The formation of individual style of activity.

5.6.4.2.1. Only those people can achieve the effective results in any activity whose individual style of activity is properly formed, i.e. who have a style of activity adequate to a person’s individual peculiarities, particularly to such important characteristics as a type of thinking. Otherwise the individual style of activity is non-adequate and it results in the low effectiveness of activity, it also causes psychological discomfort, monotony and other undesirable consequences.

Quite often you may observe a teacher or a master of industrial training realizing the principle “do as I do it” and thus forming the individual style of activity, which is harmful for a pupil. A pupil in this situation reminds a cucumber seed of which they try to grow an orange by all means. The effect of such “development” is just a great waste of time.

In this connection you should take into account the correlation between individually typological and activity-stereotyped indexes of FAH.

5.6.4.2.2. The indexes of individually typological peculiarities of thinking show the ways of forming the individual style of activity. If people with abstract-logical type of thinking prefer to operate with symbols, abstract things, schemes, structures, etc., then the people of emotional-figurative thinking operate with spatial images of a picture type, which are distinguished by their dynamics and emotional coloring.

5.6.4.2.3. In order to define the correspondence of individually typological peculiarities of thinking to the chosen individual style of activity you should compare the indexes of individually typological and activity-stereotyped thinking with each other. In case there are essential discrepancies between them you should pay attention to the necessity of the individual activity style correction to raise its productivity.

It is important to note that you can judge about the inaccurate style of thinking activity not by the fact of thinking deviation into the side of logic in emotional-figurative thinking, but the fact that the indexes of thinking essentially differ between individually typological and activity-stereotyped characteristics. So, the abstract-logical type of thinking of a musician is not the index of his professional unsuitability. There are cases when such people achieve great results in musical activity. The fact of abstract-logical thinking predominance in emotional-figurative activity should be understood not as a signal of failure, but as advice to change thinking activity, as a necessity of a different – in comparison with a traditional one – individual approach in education.

5.6.4.2.4. The manifestations of different types of thinking of musicians and the methods of correct work with them were described earlier (Yu. A. Tsagarelly, 1986). An individual approach with due account for individually typological peculiarities of FAH of people of other professions is becoming more and more popular and is described in literature as it is extremely important for the optimization of educational process.

5.6.4.2.5. The diagnostics of thinking peculiarities has a wide range of usage both for psychological-pedagogical investigations and for practical work with people. It is so because this factor of FAH makes an essential influence on all the processes of perception and processing the information by a person, including the peculiarities of memory, attention, and perception. That is why the results of the diagnostics may be of great use in promoting these questions.

5.6.4.2.6. The formation of individual style of activity presupposes the correction of the thinking activity process. Correcting the process of these or those tasks solution, directing the thinking into a necessary channel you should periodically control this process diagnosing the situational index of thinking. The results of such diagnostics allow clearing up the correcting influence to avoid some erratic judgements, to pay attention to the correct ones. So, there takes place a feedback that is necessary in any correction process.

5.6.4.3. Forming professional groups.

Selecting people into optimal groups for making a collateral activity you should take into account the factors of psychological compatibility and complementarity. In this connection you should base on a general law according to which the identical poles are repelled and the different ones are attracted.

5.6.4.3.1. People with different types of thinking mutually complement each other and they do not have competitive relations. For this reason people of emotional-figurative type of thinking are well compatible with people of abstract-logical type of thinking and they are hardly compatible with people of identical type of thinking.

5.6.4.3.2. People distinguished by a mixed type of thinking are compatible with the representatives of both extreme types. But the degree of compatibility in such cases is less than that between the antipodes.

5.6.4.3.3. When forming the groups working under the condition of high tenseness and lack of time (which is especially characteristic of special subdivisions of MIA, MES, FSB and others) you should take into account that special requirements are made to the speed and accuracy of task solution.

The advantage of abstract-logical thinking is its accuracy provided by operational logic of thinking processes. However, the operation requires a considerable waste of time and causes the sluggishness of this type of thinking. Emotional-figurative and spatial thinking are deprived of this disadvantage and surpass greatly the abstract-logical thinking by their speed. At the same time quick reactions made on the emotional level can often be incorrect.

So that this or that professional group could solve the given tasks as quickly and accurately as possible and meet the requirements of psychological compatibility it is necessary to form the group consisting of a proportional number of people having different types of thinking.

CHAPTER VI

THE DIAGNOSTICS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL

CHARACTERISTICS OF PERSONALITY

The psychological characteristics of personality are: needs which stipulate a person’s activity, personality orientation which determines the way this activity is oriented on, motivation which is connected with a person’s interests, self-consciousness closely connected with self-appraisal and also such characteristics as psycho-emotional steadiness, reliability in extreme situations, emotional reactivity, stability, anxiety, etc.

Being stable psychological characteristics, many of them are conditioned by frequent repetitions of the corresponding psychic states and processes typical of this personality.

So, frequent states of anxiety form personality anxiety, typical emotional manifestations form emotional reaction and so on. In its turn, personality characteristics cause corresponding psychic states. For example, people with high emotional reactivity are more sensitive to some irritants than those with low emotional reactivity, etc.

The diagnostics of psychological characteristics of personality can be performed by the apparatus ATS-6 using both instrumental and non-instrumental methods. The present chapter will contain instrumental methods of the diagnostics of psychological characteristics of personality and the Following one will describe non-instrumental methods – together with the methods of the diagnostics of socio-psychological and social characteristics.