Social typology of personality. — Sociology. Lectures.

Social relations are impossible without individuals who have a certain set of character traits, self-awareness, intelligence and mental characteristics. Any traits inherent in a person make him unique and inimitable. A personality becomes complete and self-determined according to its chosen and occupied place in society, precisely because of the presence of various traits. Varieties of personalities form social types. Numerous studies by modern scientists have identified different opinions, approaches and theories in defining social types. Based on the work carried out, the main personality types were scientifically identified, each of which is exceptional.

Description of the concept

Social type is the totality of personal qualities of an individual who is part of a social group. The concept arose as a result of historical transformations, political, economic, legal and cultural events occurring in the lives of people over many generations.

There are several specific personality groups, each of which plays its own role in society:

• modal – the most common, frequently occurring, characterizes individuals who constantly change their behavior pattern (adapt) throughout life, depends on age;
• ideal - considered the standard of human behavior in the future, based on rationality, balance, intelligence, the predominance of only positive character traits, observance of moral and moral qualities;
• basic - is the basis where any life events take place, meets the needs of society and the state, has a model of behavior that suits absolutely all people.

Any personality is formed on the basis of real events, environment, surroundings, time, as it is included in the social system, mastering material and spiritual areas. Family plays a great role in the formation of concepts in the early stages of growing up. It is the experience, skills, upbringing, education, ability to self-awareness and setting life goals obtained in the family that form the psychotype, a set of characteristic traits, behavior and rules of interaction with other individuals.

Social personality types

The social type of personality is a product of a complex interweaving of historical, cultural and socio-economic conditions of people's life.

In sociology, various criteria and levels of generalization of the social typology of personality are proposed. Thus, it is customary to distinguish modal, ideal and basic personality types. Model is the type of personality that actually prevails in a given society. The basic type is the one that best meets the needs of modern society. The ideal personality type is not tied to specific conditions and is considered as a standard for the personality of the future.

A great contribution to the development of social typology of personality was made by the American sociologist and psychologist E. Fromm (1900-1980), who created the concept of social character. According to his theory, the connections between the human psyche and the social structure are social characters developed by the human psyche under the influence of the social environment. According to his definition, social character is “the core of the character structure common to the majority of members of a particular culture.” E. Fromm believed that the importance of social character lies in the fact that it allows you to most effectively adapt to the requirements of society and gain a sense of safety and security. In human history, he identified four types of social character: receptive (passive), exploitative, accumulative and market.

The most common in modern sociology is considered to be a typology of personality depending on their value orientations:

traditionalists are focused mainly on the values ​​of duty, order, discipline, and obedience to the law, and qualities such as independence and the desire for self-realization are very weakly expressed in this type of personality;

idealists, on the contrary, have a strongly expressed independence and critical attitude towards traditional norms, attitudes towards self-development and disdain for authorities;

a frustrated personality type is characterized by low self-esteem, depressed, depressed health, a feeling of being thrown out of the flow of life;

realists combine the desire for self-realization with a developed sense of duty and responsibility, healthy skepticism with self-discipline and self-control;

hedonistic materialists are focused primarily on obtaining pleasure “here and now”, the desire to “enjoy life” and satisfy consumer desires.

In other words, the social type of personality is a reflection of how the social system influences a person’s value orientations and, through them, his actual behavior.

Collectivist

The collectivist personality arises in the depths of the primitive communal system and goes through the following stages: 1) patriarchal; 2) proletarian; 3) Soviet. It is characterized by a certain character, mentality, and worldview.

The patriarchal personality is religious, uneducated, engaged in agricultural work, formed in a patriarchal family, has little social mobility, sees the meaning of his life in religiosity and fulfilling traditional roles, puts the interests of the community above his own, and is organically collective. The value of a patriarchal personality is, first of all, the family (and personal) connection of people included in a large (patriarchal) family. It is formed in a pre-industrial (agrarian) society, which dominated everywhere until the 13th century. Such societies and individuals still exist in vast areas of the Earth, including Russia, in a slightly modified form.

Industrial proletarians became new, post-patriarchal collectivists; they were united by hard mechanical labor, poverty, marginality (as recent immigrants from the countryside), lack of rights, hatred of the bourgeoisie, the desire to change their social position, and revolutionary spirit. The mass of proletarians formed in Russia as a result of the growth of capitalism, against the background of the World War, became the social base of the revolutions of 1917, the civil war, Soviet socialism and collectivism. And in the West, workers became the social base for the formation of the petty-bourgeois middle class, bourgeois socialism, and solidarity.

The Soviet collectivist found himself associated with many groups: school, student, industrial, army, etc. He was an administrative-collectivist person, because he was within the framework of administrative-command relations that permeated all work collectives. The Soviet personality was primarily engaged in industrial work, remaining executive (lack of initiative).

The value of the proletarian and Soviet personality was declared, first of all, to be a connection with his work collective: professional, trade union, party, Komsomol, etc. Dependence on him implied both a personal ruler (father of the family, boss, party committee secretary, etc.), as well as subordinates (relatives, lower-ranking workers, etc.). Relatives and members of the team form a circle of their own, opposing the rest - strangers. Kinship and collectivist relationships were valued above political, legal, and official ones. The social space of a collectivist personality is huge: relatives and members of their team must support “their own” throughout the Earth.

The collectivist personality is convinced that it is power that gives wealth: land, connections, subjects. The concepts of power, domination, management, judging, on the one hand, and diligence, obedience, patience, lack of initiative, on the other hand, forming the mentality of collectivists, are known to them better than the concepts of profit, price, efficiency, economy, etc. Innovation is difficult for a collectivist person: he strictly follows traditions. Changes in production, military affairs, and management occur slowly and mainly under the influence of external contacts.

The collectivist personality is functional, that is, created to perform social functions given from time to time: father or mother, plowman or cattleman, tiller or weaver, warrior-defender, etc. The social role is perceived by such a person as given from God: it remains only for her learn and conform throughout your life. In a collectivist personality, there is a division of moral orientations: some (subordinates) are dominated by a sense of responsibility and conscience, while others (managers) are dominated by a sense of honor and duty. Justice for a collectivist person is strict adherence to his status and traditions, enshrined from time to time. Injustice is behavior that is contrary to this status, ritual, tradition. In Soviet society, social equality was considered justice.

The Soviet communists set out to create an artificial super-collectivist instead of the natural man. To do this, they (1) destroyed entire social strata from pre-Soviet society, (2) intimidated the rest and (3) tried to form a communist man in the youth with the following traits: “...devotion to the cause of communism, love for the socialist Motherland, socialist countries (and hatred for everyone else. - S.S.); conscientious work for the benefit of society: whoever does not work is not (Brodsky was condemned as a parasite, since he was engaged in poetry. - S.S.); everyone’s concern for preserving and increasing public wealth (but not their own - S.S.); high consciousness of public duty, intolerance to violations of public interests; collectivism and comradely mutual assistance: each for all, all for one; humane relations and mutual respect between people: man is friend, comrade and brother to man (if he is a Soviet man - S.S.); <...> ...intransigence towards injustice, parasitism, dishonesty, careerism, money-grubbing; <…> …intransigence towards the enemies of communism, the cause of peace and freedom of peoples.”

Individualist

ancient, bourgeois, industrial, post-industrial society. The most important need of an individualist is the need for free self-affirmation in the performance of his duty and against the background of religiosity. Death is seen as a boundary of self-affirmation, from which a person evaluates his life path, and not only from a religious point of view. Individual interests must be in harmony with public ones. Society acts as a medium for the individual’s self-affirmation. Commitment to freedom allows the individualist, on the one hand, to abandon the constraining patriarchal and religious dogmas, and on the other hand, leaves him alone before a choice in which the individualist can only rely on his consciousness, will and God.

The bourgeois (city dweller), who was at the same time the creator of the capitalist system, became a mass individualist in industrial society. The essence of the latter is manifested in (1) private property, production for profit, market relations, competition; (2) political democracy; (3) liberal worldview, mentality, motivation. The leading need for the bourgeoisie is the need for profit, production efficiency, market competition, and political democracy.

If for the patriarchal development goes in a circle (cycles), repeating the same conditions from century to century, then for the individualist development goes from simple to complex, from old to new, from known to unknown, i.e. in the form of progress. An expression of the individualization of time is the use of watches and saving time (“time is money”). The individualist has a project - an image of his life not as destiny, but as a progressive (career) process of ascension from one peak to another, until the path of life ends with death. (The image of the industrial individualist Harry is given, for example, in the novel by Hermann Hesse) “Steppenwolf”

Alexander Zinoviev characterizes the post-industrial individualist as follows: “A superman is <...> an internally simplified, rationalized being, possessing average mental abilities and controlled emotionality, leading an orderly lifestyle, taking care of his health and comfort, conscientiously and working well, practical, prudent, from a young age thinking about a prosperous old age, ideologically standardized, but at the same time considering himself a being of a higher order in relation to other (non-Western) humanity.” Hobbes's formula “man is a wolf to man” turns into the formula “man is a cyborg to man” among post-industrial individualists.

Individualistic civilization and its personality type entered a period of decline at the beginning of the 20th century, which was realized by Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, and Spengler. Pitirim Sorokin noted the crisis in both spheres of society, economic formation, and European civilization. As a result of this crisis, the Orthodox (eastern) part of the Christian world (Russia) entered the Soviet (industrial-collectivist) system with the corresponding civilization and personality, and Western Christian culture, taking into account the Soviet experiment, created a solidarist system (civilization and personality).

Solidarist

The solidarist personality is the result of the convergence of collectivist and individualist personality types. It appears as random instances in ancient society, develops in industrial (bourgeois and Soviet), and improves in post-industrial (information) society. Throughout its existence, it preserves, improves, and complements its own distinctive features, exerting a stimulating influence on types of societies. A solidarist sees the meaning of his life in self-realization, for the benefit of his people and humanity, is focused on individualism in everyday life and leisure and on collectivism in the professional and civil spheres, understands international problems (globalization, environmental crisis, post-industrialism)

A solidarist is otherwise called a bourgeois (philistine). Hermann Hesse defined it this way in the novel “Steppenwolf”: “Philistinism,” the always present human condition, is nothing more than an attempt to find balance, as a desire for a balanced middle between countless extremes and poles of human behavior <...>A person has the opportunity to completely surrender to spiritual life, to get closer to the divine (or communist - S.S.) principle, to the ideal of the saint. On the contrary, he also has the opportunity to completely surrender to his instincts, his sensual desires and direct all his efforts to obtain instant joy. One path leads to the saint, to the martyr of the spirit, to self-denial in the name of God (or the communist idea - S.S.). The other path leads to the libertine, to the martyr of instincts, to self-denial in the name of decay. So, the tradesman tries to live between both paths, in the moderate middle. He will never renounce himself, will not give in to either intoxication or asceticism, will never become a martyr, will never agree with his death - on the contrary, his ideal is not self-denial, but self-preservation, he does not strive for holiness or its opposite , unconditionality, absoluteness are intolerable to him, he wants to serve God, but he also wants to serve intoxication, he wants to be virtuous, but he also wants to live on earth for his own pleasure. In short, he tries to settle in the middle between extremes, in a moderate and healthy zone, without violent storms and thunderstorms, and he succeeds, although at the cost of the fullness of life and feelings that the desire for unconditionality, absoluteness, and extremes gives. You can live life to the fullest only at the cost of your self. And the mish-mash does not put anything above his “I” (very true, underdeveloped). At the cost of completeness, therefore, he achieves safety and security, receives a calm conscience instead of obsession with God, pleasure instead of pleasure, convenience instead of freedom, and a pleasant temperature instead of mortal heat. Therefore, the mishmash is essentially a creature with a weak impulse to life, cowardly, afraid to at least give up his “I”, and easily controlled. That’s why he put the majority in the place of power, the law in the place of power, and the voting procedure in the place of responsibility.”

Solidarists form the middle class of Western social democratic society. They implement several principles, which are, to one degree or another, features of worldview, mentality, character, institutions, and way of life. These principles were described in the works of Bernstein, Galbraig, Brandt, Hayek and others: free responsibility, relative equality, solidarity of people, acquiring specific historical content. The solidarist recognizes the freedom of individuals, institutions, and organizations, but within the framework of rules and principles for reconciling competing interests and finding a compromise regarding advantages. Developed law and a system of laws regulate all spheres of public life.

Characteristics of the concept

The basis of the social existence of the social type is the setting by the individual of certain goals and objectives that help him establish contact with the surrounding society.

The characteristics of social type as a concept are as follows:

1. Has knowledge, skills, needs connections and communications with other individuals.
2. Strives to educate, teach, obey and share smart thoughts.
3. Is humane, responsible and fair.
4. Able to get used to and learn to live in any conditions.
5. He considers activity and verbal abilities to be an important quality of life.
6. When making decisions quickly, it is based on feelings, emotions and communication experience.
7. Trying to develop professionally.
8. Willingly participates in public events and events, and is not afraid to express personal opinions on processes affecting society and the state.
9. Uses mutual assistance, understands the needs and moods of other people.

Any social type is always surrounded by family, groups, organizations, institutions, institutions, services. Types strive to build their lives correctly, in which there is a place for activities, a daily routine and well-organized leisure time.

Social types are active and passive. The former organize activities and events, and the latter participate, perform and accept them. Types perform social work, voluntarily participate in charity, attend meetings, and come up with various intellectual and competitive groups that functionally influence the life of the environment.

An individual combines various personality traits, combining several social types at once. For example, a tough, demanding, disciplined leader in his family is a loving father, an attentive husband, with a soft, responsive character. Or another example - a collected, responsible, competent worker in a home environment turns into a sloppy, sloppy and indifferent person.

Start of research

The concept of modal personality became an object of study only in the 30s of the last century, when the first serious studies of the relationship between personality and culture began. Ethnopsychologist Margaret Mead was one of the founders of a new scientific direction that studied the relationship between society and man. It was her group of researchers who first suggested that in every cultural environment there is a dominant personality type - a basic personality.

Kardiner said that in every society there is a dominant personality type, that is, a basic personality structure that is formed under the influence of a particular culture. This is the basic or normative personality. People of this type of character are characterized by maximum sensitivity to a certain cultural environment.

Socionics: benefits for individuals and society

The socionics model today is penetrating into an increasing number of areas. Those who accepted it more than others include:

• Recruitment, training and development of personnel
• Improving the efficiency of organizational management
• Creation of innovative educational technologies
• Diagnosis and treatment of psychosomatic diseases
• Vocational guidance for teenagers and adults
• Raising children in families and specialized institutions
• Organization of dating
• Self-knowledge and self-development

The most popular area of ​​application of socionics is building comfortable relationships in any social group. With the help of socionics, we can understand that complications in communicating with another person (an acquaintance, colleague, relative, etc.) may not at all be a consequence of his malicious intent or internal “unsuitability” for us. It’s just that different people perceive the world and life individually, have their own opinions, and have different values. And just understanding how our and other people’s psyches work can lead to getting rid of many problems in relationships and relieving tension. And this is important in absolutely any area of ​​​​life.

In addition to this, studying socionics allows you to grow personally, expand boundaries, get out of your comfort zone, learn to be yourself and understand yourself without squeezing your personality into the framework of how it “should” be. Despite the unreliability of methods, biased results, and the lack of scientific status, this direction has an undeniable advantage. It consists in the fact that socionics helps everyone to form correct self-esteem, communicate more effectively with people, achieve their goals faster and easier and find their place in this huge world.

At the same time, from its very inception to this day, socionics has been subject to serious criticism. Let's consider it to get more objective conclusions.

Peculiarities

Another thing worth knowing about modal personality is that it never corresponds to normative personality. Only occasionally can you find some coincidences. However, if deviations from the normative personality type are too obvious, then the individual may face opposition from society, which will insist on compliance with generally accepted rules and norms. In addition, the normative personality is considered to be a constant phenomenon, while the modal personality is subject to dynamics. After all, if living conditions change, a person has to adapt to the new rules of the game. For example, in a democratic society, a politically active type of personality will be welcomed, and in an anti-democratic society, conformists, that is, those who obey the rules, will be in good standing.

Functions of social philosophy

Social philosophy has always sought to explain and understand the lives of people together, to present a complete picture of the world, society and the individual. This science is resorted to when it is necessary to find a way out of a crisis and new ideas are needed. Scientists note that social existence in philosophy retains a particularly important role, since the structure of society is also considered here - family, collective, individual, and political, spiritual, material aspects characteristic of the country as a whole.

The social role of philosophy is determined by five functions:

1. Cognitive
   . Studies how social consciousness and existence are connected.
2. Diagnostic
   . Analyzes options for the development of society.
3. Prognostic
   . Develops diagrams of future possible contradictions and conflicts in society.
4. Educational
   . Provides topics for study by scholars and students.
5. Projective
   . Develops projects to change reality within the interests of a specific group or nation.

DISC personality typology

DISC is a four-quadrant behavioral model that explains people's behavior in certain circumstances. This model does not take into account a person’s mental abilities, experience, education and other characteristics, but identifies four aspects that speak about a person’s preferences:

• d ominance – dominant, “red” (D);
• i nducement – ​​influencing, “yellow” (I) ;
• s teadiness – stable, “green” (S);
• c ompliance – conscientious, “blue” (C) .

The founder of this personality typology is William Moulton Marston, psychologist, comic book author and creator of the polygraph. He believed that a person's behavior depends on how positively he perceives the environment and on the speed of his reaction to various situations. He described his teachings in the book “The Emotions of Ordinary People”; later they became the foundation for the development of the DISC typology [Hr-director, 2021]:

To better understand what we are talking about, let's take a closer look at each personality type:

1. Dominant, “red” (D): the main motivation of such people is victory. They do not tolerate defeat and always strive to be leaders. They are driven by passion and competition. Strengths are the ability to work for results, an active life position, determination, flexibility and endurance. But at the same time, they cannot always find a common language with others, often lose sight of details and are prone to aggression if they are under stress. They can be excellent managers and formal leaders.
2. Influential, “Yellow” (I): They are motivated by new opportunities and recognition. “Yellows” are characterized by enthusiasm, a positive outlook on life and energy; it is important for them to be in the center of attention. Such people have unconventional thinking, goodwill, and creativity. Impulsiveness, unpunctuality and lack of attention to detail are their weaknesses. They make good specialists in the creative field or HR services, because “yellows” know how to motivate people and resolve conflicts.
3. Stable, “green” (S): people of this type strive for consistency and really dislike change. They are always ready to listen and support; they are born psychologists. The main value of “greens” is good relationships in the family, at work, and with friends. Order in everything, attention to detail, reliability are their strong point. But there are also disadvantages: it is difficult for them to refuse, they talk little about problems and are often touchy, which leads to psychosomatic disorders.
4. Conscientious, “blue”, (C): these are fighters for what is right and lovers of consistency in business. Making a mistake is unacceptable to them. “Blues” do not express their emotions, they are closed and secretive, preferring loneliness. People of this type are very neat, pedantic and completely inflexible, and when stressed they often withdraw into themselves. Any position that requires accuracy, attentiveness and scrupulousness (accounting, human resources department, etc.) is suitable for them [HR-Portal, 2019].

As a rule, each of us contains all four personality types, but one of them will dominate. This typology is widely used in personnel selection to assess how well the candidate’s natural qualities match the current position.

From generation to generation

Research has proven that the main characteristics of a normative personality are passed on from generation to generation. Simply put, upbringing determines the fate of a people, and if the social organization changes, the basic personality type also changes. This happens when new technologies appear in society or communications with other nations are established.

They thought so until the early 50s of the last century. It soon became clear to scientists that if you study modern complex cultures on the basis of a basic personality type, it is difficult to get real results, because this concept is too abstract. Thus, the definition of “modal personality” appears - a statistical segment of the study of the typology of society.

Socionics: methods for determining sociotype

Traditionally, to determine a person’s sociotype (typing), the following are used:

• Socionic tests and questionnaires . The Myers-Briggs questionnaire is very popular (you can take it here), although experienced specialists (socionists) point out that the Myers-Briggs typology does not fully correspond to the socionic typology, so these questionnaires are adapted. There are also Weisband and Meged-Ovcharov tests, Talanov questionnaires, Gulenko test, Lytov multifactor test, Keirsey socionic test.
• Socionic interviews . This is a conversation between a socionicist and a person being typed on an arbitrary or planned topic (often accompanied by testing or questioning). When conducting a diagnosis, the specialist evaluates how clearly the signs of IMT and some other specific parameters are expressed. After this, the socionician compares the received data and makes a conclusion about TIM.
• Experiments . To implement this method, as a rule, socionics create special conditions for those being typed and set specific tasks for them. In the process of completing tasks, specialists monitor people’s actions, reactions, decisions, and then draw conclusions about TIM.
• Observations . A specialist observes a person (or a group of people), evaluates his appearance, behavior, actions, and non-verbal manifestations. But in order to draw reliable conclusions, a socionicist must have the skill of figurative-sensual recognition of TIM based on impressions.
• Research dossier . Socionics studies a person’s personal file, eyewitness accounts, personal texts and/or diary entries, photo and video materials, and creative results.

It is believed that experienced people and professional specialists can determine a person’s sociotype by his reactions, appearance, manner of communication and even style of clothing, without resorting to lengthy research. In addition, some are able to adequately determine their own sociotype. But in order to achieve such a level in socionics, it is necessary, firstly, to understand in detail the system of this direction and its sociotypes, secondly, to study the psychotypes proposed by Jung’s theory, and thirdly (if it comes to self-typing), to learn objectively perceive and evaluate yourself, your character traits, reactions and other features of your personality. We should not forget about the main problem of socionics - that from a scientific position it lacks objective criteria for determining the socionic type. In other words, any analysis of a person using socionics will not have reliable scientific justification.

However, if you learn to identify sociotypes, you will be able, with a certain degree of probability, to establish what the behavioral differences between people are and look for the right approach to them, determine the habits, interests and abilities of those around you, and understand what dictates their actions and actions. Possessing socionic knowledge, a person is also able to determine his compatibility with people, predict the development of relationships, highlight which qualities in other people should be perceived as basic, and which it makes sense not to pay special attention to. In short, socionics, despite the lack of scientific status, can be very useful, both for one person and for society as a whole.

Methods of social philosophy

Modern approaches in social philosophy have helped researchers determine not only the patterns of possible development of complex political situations, but also crystallize personality types. This approach greatly helps psychologists and analysts in individual and collective work with people. Today the following basic methods have been formulated:

1. Participant observation
   . The researcher infiltrates the team, as one of the employees or activists of the movement, in order to create an internal picture. Disadvantage: it is impossible to influence the course of the process.
2. Social experiment
   . Studying an object in specially created conditions. Plus: you can repeat the situation many times for the purity of the experiment. Disadvantage: strict exclusion of trial and error methods. It also includes modeling a situation when an object is inaccessible or the situation is only predicted.