Modern social psychology separates the concepts of objective and subjective success (objective & subjective well-being):
- objective success - the level of material well-being of an individual, assessed by such indicators as the level of education, sector of employment or social class of a person in adulthood, his state of health, level of annual income, as well as the status of ownership of movable and immovable property (number of rooms of living space) and etc.;
— subjective success — a person’s level of satisfaction, the presence of mental or depressive disorders, assessed using self-questionnaires completed by respondents.
Based on the data obtained, researchers identify patterns: for example, that the IQ level of a child at the age of 14 years is positively correlated with the level of annual income at 50 years old, and this correlation is expressed by a coefficient of 0.265 (26.5%).
This means that, on average, for 26 out of 100 people, higher income in adulthood can be associated with higher intelligence in childhood.
But this relationship takes on much greater significance when considered in isolation from other factors, which, in addition to the already mentioned intelligence, or cognitive abilities, include the socio-economic status of the family, the level of perceived control and the character of the individual.
Social background and education are the key to human well-being
The most studied factor of material success and future social mobility in children by modern psychology is the socioeconomic status of parents, assessed by the following parameters:
- duration of education and level of education of father and mother;
- annual income and real estate of the family;
- professional status and social class of parents.
In general, the identified correlation between these indicators and the level of income, together with the career achievements of children in adulthood, is up to 20%.
For psychology, 20% is a large dependence, the mechanisms of action of which are clear even without complex sociological research: family income directly affects the child’s starting opportunities and his social capital, which, in turn, affect the amount of earnings and social status of a person in the future.
Research in this area has been carried out since the 1960s. Using fairly large samples of people, scientists were able to trace the influence of parental factors throughout an individual’s life.
It is appropriate to note here that the role of family background is not direct, but is largely indirect through another important indicator - the level of education, which in various works can be defined as:
- number of years of study;
- index of prestige of educational institutions;
- having an academic degree;
- qualification certificates, etc.
Moreover, the correlation between education and the prestige of a profession, income level or social class in the future can be up to 40%, which makes this factor the most important in determining the trajectory of a person’s achievements.
The identified relationship between the level of well-being and a person’s social background and education can, based on these studies, be visualized as follows:
What thoughts hinder personal growth?
Each of us has blocks within us that hinder our development. It's like old junk that needs to be thrown away to free up the room and fill it with sunlight.
Let's study the main examples of negative thinking.
"I must succeed"
You don’t owe anyone anything: self-realization is your own business. Even your parents and closest relatives cannot impose patterns of behavior, life guidelines and goals on you.
“I won’t succeed”
Dooming yourself to failure in advance is not the wisest course of action. If you don't believe in your abilities, then you shouldn't try. And if you are confident in yourself, then you will not be afraid of failures after the first, second and even tenth attempt.
Our ideas about reality are limited by our own stereotypes and imposed thinking patterns. Change them and reality will change. The impossible will become possible.
"I do not want anything"
The ostrich’s position “I see nothing, I’m happy with everything” is the path to nowhere.
Life is about moving forward. If you don't have the drive to develop and achieve anything, there's something wrong with you. It's time to reconsider your priorities.
“Everything is the same as always - nothing new”
Life changes constantly, whether we notice it or not. No one will forbid you to influence events yourself and rebuild the world for yourself.
Intelligence: what are we measuring?
One of the most common stereotypes about the reasons for an individual's success or failure is the cognitive hypothesis, according to which a person's level of intelligence affects his achievements. The test for measuring mental abilities, which appeared at the beginning of the 20th century, was initially conceived by its creators solely as a methodology for assessing children and adults with difficult development of cognitive activity or with thinking problems. But “intelligence testing” was quickly adopted by educational methodologists. It’s clear why: this is a single, convenient, and most importantly, digitized way to measure people’s thinking.
The IQ test has quickly become a social myth that it is a comprehensive measure of an individual's potential that can predict the trajectory of human development. Moreover, it is innate. But by the end of the 20th century, science increasingly and more convincingly began to provide evidence that:
— a person’s IQ level is not an innate, but a completely changeable personality parameter;
- IQ tests can measure little in such complex human thinking, except the ability to pass these very tests.
From this counterargument emerged EQ (emotional quotient) - the skill of managing emotions, SQ (spiritual quotient) - spiritual intelligence, VQ (vision quotient) - the level of energy, which, although they add integrity and comprehensiveness to the modern picture of describing the individual’s potential, are subject to the same problems, as the notorious indicator of intelligence, namely the lack of objective opportunities both for measuring them and for assessing their impact on human development.
And yet, despite all the public controversy surrounding IQ, modern academic science recognizes that the level of intelligence determined by tests of cognitive abilities and measured in childhood does correlate:
- up to 30% - with income level and social status in adulthood;
— up to 50% — with the level of education!
Therefore, the previously proposed chain can be visualized as follows:
Locus of control - controlled success
"Control. This seemingly insignificant psychological concept has perhaps the most important influence on all human behavior. This is not about a person's ability to control the actions of others, but about the personal power you have over your own life and over the events in it."
Roger R. Hawk
Locus of control is a characteristic of a person that determines how he explains his successes or failures.
- Internal locus of control - all actions are defined by a person as his own efforts, accompanied by a clearly expressed feeling of controllability of the external environment.
- External locus of control - the environment is perceived as uncontrollable, a person feels the passivity of his role and the impossibility of influence.
For example, a student may evaluate success in passing a test as “I prepared well, so I coped with the task” - this is an internal locus; or in a less adaptive form: “the tasks were easy, so I got a good grade”—an external locus.
It is the internal locus of control that is considered by psychology as one of the main factors of increased determination and resistance to failure, which is proven by its 15% correlation with the achievements of children in adulthood and an extremely strong correlation with the level of intelligence - up to a 50% correlation.
That is, a child’s self-confidence has a positive effect on test scores and learning ability, which, through high school performance and a sense of self-competence, leads to a higher level of well-being in the future.
General scheme of dependencies of success factors
Over the past 20 years, in Western achievement psychology, a more holistic concept of perceived control by an individual has been formed - the so-called megatrait core self-evaluation, which in Russian-language works is translated as “core self-evaluative disposition.” Despite the complexity of the name, this megatrait is clear in its design: it is a summary factor of four human characteristics:
- locus of control - the feeling of controllability of the external environment;
- self-efficacy - a person’s confidence in his own abilities when solving problems;
- self-esteem - a sense of self-worth;
- neuroticism - the level of emotional sensitivity, that is, the degree of reactions to external stress.
All these factors have been studied quite well individually. For example, high levels of neuroticism are known to have a negative impact on both future educational and career achievements, and are also more likely to be associated with financial problems and the risk of job loss. Individuals with high self-esteem and confidence in their abilities tend to look more diligently for work during periods of unemployment, and when choosing areas of employment, they give preference to more complex and complex occupations - which leads to a higher level of income in the future.
An interesting observation has been made about people with low self-esteem: they tend to deny their influence on their own achievements, which leads to additional worries about how they will cope in the future and avoidance of further opportunities for growth, and therefore makes future success less likely. probable. This is nothing more than the phenomenon of “imposter syndrome”, known in popular psychology.
It is important to note that all four characteristics - locus of control, self-efficacy, self-esteem and neuroticism - are very strongly correlated with each other - up to 60%, that is, they are interrelated. Therefore, the possibility of combining these factors into one megatrait began to be considered.
The importance of these characteristics when a person evaluates himself is convincingly proven by graphs in the work of one of the leading researchers in this area, Timothy Judge, released in 2007 under the title Capitalizing on One's Advantages: Role of Core Self-Evaluations. ):
We see that for people with the same educational or family background, having different self-esteem dispositions leads to significant differences in expected future income. Moreover, the higher the education and status of the family, the more pronounced this difference in achievements is.
And although self-esteem disposition is not so influential in the case of low starting opportunities (the left part of the graphs), which once again emphasizes the role of family and education in shaping the trajectory of an individual’s well-being, a person’s internal locus of control, self-confidence and adaptive interpretation of external events is a huge advantage , proven by modern research.
Psychological preparation: new attitudes
To achieve success, learn to set clear goals. A person without a goal will not become successful. He doesn't know where to move and what to strive for. Listen to your heart. Until you decide on your true desires, you will not be able to choose a direction and set goals.
Develop strong-willed qualities and discipline. It can be difficult to overcome yourself. To achieve a goal you need to make an effort. Stop procrastinating. If you have a lot of work ahead and you're avoiding it, set a timer for 25 minutes right now. Surely you can spend a quarter of an hour concentrating on the task at hand? Rest and then get back to work for 25 minutes. By gradually increasing your work time, you will learn to concentrate, and moving towards your goal will become more confident and faster.
If you want to work in Spain, study the language. Have you dreamed of a career as a designer? Sign up for suitable courses or select educational material from the Internet.
Understand that you are not the center of the universe. Society is a single organism, and you are a tiny part of it. To achieve your goals, learn to be observant. Pay close attention to the changes around you. Listen to the people around you, establish communication. If a person has found his place in society, where he is needed, important and valuable, his success is guaranteed.
The price of character: mentality as the most stable personality factor
Another factor considered by social psychology as a predictor of future success is the individual's character, expressed by the big five key megatraits:
- goodwill ( agreeableness
) - a person’s disposition towards cooperation, trust and harmonious interaction with other people; - openness to experience - a
tendency towards intellectual curiosity, creativity and expansion of one's own horizons ; - extraversion ( extraversion
) - enthusiasm, external energy and desire to communicate; - consciousness ( conscientiousness
) - an individual’s demonstration of purposefulness and personal organization; - neuroticism ( neuroticism
) - the degree of response to stress and external factors.
For a long time, the active role of character in a person’s achievements was not taken seriously by academic sociology; at the moment, meta-studies highlight a correlation of up to 25% between personal traits and future professional status and job satisfaction.
Among character traits, the most obvious favorite in influencing the level of well-being is conscientiousness, which can be translated into Russian as “consciousness” or “conscientiousness” and which includes such traits as responsibility, hard work and self-control.
There is a huge amount of research confirming the positive impact of conscientiousness not only on future educational or professional success, but also on reducing mortality rates and the likelihood of divorce, on increasing school performance and life satisfaction in general.
It is not surprising that this particular trait now has the status of the most sought-after in popular psychology, which is expressed in various new qualities in which it appears in the self-development literature: for example, the trait “grit” (resilience, diligence) identified by psychologist Angela Duckworth or the concept of Growth Mindset (“Growth Mindset”). growth mindset" developed by psychologist Carol Dweck.
The correlation between the educational and professional success of an individual and his assessment on standard questionnaires on the “conscientiousness” scale is in some studies up to 40%!
Psychology of Achievement
The psychology of human success in all endeavors includes a very important component - responsibility. To achieve what you want, you need to clearly understand that:
Your life depends only on you.
What decisions do you make, actions and are you able to bear the consequences. You can read the article “Real success stories of world-famous big businesses and how they started,” and then you will see that all the leaders at the beginning of their journey, and now they are already millionaires and billionaires, did not place their hopes on the government, relatives, connections or inheritance.
They understood that in order to achieve something, it is important to be able to rely only on themselves and not expect anyone to lighten their burden. The most valuable thing is the inner knowledge that no one owes you anything or is obliged to help you. Otherwise, there will be a temptation to blame others for your failures, to look for excuses and justifications. A person who is successful in life and business is always responsible for any consequences, and knows how to learn from failure and appreciate it.
And the greater it is, the greater the risks and burden, so try to gradually increase the volume of tasks, giving the body the opportunity to adapt to increasing stress and the cost of internal resources.
The role of chance: how society should treat scientific findings about success
The factors discussed above do not exhaust the list of reasons influencing human well-being that are considered by modern sociology of achievements. There is a large body of research concerning, for example, such predictors as:
- the presence of “influential others” in the person’s professional or academic environment;
- the role of chance and place of birth;
- height and physical attractiveness;
- various behavioral characteristics, such as aggressiveness, shyness, social inadaptability;
- parenting style, family size, etc.
However, they can all be correlated with three global metafactors: environment, intelligence as measured by cognitive tests, and personality—with the last two considered the most statistically significant. But here, when assessing these factors, social psychology faces the question: what is behind this statistical significance?
Are standard cognitive tests able to measure a person's intelligence and draw conclusions about his thinking based on this: can a mathematical or visual test confirm the speed and quality of a person's decision-making outside of a real-life context? Based on research, maybe.
There is a connection between tests and professional and academic achievements. But what is behind this relationship: a person’s actual cognitive abilities used when passing tests, or increased motivation, responsibility and interest in solving abstract problems?
Motivation and interest, which are transmitted further - from tests to other activities. But if we are talking about motivation, what is behind it and what shapes it - goals, parental and social examples, random environmental factors? Here social psychology offers much fewer concrete answers.
The same applies to predictors related to a person’s character. Under the influence of what are certain character traits, temperament or behavior of an individual formed - and is it possible to influence this process, provoking the manifestation of more adaptive traits in children?
One of the biggest scientific debates in the history of psychology is the “Genes versus Environment” debate.
Behaviorism, which dominated psychology for a long time, asserting that all facets of the human personality are formed under the influence of the external environment, by the end of the 20th century began to give way to the idea of heritability of many human characteristics.
