5. The joy of intimate communication or communication in a company Thanks to the exercises of the previous sections, you have improved your physical and intellectual abilities, and were also able to take a fresh look at the world, appreciating its beauty. But the environment in which we live is not

Word and concept The concepts of dog and shovel are enshrined in certain words - “dog”, “shovel”. But it is not at all necessary, and it would be a very serious mistake, to identify (as is sometimes done) the concept and the meaning of the word. Firstly, the concept may not be expressed

3.1. The concept of observation One of the most complete works devoted to observation, “Educating Observation in Schoolchildren,” which laid the foundations for practical work on its development, was written by B. G. Ananyev back in 1940. But, unfortunately, the development of development paths

The concept of will The process of self-education is closely related to will. Sufficient level of will development - necessary basis and a condition for implementing a self-education program. Therefore, self-education of the will is not only the goal of developing one of the qualities

The concept of congruence Fundamental to many of the provisions that I want to present is the term “congruence” (consistency, correspondence). This concept was developed to describe a group of phenomena that are important in psychotherapy and in all interpersonal

Whatever the person was called: and homosapiens(reasonable person) homofaber(producing person), and homohabilis(skillful person) homoludens(person playing). I think with no less justification it can be called homocommunications- person communicating.

The need for communication, according to psychologists, is one of the basic (basic) human needs. The importance of communication as a basic need is determined by the fact that “it dictates the behavior of people with no less power than, for example, the so-called vital (life) needs.” Communication is a necessary condition for the normal development of a person as a member of society, as an individual, a condition for his spiritual and physical health, a way of knowing other people and oneself. Although human communication has always been the basis of people’s social existence, it became a direct object of psychological and socio-psychological analysis only in the 20th century.

Category of communication in psychology: content, structure and functions

Social contacts between people are represented by activity and communication.

There are differences between communication and activity as types of human activity. The result of the activity is the creation of any material or ideal product. The result of communication is mutual influence people at each other. Activity and communication, despite their differences, are interconnected aspects of human social activity. Activity can neither arise nor be carried out without intensive communication. Communication is a specific type of human activity. In real human life, communication and activity as forms of social activity appear in unity, but in a certain situation they can be realized independently of each other.

• formation of certain patterns and patterns of behavior;
• human interaction;
• mutual influence of people on each other;
• information exchange;
• formation of relationships between people;
• mutual experience and understanding of each other;
• formation of an image of a person’s inner “I”.

In psychology, communication is defined as a process of interaction between people, consisting in the exchange of information between them of a cognitive or emotional-evaluative nature, during which interpersonal relationships arise, manifest themselves and are formed. Communication involves the exchange of thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

When studying communication, it is distinguished: content, purpose, means, structure, functions and forms of communication.

• material - exchange of products and objects of activity;
• cognitive - knowledge Exchange;
• active - exchange of actions, operations, skills;
• conditioned - exchange of psychological or physiological states;
• motivational - exchange of motives, goals, interests, motives, needs.

Purpose of communication

People enter into communication in pursuit of certain goals. Target communication - This that is why a person has this type of activity. The goals of communication can be very diverse.

The purpose of communication may lie in itself, then communication is an end in itself, a means of satisfying the need for communication.

The purpose of communication may be outside the interaction of subjects itself, then we are dealing with business communication , serving as a way to organize and optimize one or another type of objective activity: production, scientific, commercial, etc.

The purpose of communication can also be to introduce communication partners to each other’s values ​​and experiences, as presented in personal communication, which is mainly centered around psychological problems internal character, those interests and needs that deeply affect a person’s personality.

It is difficult to give an exhaustive classification according to the purposes of communication, taking into account the diversity of human needs (social, cultural, cognitive, creative, aesthetic, needs for intellectual growth, moral development, biological, etc.), for the sake of satisfying which people enter into communication.

Communication means

Communication means are ways of encoding, transmitting, processing and decoding information transmitted in the process of communication.

Means of communication are divided into verbal (verbal), represented by speech, and nonverbal (non-verbal), represented by gestures, facial expressions, sound of voice, gaze, touch, etc.

Communication structure

Communication structure can be characterized by identifying three interrelated aspects in it: perceptual, communicative and interactive (Fig. 16).

Rice. 16. Communication structure

Perceptual side communication is the process of perception, cognition and understanding by people of each other with the subsequent establishment of certain interpersonal relationships on this basis.

Communication side communication consists of the mutual exchange of information between people, the transfer and reception of knowledge, ideas, opinions, feelings.

Interactive side communication consists of the exchange of actions, i.e. in the organization of interpersonal

Communication functions

Acting as a powerful consumer of human energy, communication is at the same time an invaluable biostimulator of human life and spiritual aspirations.

In accordance with this, affective-communicative, information-communicative and regulatory-communicative communication functions.

Affective-communicative (perceptual) function, which is based on the perception and understanding of another person, a communication partner, is associated with the regulation of a person’s emotional sphere, since communication is the most important determinant emotional states person. The entire spectrum of specifically human emotions arises and develops in the conditions of human communication - either a rapprochement of emotional states occurs, or their polarization, mutual strengthening or weakening.

Information and communication function communication consists of any type of exchange of information between interacting individuals. The exchange of information in human communication has its own specifics:

• firstly, the exchange of information takes place between two individuals, each of whom is an active subject (as opposed to a technical device);
• secondly, the exchange of information necessarily involves the interaction of thoughts, feelings and behavior of partners.

Regulatory-communicative (interactive) function communication is the regulation of behavior and the direct organization of joint activities of people in the process of their interaction. In this process, a person can influence motives, goals, programs, decision-making, execution and control of actions, i.e. on all components of their partner’s activities, including mutual stimulation and behavior correction.

The role and intensity of communication in modern society are increasing: the number of people employed in professional activity related to communication. At one time, the pragmatic J. Rockefeller, well understanding the importance of communication for business activities, said: “The ability to communicate with people is the same commodity bought for money, like sugar or coffee. And I am willing to pay more for this skill than for any other product in this world.”

But what does it mean to be able to communicate? This means being able to understand people and build your relationships with them on this basis, which presupposes knowledge of the psychology of communication.

The essence of communication and its forms

The source of the need for communication is the collectivist, social nature of man, his inherent need not only for individual, but also for joint activity. It was this generic feature given to man by nature that helped him survive and establish himself among other animals more physically stronger than humans.

It is admitted that one of the national characteristics Russian people are just high level development of this quality in them. Russian thinkers called him community, conciliarity, squad, brotherhood(A.S. Khomyakov, B.S. Soloviev, N.F. Fedorov, etc.). It was this national trait of the Russian spirit that helped Russia survive in the most tragic moments of its history. In this spirit of collectivism, figures of Russian culture saw one of the main differences between Russian self-awareness and Western culture, the basis of which is the spirit of individualism. Of course, at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries, during the years of post-Soviet reforms, this feature of Russian spirituality weakened significantly, although, apparently, it did not disappear completely.

- a complex multifaceted process of establishing and developing contacts between individuals and their groups. This process is generated by the needs of people for joint activities, which multiply their strength many times over. There are three components to communication:

• communication side or exchange of information;
• interactions or exchange of actions:
• mutual perception or perception and evaluation of a partner.

All three aspects of communication help optimize the joint activities of people, lead to rapprochement, as well as the development and improvement of their personal qualities.

However, this rapprochement has its limits and boundaries. It cannot be unlimited, because no matter how close people become to each other in the process of their interaction, they nevertheless always remain separate systems both in their interests and in their forms of behavior.

Each personality, no matter how close contact with other people it may be, retains its physical and spiritual autonomy, originality, remaining, as the ancients said. " microcosm." those. a whole world of unique thoughts, feelings, interests.

Therefore, any contacts or communication between people rarely proceed without difficulties, problems, and conflicts. These problems arise both in small social groups, families, in work collectives, and at the level of society as a whole, between large social groups, classes and ethnic groups. And these problems and difficulties are resolved, again, only in the process of the same communication, in which management structures of various levels can participate.

Due to the many difficulties and conflicts that arise in the course of human interactions, the forms of human communication turn out to be infinitely diverse.

Forms of communication are classified based on different criteria. So, if we take as the basis for classification criterion for the direction of communication, then it can be divided into two types:

• vertical communication, for example, between parents and children, boss and subordinates;
• horizontal communication an example of which is the communication of brothers close in age; communication between work colleagues of equal status.

If we take as the basis for the classification of types of communication the nature of his goals, then its forms can be distinguished:

• communication as an end in itself. for example, communication between friends, relatives;
• communication as a means achieving some goal external to him: this is exactly what any business, including managerial, pedagogical communication is. Here the goal is beyond the communication process itself: it is to achieve the goals of the organization, enterprise, educational institution etc. And finally, we can distinguish types of communication according to the criterion composition of its participants.

Then the main types of communication will look like this:

• communication according to the scheme "man-nature", an example of which could be activities such as hunting, fishing, tourism, relaxing in the country, communicating with pets, etc.
• communication according to the scheme man-thing" typical examples of which are performing activities in the field of material production, trade, and activities such as collecting; this form of communication can take painful forms in the form of excessive passion for acquiring and accumulating things, the so-called “materialism”:
• communication according to the scheme man-man”, which is the most psychologically intense and complex. Since this form of communication is distinguished by its special spirituality, dynamism, liveliness, it is sometimes spoken of as the highest luxury, accessible to people. But the greatest difficulties of communication are associated with this same form of communication.

Many different problems arise in the process of family communication, as well as in the course of relationships between people in work collectives. It is known that the “end-to-end” function of managers labor collectives is the psychological impact on individual employees and the group as a whole, their motivation to actively work to achieve the goals of the organization in the process of constant and diverse management communication with people.

Communication is a necessary condition for any joint activity and is the process of establishing and developing contact between people, the exchange of information, the participants’ perception of each other and their interaction.

Communication research has a long tradition in Russian psychology.

Sechenov also spoke about the importance of this issue for the study of moral feelings. Bekhterev was the first in Russia to conduct experiments to study certain aspects of communication. Lazursky, Vygotsky, Myasishchev contributed to the development of communication problems. Considering the question of psychological structure of a person as a subject of activity (that is, producing material and spiritual values), Ananyev emphasized the role of communication. He noted that communication is the most important activity that arose on the basis of labor and in the process of socio-historical development became an independent type of activity.

Currently, communication problems are the focus of attention of many domestic psychologists. Communication in ontogenesis is considered as one of the factors mental development personality, the connection between the need for communication and other human needs, the importance of communication for the regulation of personal behavior, the relationship between communication and the emotional sphere of the individual, features of mental processes in conditions of communication, etc.

Basic aspects of the transmission and perception of information in the process of communication. Any joint activity of people is inseparable from their communication. Communication is based on the communicative process of transmitting information from one person to another or a group of people and the perception of this information by these persons. In any single act of transmitting and perceiving information, at least two people are needed - the sender of information (communicator) and its recipient (communicator or addressee).

Approaching the problem of communication from the point of view of information theory, we can distinguish, in accordance with the works of the classics of this theory, Shannon and Weaver, the following three problems of communication (transmission - reception of information).

1. Technical problem. How accurately can communication symbols be conveyed?

2. Semantic problem. How accurately do the rendered symbols express the desired meaning?

3. The problem of efficiency. How effectively does perceived meaning influence people in the desired direction?

All these problems are closely interconnected. Thus, technical interference in a transmission device or inaccuracy in the concepts used may reduce the effectiveness of a particular communication. At scientific analysis communications are usually based on the Shannon model, according to which the following main elements of the communication chain can be distinguished:

1) source of information (its sender, communicator);

2) transmitter;

3) receiver;

4) recipient of information (communicator, recipient of communication).

The role of the sender of information can be any individual who has the intention of communicating something to another person or group of people, as well as influencing them accordingly. The sender of information is often at the same time the source of information, but these two roles should not be completely identified. For example, when at a lecture a teacher talks about the research of other scientists, he acts more as a communicator than as a source of this information.

This or that information is encoded by its sender based on a system of signs for transmission to the communication recipient. The conversion of information into signals is carried out by the communicator through a transmitter, which can be biological organs (for example, vocal cords) or technical devices (for example, an automatic electrical display). The communicator can say or write something, demonstrate a diagram or drawing, and finally, express his thoughts with facial expressions and gestures. Thus, when transmitting information, a number of specific signs are always used.

The communicator signals arrive at the receiver, which, like the transmitter, is a biological organ or technical device with the function of decoding the received message. The communication chain is completed by the recipient (addressee) of information - the person who perceives and interprets this information.

The entire path of information, from its sender to the recipient, is called a communication channel (meaning both the physical and social environment). It is necessary to distinguish channels from the various means used in transmitting information. Such means are written documents, telephone, radio, television, etc. Information can also be transmitted directly when communication participants interact face to face based on oral speech or using non-verbal signs.

The roles of communication participants cannot be divided into active (senders of information) and passive (receivers of information). The latter must also show some activity in order to adequately interpret the information. In addition, the sender of information and its recipient can change their roles during communication. One of the first problems that every communicator faces is the need to attract the attention of the recipient of information to the upcoming message.

There are two obvious characteristics of communication that allow you to hold the attention of the recipient of information. This is the novelty and significance of this message for him. Therefore, it is important for the communicator to have a clear idea of ​​the range of information that the future addressee of information has at his disposal, and of the hierarchy of his value orientations.

For an adequate understanding of any message, a certain commonality of “thesauruses” between the sender of information and the addressee is necessary. Translated from ancient Greek, “thesaurus” means treasure. In this case, the thesaurus is understood as the entire body of information available to this person. Large differences in the supply and nature of information make communication difficult. It is known that members of each professional group have their own specific language, widely used in the practice of their work. On the one hand, the presence of such a language helps specialists quickly exchange information with each other; on the other hand, their use of elements of their professional jargon when communicating with representatives of other professional groups negatively affects their mutual understanding.

The effectiveness of communication depends on many socio-psychological factors accompanying the process of transmission and perception of information. These factors are the subject of research in domestic and foreign social psychology. For example, the features social roles communication participants, prestige of communicators, social attitudes the recipient of information, the peculiarities of the course of his mental processes. There is experimental data indicating that age, professional and role characteristics communication participants significantly influence the processes of transmission and perception of information.

Successful interpersonal communication can be hampered by various obstacles. Sometimes the sender of information encodes it incorrectly, for example, expressing his message in inappropriate words. In this case, we can assume that the semantic problem of communication is not being solved. Thus, sometimes one or another careless word or thoughtless phrase can painfully offend the recipient of communication and cause in him an acute emotional reaction of objection and opposition. The situation may turn into a conflict. Often the communicator then has to convince the recipient of the communication for a long time that he misunderstood him, that he did not want to offend him, that he did not mean at all what the recipient of the information thought, etc.

The process of transmitting information can also be accompanied by interference, due to which the information reaches the recipient in a distorted form. This happens, for example, when information passes through big number individuals or hierarchical levels of an organization. According to American authors, in oral communication, about 30% of information is lost with each subsequent transmission. Note that the person to whom the information is addressed may simply interpret it incorrectly.

Western researchers pay a lot of attention to the consideration of various barriers to interpersonal communications (Rogers, Roethlisberger). The main barrier is the tendency to prematurely evaluate the message, its approval or disapproval, rather than maintaining a neutral position during the exchange of opinions. Possible barriers to effective communication include differences in education, experience, motivation, and others.

In the process of transmitting information, various sign systems are used. On this basis, verbal and nonverbal communications are usually distinguished.

Verbal communication uses messages expressed in words (orally, written or printed). The most important means of such communication is oral speech, if only for the reason that it does not require special material costs in interpersonal communication. In addition, by turning to oral speech, you can convey information not only in words or sentences. In such speech, people also use paralinguistic means, which can also carry a certain meaning. This is the degree of volume of speech, its rhythm, the distribution of pauses, as well as vocalization - laughter, crying, yawning, sighs. For example, if someone laughingly tells us: “Get out of here!”, without putting the literal meaning into his words at all, then we understand the subtext of this phrase. Or, if a person increases the pace of his speech, then by this he wants to tell us about his anxiety or excitement. Thus, there is a huge variety of different linguistic and paralinguistic forms of information transmission. However, along with verbal forms of communication, people also use nonverbal forms, which sometimes support verbal messages and sometimes contradict them. Sometimes nonverbal forms of communication even surpass verbal forms in their effectiveness. Nonverbal communication involves the transfer of information without the use of words. At the same time, we receive information through vision, recording such expressive elements of behavior as facial expression, gestures, posture, facial expressions, appearance generally.