Volitional act and its structure

25. Development of a person’s will, volitional qualities In the structure of a person, one can distinguish volitional qualities, the significance of which in a person’s life is very great. Purposefulness is manifested in a person’s desire to subordinate his behavior to achieving a sustainable life

4 . Volitional act and its structure

Volitional action can be realized in simple and complex forms

In a simple act of will, the impulse to action is directed to a more or less conscious goal and is capable of directly turning into action. A simple act of will has two phases:

1) the emergence of motivation and awareness of the goal;

2) achieving the goal.

Complex volitional action is characterized by an indirect conscious process: action is preceded by taking into account its consequences, awareness of motives, and planning. Such an action requires significant effort, patience, perseverance, and the ability to organize one’s execution of the action.

In complex volitional action, scientists (G. S. Kostyuk, A. V. Petrovsky, V. V. Skripchenko) distinguish four phases:

1) the emergence of motivation and previous goal setting;

2) stage of thinking and struggle of motives;

3)decision making;

4) fulfillment.

1 . The first, initial phase of the volitional act comes down to goal setting.

A necessary prerequisite for setting a goal is the emergence of a certain motive, motivation and aspiration associated with it. The aspiration experienced by a person can be perceived by him in different ways and influence his activity in different ways. Depending on the nature of his awareness, the desire can be expressed in the form of attraction, desire and attraction.

The process of setting the goal of knitting with the emergence of a conscious, effective desire or attraction.

It should be noted, however, that in a complex volitional act and the active desire that arises does not always immediately lead to response actions. This happens when several desires and motives appear in a person at the same time, contradicting each other. Moreover, contradictory desires can be both goals and means its implementation.

2. In these cases, a choice of goals or a choice of means to achieve them occurs, which is the content of the second phase of the volitional act. When choosing a goal or means of action, there is a need to discuss their acceptability, which involves weighing various arguments for and in relation to the proposed goals or means of achieving them, requires an assessment of conflicting desires, analysis of circumstances, reasoning, and hard work of thinking.

The choice of an accepted goal is often characterized by a clearly manifested struggle of motives. This struggle reflects the presence in a person of internal obstacles, conflicting impulses, desires, aspirations that collide and come into conflict with each other. For example, the desire to go out with friends or stay to help your mother. . In this case, if the goal is clear and acceptable, a war may arise between conflicting impulses about the choice of one or another means of achieving the goal. For example, how to prepare for a lesson - take notes on a question yourself or copy it.

In complex volitional actions, of course, socially significant motives come into conflict with other motives that are contradictory to them. Possible conflict and social motives of varying degrees of significance,

Volitional regulation of behavior

All human actions can be divided into two categories: involuntary and voluntary.

Involuntary actions are committed as a result of the emergence of unconscious or insufficiently clearly conscious impulses (drives, attitudes, etc.). They are impulsive and lack a clear plan. An example of involuntary actions is the actions of people in a state of passion (amazement, fear, delight, anger).

Voluntary actions presuppose awareness of the goal, a preliminary representation of those operations that can ensure its achievement, and their order. All performed actions, performed consciously and having a purpose, are so named because they are derived from the will of man.

Will is a person’s conscious regulation of his behavior and activities, associated with overcoming internal and external obstacles. Will as a characteristic of consciousness and activity appeared along with the emergence of society and labor activity. Will

is an important component of the human psyche, inextricably linked with cognitive motives and emotional processes.

Volitional actions can be simple and complex. Simple volitional actions include those in which a person goes towards the intended goal without hesitation, it is clear to him what and in what way he will achieve, i.e. the impulse to action turns into action itself almost automatically.

A complex volitional action is characterized by the following stages: 1) awareness of the goal and the desire to achieve it; 2) awareness of a number of possibilities for achieving the goal; 3) the emergence of motives that affirm or deny these possibilities; 4) struggle of motives and choice; 5) accepting one of the possibilities as a solution; 6) implementation of the decision made; 7) overcoming external obstacles, objective difficulties of the matter itself, all kinds of obstacles until the decision made and the goal set are achieved and realized.

Will is needed when choosing a goal, making a decision, taking action, and overcoming obstacles. Overcoming obstacles requires volitional effort - a special state of neuropsychic tension that mobilizes a person’s physical, intellectual and moral strength. Will manifests itself as a person’s confidence in his own abilities, as the determination to perform the act that the person himself considers appropriate and necessary in a particular situation. “Free will means the ability to make decisions with knowledge.”

The need for a strong will increases in the presence of: 1) difficult situations of the “difficult world” and 2) a complex, contradictory inner world in the person himself.

Volitional actions, like all mental activity, are related to the functioning of the brain. An important role in the implementation of volitional actions is played by the frontal lobes of the brain, in which, as studies have shown, the result achieved each time is compared with a previously drawn up goal program. Damage to the frontal lobes leads to abulia, a painful lack of will.

Volitional activity always consists of certain volitional actions, which contain all the signs and qualities of will. Volitional actions can be simple and complex.

Simple ones include those in which a person goes towards the intended goal without hesitation; it is clear to him what and in what way he will achieve it. A simple volitional action is characterized by the fact that choosing a goal and making a decision to perform an action in a certain way are carried out without a struggle of motives.

In a complex volitional action, the following stages are distinguished: 1) awareness of the goal and the desire to achieve it; 2) awareness of a number of possibilities for achieving the goal; 3) the emergence of motives that affirm or deny these possibilities; 4) struggle of motives and choice; 5) accepting one of the possibilities as a solution; 6) implementation of the decision made.

The stage of “awareness of the goal and the desire to achieve it” is not always accompanied by a struggle of motives in complex action. If the goal is set from the outside and its achievement is mandatory for the performer, then all that remains is to cognize it by forming in oneself a certain image of the future result of the action. The struggle of motives arises at this stage when a person has the opportunity to choose goals, at least the order of their achievement. The struggle of motives that arises when goals are realized is not a structural component of volitional action, but rather a certain stage of volitional activity, of which action is a part. Each of the motives, before becoming a goal, goes through the stage of desire (in the case when the goal is chosen independently). Desire is the content of a need that exists ideally (in a person’s head). To desire something is first of all to know the content of the incentive.

Since a person at any moment has various significant desires, the simultaneous satisfaction of which is objectively excluded, there is a clash of opposing, divergent motives, between which a choice must be made. This situation is called the struggle of motives. At the stage of awareness of the goal and the desire to achieve it, the struggle of motives is resolved by choosing the goal of action, after which the tension caused by the struggle of motives at this stage weakens.

The stage of “awareness of a number of possibilities for achieving a goal” is a mental action itself, which is part of a volitional action, the result of which is the establishment of cause-and-effect relationships between the methods of performing a volitional action in existing conditions and possible results.

At the next stage possible ways and the means of achieving the goal are correlated with a person’s value system, including beliefs, feelings, norms of behavior, and leading needs. Here, each of the possible paths is discussed in terms of the correspondence of a particular path to the value system of a given person.

The stage of the struggle of motives and choice turns out to be central in complex volitional action. Here, as at the stage of choosing a goal, it is possible conflict situation, associated with the fact that a person accepts the possibility of an easy way to achieve a goal (this understanding is one of the results of the second stage), but at the same time, due to his moral feelings or principles, cannot accept it. Other paths are less economical (and a person also understands this), but following them is more consistent with a person’s value system.

The result of resolving this situation is the next stage - accepting one of the possibilities as a solution. It is characterized by the sweetness of tension as internal conflict is resolved. Here the means, methods, and sequence of their use are specified, i.e., refined planning is carried out. After this, the implementation of the decision planned at the implementation stage begins.

The stage of implementing the decision made, however, does not free a person from the need to make volitional efforts, and sometimes no less significant than when choosing the goal of an action or methods of its implementation, since the practical implementation of the intended goal is again associated with overcoming obstacles. Volitional Act And his structure. Links strong-willed act. Strong-willed an effort. Decision making and his psychological...

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Introduction

volitional quality act of person

“Will in its proper sense arises when a person is capable of reflecting his drives and can relate to them in one way or another. To do this, the individual must be able to rise above his drives and, abstracting from them, realize himself... as a subject... who... rising above them, able to make a choice between them."

S.L. Rubinstein. The concept of will

Often, when making a decision and understanding the need to act, a person is in no hurry to implement it.

Even psychologists cannot always explain why people sometimes do nothing to implement their plans, decisions, or satisfy even urgently necessary needs. When people with the necessary knowledge, holding similar beliefs and views on life, with to varying degrees intensity begin to solve the task facing them or when, when faced with difficulties, some of them stop their attempts, while others act with renewed energy - these phenomena are associated with such a feature of the psyche as will. Will is a person’s conscious regulation of his behavior and activities, expressed in the ability to overcome internal and external difficulties when performing purposeful actions and deeds.

The task of the will is to control our behavior, conscious self-regulation of our activity, especially in cases where obstacles to a normal life arise.

Psychological structure of the volitional act

Any human activity is always accompanied by specific actions, which can be divided into two large groups: voluntary and involuntary. The main difference between voluntary actions is that they are carried out under the control of consciousness and require certain efforts on the part of a person aimed at achieving a consciously set goal. For example, let’s imagine a sick person who with difficulty takes a glass of water in his hand, brings it to his mouth, tilts it, makes movements with his mouth, that is, performs a whole series of actions united by one goal - to quench his thirst. All individual actions, thanks to the efforts of consciousness aimed at regulating behavior, merge into one whole, and the person drinks water. These efforts are often called volitional regulation or will.

The main function of the will is the conscious regulation of activity in difficult living conditions. This regulation is based on the interaction of excitation and inhibition processes nervous system. In accordance with this, it is customary to single out as a specification of the above general function the other two are activating and inhibiting.

It should be noted that not every action aimed at overcoming an obstacle is volitional. For example, a person running away from a dog can overcome very difficult obstacles and even climb a tall tree, but these actions are not volitional, since they are caused primarily by external reasons, and not by the person’s internal attitudes. Thus, the most important feature volitional actions aimed at overcoming obstacles is the awareness of the significance of the goal that must be fought for, the awareness of the need to achieve it. The more significant a goal is for a person, the more obstacles he overcomes. Therefore, volitional actions can differ not only in the degree of their complexity, but also in the degree awareness.

Usually we are more or less clearly aware of why we perform certain actions, we know the goal we are striving to achieve. There are times when a person is aware of what he is doing, but cannot explain why he is doing it. Most often this happens when a person is overwhelmed by some strong feelings, experiences emotional arousal. Such actions are usually called impulsive. The degree of awareness of such actions is greatly reduced. Having committed rash actions, a person often repents of what he did. But the will lies precisely in the fact that a person is able to restrain himself from committing rash acts during affective outbursts. Therefore, the will is connected with mental activity And feelings.

Human volitional qualities and their development

The human will is characterized by certain qualities. First of all, it is customary to highlight willpower as a generalized ability to overcome significant difficulties that arise on the way to achieving a goal. The more serious the obstacle that you have overcome on the way to your goal, the stronger your will. It is the obstacles overcome through volitional efforts that are an objective indicator of the manifestation of willpower.

Among various manifestations willpower, it is customary to highlight the following personality traits: excerpt And self-control , which are expressed:

in the ability to restrain your feelings when required;

in preventing impulsive and rash actions;

in the ability to control oneself and force oneself to carry out the intended action, as well as to refrain from doing what one wants to do, but which seems unreasonable or wrong.

Another characteristic of will is determination . Purposefulness is usually understood as the conscious and active orientation of an individual towards achieving a certain result of activity. Very often, when talking about determination, they use such a concept as perseverance . This concept is almost identical to the concept of determination and characterizes a person’s desire to achieve a goal even in the most difficult conditions. Usually, a distinction is made between strategic purposefulness, i.e. the ability to be guided in all one’s life activities by certain principles and ideals, and operational purposefulness, which consists in the ability to set clear goals for individual actions and not deviate from them in the process of achieving them.

It is customary to distinguish from persistence stubbornness. Stubbornness most often acts as negative quality person. A stubborn person always tries to insist on his own, despite the inappropriateness of this action. As a rule, a stubborn person in his activities is guided not by the arguments of reason, but by personal desires, despite their failure. In essence, a stubborn person does not control his will, since he does not know how to control himself and his desires.

An important characteristic of the will is initiative . Initiative lies in the ability to make attempts to implement ideas that arise in a person. For many people, overcoming their own inertia is the most difficult moment of an act of will. Only an independent person can take the first conscious step towards the implementation of a new idea.

Independence -- this is a characteristic of will that is directly related to initiative. Independence is manifested in the ability to consciously make decisions and in the ability not to be influenced by various factors that impede the achievement of a goal. Independent person is able, by critically assessing the advice and suggestions of other people, to act on the basis of his views and beliefs and at the same time make adjustments to his actions based on the advice received.

Negativism should be distinguished from independence. Negativism manifests itself in an unmotivated, unfounded tendency to act contrary to other people, to contradict them, although reasonable considerations do not provide grounds for such actions. Negativism is regarded by most psychologists as weakness of will, expressed in the inability to subordinate one’s actions to the arguments of reason, conscious motives of behavior, in the inability to resist one’s desires, leading to idleness, etc. Very often, idleness is associated with laziness. It is laziness that is a comprehensive characteristic of qualities that are opposite in meaning to the positive qualities of the will.

It should be noted that the initiative shown by a person, in addition to independence, is always associated with another quality of will - decisiveness . Decisiveness lies in the absence of unnecessary hesitation and doubt when there is a conflict of motives, in timely and quick decision-making. First of all, determination is manifested in the choice of the dominant motive, as well as in the choice of adequate means of achieving the goal. Decisiveness also manifests itself when implementing a decision. Decisive people are characterized by a quick and energetic transition from the choice of actions and means to the actual execution of the action.

From determination, as a positive volitional quality, it is necessary to distinguish impulsiveness, which is characterized by haste in decision-making and rashness of actions. An impulsive person does not think before taking action, does not take into account the consequences of what he does, and therefore often regrets what he has done. The haste in making a decision by such a person is usually explained by his indecision, the fact that making a decision for him is an extremely difficult and painful process, so he strives to get rid of it as soon as possible.

An extremely important volitional quality of a person is subsequence human actions. The sequence of actions characterizes the fact that all actions performed by a person follow from a single guiding principle, to which a person subordinates everything secondary and incidental. The sequence of actions, in turn, is closely related to self-control And self-esteem .

The actions taken will only be carried out when a person controls his activities. Otherwise, the actions performed and the goal that a person strives for diverge. In the process of achieving a goal, self-control ensures the dominance of leading motives over secondary ones. The quality of self-control and its adequacy largely depend on the individual’s self-esteem. Thus, low self-esteem can lead to a person losing self-confidence. In this case, a person’s desire to achieve the goal may gradually fade away and what was planned will never be accomplished. Sometimes, on the contrary, a person overestimates himself and his capabilities. In this case, it is customary to talk about inflated self-esteem, which does not allow one to adequately coordinate and adjust one’s actions on the way to achieving the set goal. As a result, the ability to achieve what was planned becomes much more difficult and, more often than not, what was previously planned is not fully realized in practice.

The will, like most other higher mental processes, is formed during the age-related development of a person. Thus, in a newborn child, reflex movements predominate, as well as some instinctive actions. Volitional, conscious actions begin to form much later. Moreover, the child’s first desires are characterized by great instability. Desires quickly replace each other and very often are of an uncertain nature. Only in the fourth year of life do desires acquire a more or less stable character.

At the same age, children first experience the emergence of a struggle of motives. For example, two-year-old children, after some hesitation, can make a choice between several possible actions. However, a choice made depending on moral motives becomes possible for children no earlier than the end of the third year of life. This happens only when the child can already control his behavior. This requires, on the one hand, a fairly high level of development, and on the other, some formation of moral attitudes. Both develop under the influence of training and education, in the process of constant interaction with adults. The nature of the emerging moral attitudes largely depends on the moral attitudes of the adult, since in the first years of life the child strives to imitate the actions of adults, and gradually in the process mental development he begins to analyze the actions of the adult and draw appropriate conclusions.

The development of volitional regulation of behavior in humans occurs in several directions. On the one hand, this is the transformation of involuntary mental processes into voluntary ones, on the other hand, a person gains control over his behavior, and on the third, the development of volitional qualities of the individual. All these processes ontogenetically begin from the moment in life when the child masters speech and learns to use it as effective means mental and behavioral self-regulation.

Within each of these directions of development of the will, as it strengthens, its own specific transformations occur, gradually raising the process and mechanisms of volitional regulation to higher levels. For example, within cognitive processes, the will first appears in the form of external speech regulation and only then in terms of the intra-speech process. In the behavioral aspect, volitional control first concerns voluntary movements of individual parts of the body, and subsequently - planning and control of complex sets of movements, including inhibition of some and activation of other muscle complexes. In the field of formation of volitional qualities of a person, the development of will can be represented as a movement from primary to secondary and then to tertiary volitional qualities.

Another direction in the development of the will is manifested in the fact that a person consciously sets himself more and more difficult tasks and pursues more and more distant goals that require the application of significant volitional efforts for quite a long time. For example, a schoolboy still in adolescence may set himself the task of developing such abilities for the formation of which he does not have expressed natural inclinations. At the same time, he can set himself the goal of engaging in a complex and prestigious activity in the future, the successful implementation of which requires such abilities. There are many life examples of how people who became famous scientists, artists, writers achieved their goals without having good inclinations, mainly due to increased performance and will. The development of will in children is closely correlated with the enrichment of their motivational and moral sphere. Inclusion in the regulation of activity of higher motives and values, increasing their status in the general hierarchy of incentives that govern activity, the ability to highlight and evaluate the moral side of performed actions - all this important points in the education of will in children. The motivation for an act, which includes volitional regulation, becomes conscious, and the act itself becomes voluntary. Such an action is always performed on the basis of an arbitrarily constructed hierarchy of motives, where the top level is occupied by a highly moral motivation, which gives moral satisfaction to a person if the activity is successful. A good example of such activity is extra-standard activity associated with the highest moral values, performed on a voluntary basis and aimed at benefiting people.

Improving the volitional regulation of behavior in children is associated with their general intellectual development, with the advent of motivational and personal reflection. Therefore, to educate the child’s will in isolation from his general psychological development almost impossible. Otherwise, instead of will and perseverance as undoubtedly positive and valuable personal qualities, their antipodes may arise and become entrenched: stubbornness and rigidity.

Games play a special role in the development of will in children in all of these areas, and each type of play activity makes its own specific contribution to the improvement of the volitional process. Constructive object-based games, which appear first in a child’s age-related development, contribute to the accelerated formation of voluntary regulation of actions. Role-playing games lead to the consolidation of the necessary volitional personality traits in the child. In addition to this task, collective games with rules solve another problem: strengthening the self-regulation of actions. Learning, which appears in the last years of preschool childhood and turns into a leading activity in school, makes the greatest contribution to the development of voluntary self-regulation of cognitive processes.

The concept of “will” is used by psychiatry, psychology, physiology and philosophy. At the personal level, will manifests itself in such properties as willpower, energy, perseverance, endurance, etc. They can be considered as primary, or basic, volitional qualities of a person. Such qualities determine behavior that is characterized by all or most of the properties described above. The will ensures the fulfillment of two interrelated functions - incentive and inhibitory - and manifests itself in them. Will is understood as a complex mental process that causes human activity and awakens him to act in a directed manner.

The development of will in a person is associated with such actions as:

1) transformation of involuntary mental processes into voluntary ones;

2) a person’s acquisition of control over his behavior;

3) development of strong-willed personality traits;

4) and also with the fact that a person consciously sets himself more and more difficult tasks and pursues more and more distant goals that require significant volitional efforts over a long time.

Will is a person’s ability to overcome obstacles and achieve a goal. Specifically, it appears in such character traits as determination, determination, perseverance, and courage. These character traits can contribute to the achievement of both socially useful and antisocial goals.

List of used literature

1. Maklakov A. General psychology

2. Rubinshtein S. L. Fundamentals of general psychology. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 1999

3. Ilyin E. P. Psychology of will. -- St. Petersburg: Peter, 2000

4. V.A. Krutetsky"Psychology", Moscow 1999

5. Psychology - textbook Moscow 1998

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Topic 18

WILL

general characteristics will

Volitional qualities of a person

Development of the human will

Violation of the volitional sphere

General characteristics of will

Will is a person’s conscious regulation of his behavior and activities, expressed in the ability to overcome internal and external difficulties when performing purposeful actions and deeds.

Will is an important component of the human psyche and is inextricably linked with the motivational sphere of the individual, cognitive and emotional processes. The will ensures the transition from human cognition and experiences to practical activity, to changing reality in connection with needs, intentions, and interests. With the help of will, a person organizes activities and controls his behavior. The main features of the will are:

· conscious determination. To accomplish something, a person must consciously set a goal and mobilize himself to achieve it;

· connection with thinking. A person can achieve something and mobilize himself for this only if he has thought through and planned everything well;

· connection with movements. To realize his goals, a person moves and changes forms of activity.

Most often, a person shows his will in the following typical situations:

1. When it is necessary to make a choice between two or more thoughts, goals, and feelings that are equally attractive, but require opposite actions, and are incompatible with each other.

2. When, in spite of everything, it is necessary to purposefully move towards the intended goal.

3. When internal (fear, doubts) or external (objective circumstances) obstacles arise on the path of a person’s practical activity that need to be overcome.

IN mental activity A lawyer's will performs a number of functions.

The main function of the will consists in the conscious regulation by a person of his actions aimed at achieving his goals, both in favorable and unfavorable life situations.

General regulating function of the will is specified in the following interrelated functions:

· incentive function - activation of certain motives of behavior, encouraging a person to perform certain activities, perform certain actions aimed at achieving a certain goal related to the satisfaction of a certain need;

· organizing function – organization of mental processes into a system adequate to the purpose of the activity;

· stabilizing function – maintaining activity at the proper level until the goal of the activity is achieved;

· function of inhibition of the will - restraining unwanted manifestations of activity, inhibition of motives, drives, desires, behavior options that are not consistent with the main goals of activity at one time or another.

Will is the ability of a person to consciously control himself in activities with difficult to achieve goals. It involves a person regulating his behavior, inhibiting a number of other aspirations and impulses, organizing a chain various actions in accordance with consciously set goals. Volitional activity means that a person exercises power over himself, controls his own involuntary impulses and, if necessary, suppresses them. The manifestation of will is a type of personality activity that is associated with the participation of consciousness. Volitional activity necessarily involves a number of acts: assessment of the current situation; choosing a path for future action; selection of means necessary to achieve the goal, etc.

In a number of cases, volitional activity is associated with making decisions that determine life path a person, revealing his public face, revealing his moral character. Therefore, the whole person is involved in the implementation of such volitional actions as a consciously acting personality. A person’s volitional activity is determined by the formed personality, the nature of its motives and life goals, which arise as a result of various influences in the conditions of human life. At the same time, various life circumstances can act as a direct cause of volitional activity.

Volitional actions and acts of will

Volitional activity always consists of certain simple and complex volitional actions, which contain all the signs and qualities of will (Fig. 1).

Rice. 1. Types of volitional action

Volitional action is associated with awareness of the purpose of the activity, its significance, subordination of one’s impulses to conscious control and changing the surrounding reality in accordance with one’s plans (Fig. 2).

Rice. 2. Characteristics of volitional action

Volitional actions are distinguished by degree of complexity. In the case when the goal is clearly visible in the impulse, and it directly turns into action, they speak of a simple act of will. A complex volitional act is preceded by taking into account the consequences, awareness of motives, making a decision, and drawing up a plan for its implementation (Fig. 3).

Inspiration to perform a volitional action. The role of motivating forces for specific volitional actions is played by certain human needs and motives. They can be very different, but in any case they force a person’s thinking to work actively, force him to evaluate the motivation for future behavior, and set certain goals for himself. It should be recognized that not every desire for a goal is conscious. Depending on the degree of awareness of needs and motives of behavior, the pursuit of a goal is divided into drives and desires.

Attraction– this is an insufficiently conscious desire in which a person is poorly aware of his needs and motives for behavior. Attraction is often considered as a kind of transitional state, since, due to its ambiguity and uncertainty, it cannot develop into purposeful activity. The need presented in the drive, as a rule, either fades away or is realized and turns into a specific desire.

Rice. 3. Stages of complex volitional action

Wish- this is a desire that arises with a clear awareness of the goal and the motive that causes it. It should be noted that not every desire leads to action. Desire in itself does not contain active component. Before a desire turns into an immediate motive and then into a goal, it is evaluated by a person, i.e. “filtered” through a person’s value system and receives an emotional coloring.

Desire, having a motivating force, sharpens the awareness of the goal of future action and the construction of its plan.

Awareness of the goal and the desire to achieve it. The ability for conscious purposefulness is a specialized ability of human consciousness. Goal setting includes an image of the object to which actions will be directed, and representations of the expected result - forecasting. It is the content of goals that determines the social value of a person’s actions, his value orientations, and his sense of justice.

In psychology it is common to distinguish two types of goals: strategic(distant), i.e. aimed at any general socially and personally significant result(for example, successful completion of a complex investigation), and tactical goals, closer, aimed at solving specific problems and consistently bringing us closer to the final goal.

Awareness of a number of possibilities for achieving the goal, those. those specific means that lead to the desired result. This is actually a mental action, which is part of a volitional action, the result of which is the establishment of cause-and-effect relationships between the methods of performing a volitional action in existing conditions and possible results.

Methods of action must be assessed by a person not only from the point of view of his personal benefit, benefit, but also taking into account possible consequences for other people and society as a whole. The choice of methods of action, like all other stages of a volitional act, is mediated by moral guidelines included in the structure of the subject’s motivation.

The emergence of motives that affirm or deny these possibilities. This stage characterizes the activation and awareness of the motive that prompts a person to set a specific goal and commit a normative or illegal act. The structure of motivation includes emotions and feelings, needs, interests and ideals of the individual. That is why it is the motive that determines the “personal meaning” of the set goal and the orientation of the individual (A.N. Leontyev). Human motivation is a very complex multi-level formation, so it is often not easy to identify true and adequate motives for behavior.

Revealing the true motives of offenders is one of the The struggle of motives and choice. Analysis of the structure of one’s motivation and its relationship with the goal allows the subject to understand to what extent the set goal corresponds to a certain motive. When a person experiences a state of uncertainty, he has several different motives that encourage him to strive for different goals. Here, as at the stage of choosing a goal, a conflict situation is possible due to the fact that a person accepts the possibility of an easy way to achieve a goal, but at the same time, due to his moral feelings or principles, cannot accept it. Other paths are less economical (and the person also understands this), but following them is more consistent with his value system.

Feelings of duty and fear, love and hatred, altruism and selfishness, etc. can fight in a person. The struggle is especially intense when incompatible motives collide and a person has to choose between narrow personal motives and social duty. Law-conscious behavior occurs when social and value motives predominate. If, in the presence of conflicting motives, none prevails, then the subject experiences a state of doubt, inhibition and is inclined to refuse to perform the action.

A person’s awareness, rational and emotional assessment of competing motives and goals ends with the choice of one of them, which has the highest personal and social “rating” on the scale of the subject’s value orientations, and the setting of the main goal of the activity corresponding to this motive. Other competing motives are recognized by a person as desires, inclinations, which, as intermediate obstacles, often prevent the achievement of an intended or intermediate goal. Intermediate goals are set taking into account the optimal sequence of implementation of certain motives and goals.

The struggle of motives ends either with the emergence of an intention aimed at an uncertain future, or with a decision made when a person clearly understands the need and possibility of achieving a certain goal and gives himself an order in terms of internal or external speech, stimulating the activation of motor processes.

Accepting one of the possibilities as a solution. This stage is characterized by a decrease in tension as the internal conflict is resolved. Here the means, methods, and sequence of their use are specified, i.e. refined planning is carried out. After this, the implementation of the decision begins. This is an intellectual act and a special volitional effort. It is characterized by the amount of energy spent on performing a goal-directed action or refraining from it. The decision-making process requires maximum awareness, determination and responsibility from the individual.

Implementation of the decision made. This stage, however, does not free a person from the need to make volitional efforts, sometimes no less significant than when choosing the goal of an action or methods of its implementation, since the practical implementation of the intended goal is again associated with overcoming obstacles, objective (external) and subjective (internal) difficulties.

External difficulties are obstacles that do not depend on acting person: natural disasters, difficulties in solving professional problems, resistance from other people, various kinds of interference, etc.

Internal difficulties include personal difficulties that depend on the physical and mental state of a person, for example, lack of knowledge, the struggle of negative ideas, desires, feelings that have developed in the past, overcoming which is often more difficult for a person than overcoming external obstacles, since it can be easier to resist external difficulties rather than to overcome oneself.

This stage is characterized by the tension of forces aimed at overcoming opposing motives and mobilizing forces. A person builds his behavior in such a way that the plan in his consciousness is embodied in a thing, object, work, mental action, or deed. However, a person not only acts, he manifests his will, controls and corrects his actions. At each moment he compares the result obtained with in an ideal way goal (or part of it), which was created by him in advance.

Achieving the set goal. The results of any volitional action have two consequences for a person: first, it is the achievement of a specific goal; the second is due to the fact that a person evaluates his actions and learns appropriate lessons for the future regarding the ways to achieve the goal and the effort expended. Results (successful or unsuccessful) by principle feedback are perceived and evaluated by the subject based on a comparison of the image of the desired and actually obtained result, after which the volitional action either ends or is repeated again.

Volitional qualities of a person

The volitional action of each person has its own special uniqueness, since it is a reflection of the relatively stable structure of the personality. Within individual differences In the volitional sphere, the identified parameters can characterize both the volitional act as a whole and its individual links. In particular, one of the main characteristics of will is its strength.

Strength of will manifests itself at all stages of the volitional act, but most clearly in what obstacles are overcome with the help of volitional actions and what results are obtained. It is the obstacles overcome through volitional efforts that are an objective indicator of the manifestation of willpower.

Analyzing the individual links of a volitional act, we can conclude that the first, starting stage of a volitional act largely depends on such personality qualities as determination, initiative, independence, endurance and self-control.

Determination– a person’s ability to subordinate his actions to his goals. Purposefulness is the most important motivational and volitional quality of a person, determining the content and level of development of all other volitional qualities. Distinguish between purposefulness strategic- the ability of an individual to be guided in all his life activities by certain principles and ideals and determination operational- the ability to set clear goals for individual actions and not be distracted from them in the process of execution.

For the most part, lawyers have good sense of purpose, clarity of purpose, and a combination of personal goals with the goals of the entire Russian state.

Initiative– the ability to work creatively, taking action on one’s own initiative. For many people, the most difficult thing is to overcome their inertia; they cannot do something on their own, without outside stimulation. Initiative is therefore a volitional quality because it requires a willingness to take risks, bear responsibility for the consequences, and experience great strain of spiritual and physical strength.

Independence The act of will is manifested in the ability not to be influenced by various factors, to critically evaluate the advice and suggestions of other people, to act on the basis of one’s views and beliefs. Independent people without outside help see a problem and set a goal based on it. Usually such people actively defend their point of view, their understanding of the task, goals and ways of its implementation.

Excerpt– the ability to slow down actions, feelings, thoughts that interfere with the implementation of the decision made. This is the ability to constantly control your behavior.

Self-control– a person’s ability to maintain inner calm, act wisely and deliberately in difficult life situations.

Highest degree self-control is - courage, which clearly manifests itself in difficult and dangerous circumstances, in the fight against unusual difficulties. Courage is a complex quality. It requires courage, endurance and perseverance.

Initiative, independence, as volitional qualities of a person are opposed to such qualities as suggestibility, pliability, inertia, but they must be distinguished from negativism as an unmotivated tendency to act contrary to others.

Negativism is considered by most psychologists as weakness of will, expressed in the inability to subordinate one’s actions to the arguments of reason, conscious motives of behavior, in the inability to resist one’s desires, leading to idleness, etc.

An individual parameter characterizing the features of the stage of updating one or more motives and the stage of decision-making is determination – the ability to make and implement quick, informed and firm decisions. Determination is realized in the choice of the dominant motive and adequate means of achieving the goal. It is especially pronounced in difficult situations where the action involves some risk. Making a decision in a timely manner means making it exactly at the moment when circumstances require it. Decisive people comprehensively and deeply consider the goals of action and ways to achieve them, experiencing a complex internal struggle and a clash of motives. Decisiveness is also manifested in the implementation of a set goal: decisive people are characterized by a quick and energetic transition from the choice of actions and means to the actual execution of the action.

An essential prerequisite for determination is courage– the ability to resist fear and take justifiable risks to achieve your goal.

The opposite qualities of decisiveness are indecision, impulsiveness and inconsistency.

The most important characteristic of the execution stage of an activity is persistence or perseverance.

Perseverance or perseverance– a person’s ability to mobilize his capabilities for a long-term struggle with difficulties. A persistent person is able to find in the surrounding conditions exactly what will help him achieve his goal. Persistent people do not shy away from failure, do not give in to doubts, and do not pay attention to the reproaches or opposition of other people.

Perseverance must be distinguished from stubbornness- a personality quality expressed in the desire to act in one’s own way, contrary to reasonable arguments, requests, advice, and instructions of other people.

Courage is expressed in a person’s readiness to fight and overcome danger. Courage is courage combined with the consideration of danger. Courage usually manifests itself in Everyday life, in the official activities of law enforcement officers, in their demands on their colleagues, criticism and self-criticism.

Discipline- this is an alloy of personal traits that ensure precise and consistent subordination of one’s actions and actions to the rules and requirements of laws and moral norms.

Responsibility– external or internal control over activities, reflecting the social, moral and legal attitude towards society, expressed in the fulfillment of accepted moral and legal norms and rules, one’s duty.

Self-education of will carried out using a variety of techniques, including by complying with the following requirements:

· the decision made must be implemented. It is better not to make decisions than to make and not implement them;

· You need to train yourself to overcome difficulties and obstacles on the way to achieving your goal. You need to start by acquiring the habit of overcoming relatively minor difficulties and obstacles;

· when setting difficult goals, it is necessary to outline not only main goal, but also intermediate goals, the achievement of which will bring the main goal closer;

· It is necessary to follow a daily routine and systematically exercise. The ability to win is developed in the process of physical education, since not only the muscles are trained, but also the will.

Development of the human will

The development of volitional regulation of behavior in humans occurs in several directions. On the one hand, this is the transformation of involuntary mental processes into voluntary ones, on the other hand, a person gains control over his behavior, and on the third, the development of volitional personality traits. All these processes ontogenetically begin from the moment in life when the child masters speech and learns to use it as an effective means of mental and behavioral self-regulation.

Within each of these directions of development of the will, as it strengthens, its own specific transformations occur, gradually raising the process and mechanisms of volitional regulation to higher levels. For example, within cognitive processes, the will first appears in the form of external speech regulation and only then in terms of the intra-speech process. In the behavioral aspect, volitional control first concerns voluntary movements of individual parts of the body, and subsequently – planning and control of complex sets of movements, including inhibition of some and activation of other muscle complexes. In the field of formation of volitional qualities of a person, the development of will can be represented as a movement from primary to secondary and then to tertiary volitional qualities.

Another direction in the development of the will is manifested in the fact that a person consciously sets himself more and more difficult tasks and pursues more and more distant goals that require the application of significant volitional efforts for quite a long time. For example, A schoolchild, even in adolescence, can set himself the task of developing abilities for the formation of which he does not have clear natural inclinations. At the same time, he can set himself the goal of engaging in a complex and prestigious activity in the future, the successful implementation of which requires such abilities. There are many life examples of how people who became famous scientists, artists, writers achieved their goals without having good inclinations, mainly due to increased efficiency and will.

The development of will in children is closely correlated with the enrichment of their motivational and moral sphere. The inclusion of higher motives and values ​​in the regulation of activity, increasing their status in the general hierarchy of incentives that govern activity, the ability to highlight and evaluate the moral side of performed actions - all these are important points in the education of will in children. The motivation for an act, which includes volitional regulation, becomes conscious, and the act itself becomes voluntary. Such an action is always performed on the basis of an arbitrarily constructed hierarchy of motives, where the top level is occupied by a highly moral motivation, which gives moral satisfaction to a person if the activity is successful. A good example of such an activity would be excess activity, associated with the highest moral values, performed on a voluntary basis and aimed at benefiting people.

Improving the volitional regulation of behavior in children is associated with their general intellectual development, with the emergence of motivational and personal reflection. Therefore, it is almost impossible to cultivate a child’s will in isolation from his general psychological development. Otherwise, instead of will and perseverance as undoubtedly positive and valuable personal qualities, their antipodes may arise and take hold: stubbornness and rigidity. Games play a special role in the development of will in children in all of these areas, and each type of play activity makes its own specific contribution to the improvement of the volitional process. Constructive object-based games, which appear first in a child’s age-related development, contribute to the accelerated formation of voluntary regulation of actions. Role-playing games lead to the consolidation of the necessary volitional personality traits in the child. In addition to this task, collective games with rules solve another problem: strengthening the self-regulation of actions. Learning, which appears in the last years of preschool childhood and turns into a leading activity in school, makes the greatest contribution to the development of voluntary self-regulation of cognitive processes.

Violation of the volitional sphere

One of the important tasks of self-education and will development is to overcome various passive and active forms of volitional insufficiency, often inherent in weak-willed people. TO passive forms of volitional failure include easy suggestibility and lack of independence, apathy, abulia, lack of persistence and endurance.

Easy suggestibility and lack of independence. People with this form of volitional insufficiency are characterized by extreme compliance with the influence of others and easy pliability to the will of another person. Such people lack entrepreneurship and initiative, and their persistence is insignificant.

Apathy– a more severe form of volitional insufficiency, close to a painful state, depression, when a person’s various kinds of desires and aspirations disappear, indifference to life events, the opinions of other people appears, and feelings become dulled. Apathy is often caused by difficult experiences, such nervous diseases as hysteria, neurasthenia; various mental illness accompanied by melancholy and depression.

Abulia– violation of the will, partial or complete lack of desire and motivation for activity.

Lack of persistence and endurance. There are people who make many decisions, but do not carry them out. It is precisely these people who lack endurance and perseverance (often determined by developed laziness with a poorly developed ability to exert volition).

TO active forms of volitional failure include impulsiveness and stubbornness.

Impulsiveness characterized by excessive impetuosity in decisions and actions, even when motives are not weighed and decisions are not thought through. Impulsivity is characteristic of people with weak self-control, strong and violent feelings, incapable of self-control and endurance. This form of volitional insufficiency manifests itself in “scatteredness,” violent and little conscious activity.

Stubbornness- a form of volitional insufficiency, manifested in senseless persistence, in the desire to tenaciously adhere to the decision made, even when the person who made it is aware (even vaguely) of the unreasonableness and even harmfulness of this decision.

Stubbornness is associated with weakness of critical assessment, the inability to calmly and comprehensively consider one’s own motives and the arguments of others, and dull clumsiness of the mind.

Psychological criteria confirming that a subject has a reduced ability to direct his actions within the limits of the mental norm include the following factors:

· reduced level of intelligence, which significantly complicates a person’s decision-making that is important to him in non-standard situations, making it difficult for him to predict and plan his subsequent actions;

· the presence of certain stable character traits, which together constitute the syndrome of the so-called “reduced volitional stability”, forming a “conformal type” of a person’s personality, who very often makes a decision under the influence of some external, sometimes random circumstances, under the influence of group opinion, etc. .d.;

· low self-esteem and level of aspirations, causing the subject to feel inferior and expect all kinds of failures;

· the presence in the motivational sphere of the individual as the leading motive of avoiding failure;

· reduced level emotional stability(stress resistance) of the individual, significantly complicating the subject’s exercise of the proper level of volitional control over his emotions and behavior.

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Rozhina L.N. Development of the emotional world of the individual [Text] /
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