science is passed down from generation to generation, it is taught in universities, it is stored in books. Scientific knowledge is constantly deepening and expanding.
Amateur conclusions are tied to the situation, specific conditions and time. Using them is very problematic, not every person is suitable for this or that wisdom, and the advice of strangers does not always work. Science is not tied to time and conditions; it is methods, techniques that always work. And if special conditions are needed, then this is always said.

Thus, while one type describes certain phenomena in a versatile and chaotic manner, the other explains them through terms, concepts, definitions, patterns, and cause-and-effect relationships.

The relationship between everyday and scientific psychology (briefly)

You probably already guessed that both types are closely interrelated. Examples of connections and relationships:

professional research is based on life experience (someone noticed something and decided to substantiate it, identify general patterns, find solutions);
psychological science takes its tasks from everyday experience;
The final test of scientific knowledge is the test of life experience.

Does science influence life? Undoubtedly. This is what we usually call practical psychology. We are talking about all the techniques, methods, trainings that we use in life to improve it. All scientific psychological research arises against the background of current problems of society. People suggest what they need - psychologists try to help. According to this, three types can be roughly distinguished: everyday, scientific and practical psychology. The latter combines the other two types.

Most psychologists who have received appropriate training relate to both types. Someone chooses only the theoretical part, but even in this case he is faced with everyday problems of people, because without this it is impossible to put forward and test a hypothesis. For this, everyday observation is used. In psychology, this is one of the methods that involves testing a hypothesis or research results in real conditions (not laboratory ones).

Thus, the specificity of scientific and everyday psychology is as follows: there is a need for everyday psychological knowledge for the development of psychology as a science.

Everyday or pre-scientific psychology

If we talk about psychology as a form of everyday knowledge, then it appeared along with human society. Worldview in everyday or pre-scientific psychology grew out of the everyday practice and life experience of primitive man. By interacting with each other, people learned to distinguish mental qualities hidden in behavior. Behind the actions performed, the motives and characters of people were guessed.

Psychological knowledge arose in the process of understanding specific situations. The content of this knowledge was limited to the conclusions that could be drawn by analyzing simple events, and the reasons underlying them were easily traced. People recorded all the conclusions made in proverbs and sayings, for example, “repetition is the mother of learning,” “measure seven times, cut once,” “if you don’t know the ford, don’t go into the water,” etc.

What is certain is that pre-scientific psychology could not rise to a holistic assessment of existence and was limited only to a symbolic explanation of its individual fragments. The psychological knowledge of primitive people corresponded to a non-systematic, fragmented worldview that arose and existed in conditions of underdevelopment of rational methods of mastering reality. It is called topocentric because the content was limited to knowledge only of the place where the clan or tribe lived. And yet, covering all spheres of life of primitive man, this knowledge could be quite extensive.

Modern psychologists believe that the emergence of this knowledge was caused by such obvious manifestations of the human psyche as:

Dreams;
Mental states such as joy, fear, sadness, etc.;
Mental qualities - benevolence, hostility, cunning, all of them are manifested in the communication of people.

The phenomena that ancient people observed and, making attempts to explain them, led to the conclusion that the soul can leave the human body. At the moment of death, it leaves the body forever. This is how the most ancient and widespread doctrine of the transmigration of the soul from one body to another appeared in India.

This does not mean at all that ordinary forms of psychological knowledge, despite their simplicity, turned out to be false. Some of these ideas have retained their significance to this day and have entered the treasury of modern psychological science:

Everything psychological exists within man;
The soul remains to live forever and does not die with the person.

The immortality of the soul today appears differently compared to the ancient Egyptians, who believed that the soul of a deceased person turns into a bird and lives on his grave.

Eternity, the immortality of the soul, according to the ideas of modern man, is associated with good deeds performed by him during his life. Even Seraphim of Sarov (1754-1833) argued that if you save yourself, then thousands around you can be saved.

The idea that appeared to primitive man about the eternity of the soul, thus, continues to live in the public consciousness today, albeit in a slightly different form.

Psychology had to begin with the idea of the soul, believed the domestic psychologist L.S. Vygotsky. This idea became the first scientific hypothesis of ancient man and a huge achievement of thought.

Comparison of everyday and scientific psychology

Differences between everyday and scientific psychology

The two types differ in the nature of knowledge, content and methods of transferring experience. Let's look at the basics:

The amateur type is the experience of one person, with all its nuances. Psychological knowledge is chaotic and based on intuition. The individual receives them by chance. The experience of science is always systematized, obtained through special experiments, extensive in application, and reflects general laws and patterns.
Amateur knowledge lives only in the sphere where a person received it, only in the life of this person. An individual can convey his knowledge orally or in writing to other people, but still it will only be his experience, his guesses, his considerations. Traditions, rituals, sayings, aphorisms, folk wisdom, proverbs - all these are examples of storing amateur psychology. Often several sources of information contradict each other. For example, for every proverb you can find an “anti-proverb”: “Teaching is light, not teaching is darkness”, “Live forever, learn – you will die a fool.” Information from science is passed down from generation to generation, it is taught in universities, it is stored in books. Scientific knowledge is constantly deepening and expanding.
Amateur conclusions are tied to the situation, specific conditions and time. Using them is very problematic, not every person is suitable for this or that wisdom, and the advice of strangers does not always work. Science is not tied to time and conditions; it is methods, techniques that always work. And if special conditions are needed, then this is always said.

Thus, while one type describes certain phenomena in a versatile and chaotic manner, the other explains them through terms, concepts, definitions, patterns, and cause-and-effect relationships.

The relationship between everyday and scientific psychology (briefly)

You probably already guessed that both types are closely interrelated. Examples of connections and relationships:

professional research is based on life experience (someone noticed something and decided to substantiate it, identify general patterns, find solutions);
psychological science takes its tasks from everyday experience;
The final test of scientific knowledge is the test of life experience.

Thus, the specificity of scientific and everyday psychology is as follows: there is a need for everyday psychological knowledge for the development of psychology as a science.

Scientific psychology is based on extensive factual material

In its entirety, such material is inaccessible to any bearer of everyday psychology, no matter how rich a life he leads and how many people he communicates with.

Situation

For the first time in his life, a young specialist has been appointed to a leadership position. He has to build relationships in the team, establishing a leadership position, but he does not know what to rely on.

Everyday psychology

An unprofessional scenario for resolving contradictions in a work team involves a situational recommendation, such as: “If you want to do it well, do it yourself” or “Write everything in the job description.”

Scientific psychology

A psychologist, consulting a client on the problem of leadership in an organization, will rely on the theories of transformational leadership by James Burns, types of leadership by Fred Fiedler, human resources by Douglas McGregor and others. Each of them is based on extensive empirical material.

***

Scientific and everyday psychology should not be considered as opposing sides: they complement each other. The practice of communication and life experience serve as material for the scientific understanding of mental phenomena and vice versa. The time for abstract ideas has passed: today the main task of those who deal with the problems of the human psyche is not to produce another brilliant idea, but to make sure that “it works.”

about the author

Natalya Kurdyukova is the director of the master’s program “Leadership in the Management of Civil and Public Initiatives,” business trainer, coach consultant.

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The basis for the emergence of psychology as a science was the everyday practical experience of people. Psychological knowledge has helped people get to know each other better, influence individual actions and behaviors, prevent unwanted ones, and take into account individual characteristics.

This knowledge was accumulated, passed on from generation to generation, enshrined in proverbs and sayings, in works of art. However, in general, this knowledge lacked systematicity and depth of evidence and therefore could not be a solid basis for working with people.

Everyday psychological knowledge differs significantly from scientific knowledge, primarily in that it was based on intuition and had a specific situational nature. The knowledge available to everyday psychology was based mainly on observations and assumptions.

Scientific psychology, as opposed to everyday psychology, is built on generalizations, knowledge is realized and experiment plays a significant role in its acquisition.

Differences between everyday and scientific psychology:

1) Everyday knowledge is used in specific situations in relation to specific people. Scientific knowledge is more universal, applicable to a range of situations.

2) Everyday knowledge is acquired intuitively, through communication with other people. Scientific knowledge comes from scientific laws.

3) Everyday knowledge is passed on from generation to generation. Scientific knowledge - through the education system.

4) We acquire everyday knowledge only through observation; we also obtain scientific knowledge through experiment.

5) Everyday psychology exists at the level of everyday consciousness and is based within a certain social group. Scientific psychology accumulates its material in books.

Published 12/16/2018 — 15:48 —

Scientific and everyday psychology: what is the difference?

Knowledge about life

So, it is important to understand that everyday psychology is far from science, it is a kind of synthesis of people’s knowledge about life, about themselves, the quintessence of experience, observations and experiences. Of course, conclusions drawn on the basis of subjective experience are unlikely to be objective and acceptable to others. Everyday psychology, its main features and characteristic features:

Everyday psychology, its main features and characteristic features:

1. Specificity and down-to-earthness. Everyday psychology tends to talk about specific people and the situations in which they find themselves; it relies on the subjective experiences of specific people. Usually, as an example, they give you stories that happened to some person who found himself in a certain situation and made certain conclusions for himself (naturally, this conclusion will be relevant and useful for him, but it is not a fact that this knowledge can be widely applicable and used other people).

2. Intuitive nature of knowledge. The peculiarities of everyday psychology are that it relies on intuition, on subjective feelings, and usually no one seeks to check their feelings or try to think about them. This is most often the main limitation of intuitive knowledge - it is almost impossible to explain it to another person, “I just realized something.”

3. Insufficient depth of knowledge. People make conclusions superficially, without examining certain motives, emotions or behavior of other people. As a rule, a conclusion is made quickly, without checking its reliability (this is where fears, beliefs, proverbs, superstitions come from, when people try to follow certain rules just because someone said so; following fashion or relying on popular books or articles lives here , which do not carry any scientific knowledge).

4. The main method is observation. Most of us make conclusions about something based only on periodic, short-term observation, which is not at all consistent with its scientific counterpart. As a result, this leads to a superficial perception of reality, since everything is verified only through personal experience, and, as we know, such a method is extremely subjective and limited.

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5. Everyday psychology does not have a common terminology. The life experience of many people is connected with different times, eras, states, so everyone tends to describe this or that state “in his own words,” into which he puts his own meaning, which only he fully understands. This often leads to misunderstandings and substitution of concepts.

Such knowledge can be presented very confidently and openly, you can be convinced that a given method or point of view is correct, because it is written so in a magazine or because everyone does it. You can also be assured that this postulate has been tested by personal experience. For example, a person celebrated the New Year in a bad mood and the whole next year was not going well for him, after which he carries this knowledge to his friends as a dogma.

It is important to understand that not every person has inner instinct, insight, the ability to notice details and generate everyday psychological knowledge. Therefore, it is always worth remembering that not all other people’s knowledge can be useful for you, but sometimes you can listen and communicate with different people in order to have an idea about a certain phenomenon or learn about someone else’s experience, knowledge of which may be useful

The view of science

To begin with, it is important to understand the definition of psychology as such. So, psychology is a complex science; it studies one of the most mysterious and complex mechanisms in nature - the human psyche. In this regard, this scientific discipline requires attention, depth of research, as well as special working methods

In this regard, this scientific discipline requires attention, depth of research, as well as special working methods.

Throughout the 20th century, this science gained momentum, developed, and found more and more new methods for studying humans. The professional view of many theorists has helped this science become one of the most influential in our time. The theoretical aspect within its framework is extremely important, because the theory gives general ideas about the world and man, which exist in almost every science.

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In the process of long-term experiments, collection and analysis of theoretical and practical data, scientific or academic psychology was formed, the main features of which are as follows:

1. Generalizations. This sign suggests that conclusions are drawn not on the basis of what one specific person experienced, but on the basis of many experiments and observations. And when a certain fact, a certain behavioral reaction manifests itself in similar circumstances in a larger number of samples, a certain conclusion can be drawn based on detailed analysis and generalization.

2. Rationalization. Scientific psychology gains knowledge through experimentation and detailed reflection on its results. Data must be rationally explained, and a cause-and-effect relationship between phenomena must be traced.

3. No restrictions - this means that the data obtained through scientific experiments is applicable to a large number of people

For example, data on the fatigue of schoolchildren, how attention functions and what is the maximum number of objects we can hold in short-term memory - all this is consistent for most of the general population

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4. Reliance on various methods. As you know, scientific psychology has a fairly large range of different methods - from content analysis to psychological experiment. When using various methods for studying the psyche and its mechanisms, data is checked in order to identify variables that influence the experiment and create the necessary conditions for research.

Observation is long-term monitoring of the manifestation of certain signs in those observed in natural and sometimes specially created conditions.
A survey is a collection of information from a large number of people using questions, the answers to which are processed and grouped.
Tests are a method of quantitative and qualitative assessment of a person’s mental processes, his behavioral and emotional reactions. With the help of tests, you can assess both a person’s mental and intellectual abilities, as well as the level of his anxiety or creative abilities.
Experiment - this method is aimed at studying specific mental phenomena in certain, specially created and controlled conditions. Almost any experiment serves to confirm or refute a theory or hypothesis.

5. Systematization of knowledge is a theoretical approach. Everything that science receives in the course of research and experiments is systematized, analyzed, on the basis of which certain conclusions are drawn. And it must be said that in order to systematize any knowledge or come to a certain conclusion, it takes a lot of time, sometimes several years.

6. The main features of the scientific approach are the presence of a single glossary and the use of a single terminology. Psychology as a science has a clear system of terms that describe certain states and processes. And this, in turn, eliminates discrepancies when one concept is replaced by another.

7. Use of mathematical statistics methods for data processing. They avoid unreliability, subjectivity, and eye-catching conclusions.

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The relationship between everyday and scientific psychology is obvious - one explores practice and accumulates experience, the other tests everything through experiment. But we should never forget that everyday psychological knowledge is not scientific, which means that it cannot always be applied by one person or another and be effective.

If we recall all the stages of the development of psychology as a science, we can say that this knowledge largely began with the use of the method of introspection, when the scientist observed himself and his subjective experiences. Based on this, many conclusions and conclusions were made.

Knowledge about life

Everyday psychology, its main features and characteristic features:

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What is everyday psychology

Conventionally, every person is a psychologist. The quality of his life will depend on how competently and skillfully he is able to analyze the personalities of other people, influence them and build relationships with them.

Everyday psychology is represented by a set of different views, beliefs, convictions, proverbs, aphorisms, sayings and similar creations of the people. Thus, it stores the experience of generations.

Our idea of reality, present life, people arises thanks to our own experience and knowledge that someone shared with us. It is worth considering that our perception of reality cannot cover all its completeness and versatility. Our own views, beliefs and opinions limit us to certain limits. We look at the world around us as if through a small window, while everyday psychology gives us richer grounds for understanding. However, we should not forget the fact that everyday psychology is situational.

It is also necessary to take into account that the experience of each person is valuable precisely because it takes into account all the subtleties and nuances of the current situation for the microcosm of the one who then broadcasts his own impressions and conclusions. Therefore, it will be more useful.

The importance of everyday knowledge should also not be underestimated. They help us in everyday life to make the most optimal decisions for us, protect us from annoying mistakes and allow us to achieve maximum benefits. Therefore, everyday experience is invaluable to a person. If he does not listen to him, he will learn at the cost of his own losses and failures.

Methods for obtaining information

There are judgments that sound convincing, but are questioned by skeptics. Those around you are attracted by brightness, persuasiveness, and novelty of expressions. They do not pay attention to the disconfirming evidence provided by experienced researchers.

There is more substantiated information among scientific concepts than among everyday knowledge. Common speculations:

A curse placed on a family is removed by begging forgiveness from the dead.
After the loss of a loved one, a relative will certainly suffer severe psychological trauma.
Childhood psychotraumas can interfere with normal activities and development.
Without maternal love, a full-fledged personality will not be formed.

Scientific psychology: what is it

This is data that is accumulated through research and is used both in theory and in practice, that is, in life. The discipline arose in the 19th century, but life's wisdom accumulated along with the development of society.

Specifics of scientific (academic) psychology, its difference from everyday psychology:

The first is science. The second is someone’s views, the results of reflection, analysis, introspection, and social interaction.
Scientific information is closely related to statistics, mathematical calculations, experiments, experiments.
Scientific data is always rationally summarized and explained. They are carefully verified, confirmed, and do not depend on the emotions or moods of an individual subject or society. They are objective and impartial. As a rule, they are distinguished by a higher cultural and intellectual level.
Facts from science are relevant for the entire society; they take into account the specifics of certain conditions and the differences of individuals.

Next, let's look at the characteristics of everyday and scientific psychology in comparison.

Verification methods

Everyday knowledge proves its validity only over time, and what loses its relevance is gradually forgotten. In addition, their correctness is confirmed by personal experience, and not by scientifically regulated experiments.

In science, the researcher purposefully models the necessary conditions, rather than waiting for a favorable combination of circumstances. This allows you to study in its entirety the phenomenon of interest by changing the characteristics of the experimental environment.

Due to the fact that scientific knowledge is accumulated and information about a particular object or phenomenon is systematized, it becomes complex and diverse. The resulting material continues to be comprehended and analyzed, becoming fertile ground for its expansion and the emergence of new scientific disciplines.

General psychology develops through the improvement and enrichment of its individual branches. Everyday knowledge does not have a single system and such features.

4. Formation of psychological science. Its main stages

development.

The first systematic presentation of psychological phenomena was undertaken by the ancient Greek scientist Aristotle in his treatise “On the Soul”. But the actual scientific experimental study of mental phenomena and their patterns began essentially from the middle of the 19th century, and truly scientific psychology began to take shape even later - at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. Conventionally, there are four main stages in the development of psychology as a science.

Stage I (IV century BC - mid-17th century AD) psychology as the science of the soul. They tried to explain all the incomprehensible phenomena in human life by the presence of a soul: sleep, dreams, trance states, mastery of magical skills (for example, success in hunting), death, etc. At this stage, psychology was pre-scientific, since it did not have its own research methods, but used the philosophical method of logical reasoning.

Stage II (mid-17th century - mid-19th century) - psychology as the science of consciousness. Arises in connection with the development of natural sciences. The ability to think, feel, sense, desire is called consciousness. The main method of studying mental phenomena is considered to be a person’s observation of himself (the method of introspection) and the description of facts. Philosophical discussion ceases to be the only tool of knowledge.

Stage III (mid-19th century - mid-20th century) - psychology as a science of behavior.

Since the 60s XIX century a new period in the development of psychological science began. At this time, many different “psychologies” arise with their own principles and language; Initially, they interacted with difficulty, most often existing in opposition to each other (at the present stage, these movements - in their current versions - often strive, if not to unite, then to borrow methods, concepts, etc.). This period is often called a period of open crisis in psychology. There is a transformation of the subject of psychology; ideas about the “soul” and “consciousness” turn out to be insufficient. During this period, not only theoretical, but practical psychology was born.

Stage IV (mid-20th century to the present) psychology as a science that studies facts, patterns and mechanisms of the psyche Until the middle of the 20th century, a large number of competing incompatible and even incomparable paradigms were formed in psychology, which realized potentially logically possible versions of understanding the subject and method of psychology. This was a unique situation in the history of science. No other discipline has seen so many different paradigms collide. The state of psychology during this period represented a stage of open crisis, which continues to the present day and is characterized by diversity and competition of paradigms. A productive way out of the crisis does not consist in the dominance of any one paradigm, not in the merging of logically difficult to compatible paradigms, but in the evolutionary process of the psychological community developing a consensus opinion about the basic scientific values, principles, subject and method of psychology.

Approaches to the classification of psychological research methods

As we said earlier, the specificity of scientific psychology is that it uses a whole arsenal of scientific methods to accumulate its data. The way in which this or that knowledge was obtained also plays an important role. Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1896-1934) expressed this in the following laconic formula: facts obtained using different cognitive principles are different facts. There is a certain conditionality of the facts obtained in an empirical study by the scheme existing before this empirical study, the hypotheses put forward, preliminary knowledge about the reality being studied, etc. And such a relationship between the facts obtained in the study and the researcher’s preliminary ideas about the phenomena being studied and, accordingly, with the methods used can be traced in all psychological directions. Therefore, the problem of the methodology (means) of psychological cognition is one of the most significant and discussed problems of psychology. There are several views on the classification of psychological research methods. For example, G. Pirov divided the “methods” into:

the actual methods (observation, experiment, modeling, etc.);
methodological techniques;
methodological approaches (genetic, psychophysiological, etc.). (See additional illustrative material.)

Sergei Leonidovich Rubinstein (1889-1960) in “Fundamentals of General Psychology” identified observation and experiment as the main psychological methods. The first was divided into “external” and “internal” (self-observation), the experiment - into laboratory, natural and psychological-pedagogical plus an auxiliary method - a physiological experiment in its main modification (the method of conditioned reflexes). In addition, he identified techniques for studying the products of activity, conversation (in particular, clinical conversation in genetic psychology by Jean Piaget (1896-1980)) and questionnaire. Naturally, time has determined the features of this classification. Thus, the “kinship-ideological” connections between psychology and philosophy deprived it of theoretical methods; a similar affinity with pedagogy and physiology was rewarded by the inclusion of the methods of these sciences in the psychological list. (See additional illustrative material.) We will consider the methods of psychology based on four main positions:

a) non-experimental psychological methods;
b) diagnostic methods;
c) experimental methods;
d) formative methods. (See additional illustrative material.)

Scientific psychology: what is it

Specifics of scientific (academic) psychology, its difference from everyday psychology:

The first is science. The second is someone’s views, the results of reflection, analysis, introspection, and social interaction.
Scientific information is closely related to statistics, mathematical calculations, experiments, experiments.
Scientific data is always rationally summarized and explained. They are carefully verified, confirmed, and do not depend on the emotions or moods of an individual subject or society. They are objective and impartial. As a rule, they are distinguished by a higher cultural and intellectual level.
Facts from science are relevant for the entire society; they take into account the specifics of certain conditions and the differences of individuals.

Next, let's look at the characteristics of everyday and scientific psychology in comparison.

Methods of psychology

Observation

-
the most common method by which psychological phenomena are studied in various conditions without interfering with their course.
Observation can be everyday and scientific, included and not included.

Everyday

observation is limited to recording facts and is random and unorganized.
Scientific
observation is organized, involves a clear plan, recording the results in a special diary.
Participant
observation involves the participation of the researcher in the activity being studied.
When not included,
this is not required.

Experiment

-
a method that involves the active intervention of the researcher in the activities of the subject in order to create the best conditions for the study of specific psychological phenomena.
The experiment can be laboratory,

when it takes place in specially organized conditions, and the actions of the subject are determined by instructions;
natural,
when the study is carried out in natural conditions;
ascertaining -
when only necessary psychological phenomena are studied;
formative -
in the process of which certain qualities of the subjects develop.

The method of generalizing independent characteristics
involves identifying and analyzing opinions about certain psychological phenomena and processes obtained from various people.
Performance analysis

–
a method of indirect study of psychological phenomena based on practical results and objects of work, in which the creative strengths and abilities of people are embodied.
A survey
is a method that requires subjects to answer specific questions from the researcher.
It can be written (questioning),

when questions are asked on paper;
oral,
when questions are posed orally;
and in the form of an interview,
during which personal contact is established with the subject.

Testing

–
a method during which subjects perform certain actions on the instructions of the researcher.
There are projective testing ,

exploring various manifestations of the psyche of individuals (usually it includes the use of constitutive, interpretative, cathartic, impressive, expressive and additive techniques) and
psychocorrectional
(usually involving the use of behavioral and cognitive correction techniques, psychoanalysis, gestalt - and body-oriented therapy, psychodrama, psychoanalysis and transpersonal approach).

Similarities between scientific and everyday psychology

The similarity between scientific and everyday psychology is that they help people understand each other. The result of combining two areas of psychology is practical psychology.

What does the unification of scientific and everyday psychology look like:

The study of the influence of a group on an individual and individuals on a group (psychology of management and leadership).
Determining the features of interaction between two groups or two people.
The study of human uniqueness, behavioral characteristics (personality psychology).

Practical psychology begins with everyday observation and ends with scientific study. And at the third stage, on the contrary, the put forward theoretical hypothesis is tested on special cases in everyday life, the breadth of its application is noted.

Everyday and scientific psychology are important to each other. These are mutually complementary types. Everyday psychology is everyone’s personal experience. Scientific psychology is the generalized experience of the entire society. But is it really possible to draw general conclusions about the laws of society without knowing the psyche of each individual? And it is also impossible to understand systematic knowledge without experiencing it personally in practice. Can a teacher only follow the material written in the textbook, ignoring the environmental conditions and characteristics of the very children with whom he interacts? So, in essence, we are talking about theoretical and practical psychology.

What sciences and how is psychology related?

Biology. This is the most important science for psychology and it is quite clear why. The secret is that the study of the human psyche and behavior is impossible even without all known knowledge about the structure of man

But as it turns out, not only the structure of the body is important for psychology, but also the central nervous system and its functions. All this knowledge helps to connect together psychological processes and the activity of the central nervous system.

2. History. What modern man has become is the result of many years of development, which can be observed in the developments of such a science as history. The manner and method of speech, the thought process, work activity and much more that is studied and analyzed by psychology would be impossible without historical data.

3. Pedagogy. This science provides information about people's behavior during learning and the influence of education.

4. Medicine. Knowledge from this science helps to better understand the human condition, prevent serious disorders and prescribe the correct mental treatment.

5. Sociology. The formation of personality is influenced by the social environment, that is, how a person will display the outside world directly depends on society and his position in it. Sociology provides knowledge about the structure of society, its problems and ways to solve them.

6. Philosophy. This science studies a person’s views on life, and psychology studies the person himself and what contributed to the adoption of certain decisions, the formation of those same views on life.

The connection between psychology and other sciences has led to the emergence of various branches of psychology, which specialize in its individual interfaces with other sciences (let’s consider the main branches):

Social psychology as a science is a branch of psychology that studies relationships between people, their compatibility and the influence of various factors on people’s behavior. In a world where every day people are influenced by each other and the flow of information, this science helps to find common ground and protect against negative influence. An example of socio-psychological phenomena is the attitude in the family, at work, in the educational community.

Educational psychology is a science that studies the process of personality formation during training and education. Thus, during the educational process a person acquires not only knowledge, but also the opportunity to grow up in society. For example, a school is a place where children are not only taught mathematics, but also have preventive conversations, trainings, tests and educational hours.
Medical psychology is a branch of psychology that studies methods of treating the human psyche at the physical level.

Psychology is a vast science with many nuances. That is why it includes a large amount of knowledge, methods and functions that make it possible to study and diagnose the patterns and mechanisms of the human psyche.