In modern society, it is customary to consider a person as a civil subject, which is a well-established formed unit of society. This in past times, many years before our era, in primitive communities people were not determined by personal qualities. Then the concept of personality did not exist as such. Today, the public needs individuals. After all, each of its kind is individual, different from the others. And each person conscious and participating in the development of society is a person.
The concept of personality and its constitutional legal status
To date, there are many interpretations of this concept. It is revealed in the context of the psychological, sociological or scientific context, is considered in a broad sense or in a narrow. But in all cases, the main idea boils down to the fact that a person is a person who owns consciousness and participates in social relations. She can not be a nursing infant or a mentally unbalanced patient who is not able to control herself and fulfill her social role.
There are several specific signs and features that characterize a person as a person:
- belonging to a social group and fulfilling its role in society;
- possession of a bright mind and pure consciousness;
- determination not by physiological or genetic properties, but specifically by the psychoemotional state and connection with the surrounding society;
- patronage by man of himself as the author of his life, that is, self-control and possession of his own "I".
The views of scientists, psychologists and sociologists regarding the definition of the described concept are different. Many of them believe that each person is already a person, since everyone has a total set of stable qualities, has a certain type of temperament and specific character traits. The rest are deeply convinced that one cannot be born a personality, one must become one. Only one who knows how to control his life and fulfill his social functions, one who is responsible for himself and for his actions, can rightfully be called a person.
Every modern person has a combination of constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms with the assignment of certain obligations to society. This set of free and binding factors is called the constitutional legal status of the individual. It presupposes a principled belonging to today's democratic state in the inalienability and guarantee of a free choice of actions, equality, unity and communications of each representative of the current society. The constitutional legal status of an individual puts human interests first and the protection of his rights in front of the public.
Personality structure and its content
Like all significant systems of social life and all the laws of nature, a conscious person has his own personality structure. This structure is multi-level, and each level characterizes it in the context of different moral qualities of a person:
- The biological level includes natural qualities that are common in origin (body structure, age and sex characteristics, temperament, etc.).
- The psychological level combines the psychological characteristics of a person (feelings, will, memory, thinking).
- The social level consists in a specific lifestyle, communication style, informed beliefs, social roles. This includes family, educational, philosophical, financial, authoritative factors that reveal the moral qualities of a person.
Each level reveals the individual components of personal baggage as a whole. In addition to the level context, the personality structure is considered from the position of its constituent elements. These include:
- rationality - the ability of a person to think, develop, learn, acquire skills and competence;
- psycho-emotionality - a combination of feelings, desires, impulses, motives and other factors opposed to rationality;
- worldview - the perception of the world and the determination of its attitude to it by any representative of society: a man or woman, adult or child, realist or mystic;
- focus - the integration of character in the ability of a person to determine their own values and life priorities;
- experience - accumulated over time skills, abilities, knowledge, habits, brought to automatism, habits;
- ability, perhaps the most important tool of the individual, which determines its ability to perform useful activities;
- psychotype - a patronage of character, behavioral patterns and a person’s reaction to what is happening around him;
- temperament - the manifestation of a particular type of temperament, the energy and dynamic component of the manifestation of brightness, speed, strength of emotional response;
- body drawing - a person’s supply of his outer shell in a perspective favorable to him.
Varieties of Functions
In addition to structure, an important role in the formation of human consciousness is played by the functions of the individual in society. They imply specific actions performed to achieve the result necessary for a person. Types of personality functions are represented by three main areas: cognitive, affective, motor.
Cognitive functions include all types of conscious activity and are in no way connected with the emotional background of human psychology. They relate to the rational function of the human brain, are aimed at thinking, consideration, mental development and include:
- ability to make decisions;
- manifestation of will;
- subconscious aspiration;
- integration of memories;
- the ability to manage memory, memories;
- manifestations of mindfulness;
- perception of the environment.
Based on the foregoing, it can be noted that the cognitive functions of the personality include everything conscious and unconscious, without sensitivity and emotional manifestations.
Affective functions, on the contrary, abstract from the abilities of the mind and are aimed exclusively at the manifestation of a person’s emotional feelings. In itself, affect, or emotion, is a powerful form of a sensitive reaction to a particular action, phenomenon. A manifestation of affect is an intense emotional shock. These are outbursts of anger, and outbursts of rage, and overwhelming horror, and an irresistible feeling of joy, and a feeling of deep grief, despair. The affective functions of the personality embrace its psyche, combining the main acting stimulus with the adjacent ones, which entails a complex reaction to what is happening as a whole. Therefore, a person is able to react and show their feelings and emotional sensations in response to a particular action.
The motor functions of the personality are mainly focused on the impulses supplied by the motor system of the body and aimed at the implementation by the body of certain movements. The sense of touch gives a signal to the brain to perform an action, the motor system receives it and turns it into a maneuver. So, motility involves a complex of coordination actions of the nervous, muscular and skeletal systems, providing motor work of fingers, hands, legs, neck, head, body as a whole.
Personality status
In addition to the structural and functional development of man, an important role in his formation as a person is played by social and legal status. It assumes a central system of human rights and obligations coordinated within it as a social unit and predetermines its activities in society. The status of a person is determined by the concepts of sustainability and duration, while the status can be either whole or partial. Fragmentally, it is connected with what exactly a person is engaged in during his activities, what is the size of his income, what is his level of education, to which group of ethnic group he belongs, which of the sexes belongs to. The totality of certain types of status makes it possible to designate his general profile of personality as a whole.
Determining the place of the individual in the social structure of society allows you to build a person’s behavioral system. For the first time, a status is assigned to a person at the time of birth, when, as a baby, he receives the status of his parents, their economic, legal, political and cultural position in society. After, when he begins to exist independently, when his own social and labor activity begins, he is assigned a personal status in society.
The most important and fundamental value of the social and legal status of a person is that thanks to him, the formation takes place and the attitude of those around him is formed. For example, if a person holds a good position, is a qualified specialist, a respected person among colleagues, a loving family man, then the attitude of people around him will be appropriate, even if these people do not know him personally, but know him firsthand, in absentia. And inversely, the status of a person works otherwise: a young man who is known as a loafer, a boor, a hooligan will never be respected in society, because his status as a poorly reputed representative of society will not allow people to think about him well.
Personality traits
The functions performed by a person predetermine the formation of his characteristic qualities. All of them are conditionally divided into internal and external.
Internal personality traits suggest the spiritual wealth of a person. These are the very qualities that are not visible to the eye, but are felt after communication. This includes caring, participation, free-thinking, positive outlook, wisdom. In addition to the internal features include self-improvement, which involves constructive thinking, responsible attitude to everything, energy and determination, as well as love of order.
The external qualities of the personality work to express his appearance. This includes artistry, attractive appearance, sense of style, beautiful even speech, facial expressions and gestures.
Temperament of personality
Very often in the practice of private psychology, a testing technique is used. It applies to most of the problematic issues that arise in patients in the field of psychology. The test for determining the type of personality by temperament is no exception.
Temperament refers to the totality of a person’s properties, depending on his innate natural psychophysiological character traits. Temperament is considered in the context of those personality traits that predetermine his type in terms of the characteristics of his mental system in terms of intensity, speed, pace of psychological processes.
There are four types of temperament:
- phlegmatic - a man unhurried, unperturbed, having a steady desire and mood, not showing his emotions and feelings; phlegmatic people are distinguished by calm and poise, show persistence and perseverance in their activities;
- choleric - quick-tempered, speedy, passionate, but at the same time absolutely unbalanced, changes his mood through emotional outbursts, as a result of which he is quickly exhausted;
- sanguine - a person leading an active lifestyle, characterized by liveliness, mobility, sensitivity, quick reaction, frequent changes in mood, optimistic about life and with expressive facial expressions;
- melancholic - a person easily vulnerable, prone to constantly experiencing various events, too impressionable, little responsive to external factors.
Psychologically, the test for determining the type of personality involves a number of specifically selected questions, the answers to which help to identify a person's belonging to one or another type of temperament. Regardless of what kind of temperament a person possesses, each of its types has its positive and negative sides, therefore there is no objective opinion about which type of temperament is the best among the others.
Communicative function
From the point of view of the nature of the functions performed by a person, in addition to cognitive, affective, and motor functions, it is typical for him to carry out communicative, educational, mental, and social tasks.
A communicative function is the implementation of the exchange of information between people, during which people through communication share their interests, feelings, emotions, and attitudes with each other. Its influence on the formation of personality is very important, since in mutual communication between people a common understanding of the information received is developed, which is not only accepted by him, but also realized, considered. That is why every process of communication is accompanied by a unity of representation of activity, communication and knowledge. And in it, the communicative function is a fundamental component of public communications.
Educational personality function
Equally important along with communicative is the upbringing function. It represents a huge contribution to the development of man as a mentally developed unit of society and is responsible for instilling in man a certain baggage of moral qualities, formed feelings of duty and responsibility for his actions. The main task of the function of educating the individual is to model its specific type - temperament - one that would correspond to social morality for a specific period of historical time.
In modern psychology, the educational function is defined as humanistic, because in the process of education, the concepts of responsibility, morality, and conformity to one’s environment are laid in a person. Its main goal is aimed at the development, education, training and putting knowledge into the head of every conscious citizen of society.
Mental function
Any cognitive process or act performed by a person is called the mental function of the person. The psyche as a specific property of the brain determines the reflection of external phenomena through the specifically performed processes of brain activity. So, there are several basic mental functions of personality:
- perception is information taken into account and is subsequently reflected in thought processes;
- thinking - the ability of a person to realize and ponder specific thoughts;
- memory - the ability of the human brain to fix, save and reproduce information about the external world and its internal state for its further use;
- speech - the ability of a person to speak and share information with others;
- motivation - an incentive that gives a person an impetus to action;
- emotions - manifestations of feelings and psychological mood, condition;
- consciousness - the ability to know what is happening around;
- will - the desire for sustainability and patience;
- attention - the ability to focus and react to the influence of external factors.
Social function
The relationship between people is determined by their dependence on each other. People existing within the framework of one society must interact and perform a number of tasks called social. The social functions of the individual act as original instructions for a number of specialized occupations within the social division of labor. So, doctors carry out medical activities, teachers - teaching, accountants - estimated, etc.
The main significance of social functions is that each individual, performing various actions in the process of his existence, becomes necessary for the other. And in view of this, the essence of the functional dependence of partners in the course of social interaction determines the stability of society as a whole. And what else does the state need if not unity and mutual respect between representatives of its social society.