Volitional qualities of a person and their formation: psychology of properties of the personality sphere

Basic Concepts

Volitional personality traits , what is it? This is a set of qualities that are necessary to achieve your goals.

Some of the most famous: determination, perseverance, discipline, strategicity.

These qualities are based on willpower, a special state, and a mental habit. Willpower can be trained by successfully realizing your goals, motivations, and desires.

The volitional sphere of personality consists of two parameters: willpower and willpower.

Willpower , the ability to mobilize the body and psyche to achieve goals. If a person is ready not to retreat for a long period of time and regularly strive for success, his will is developed.

If a person gives up on something halfway, does not finish it to the end, or gives up after the first or second failure, there is a problem with willpower.

Willpower , the ability to maintain the degree of volitional effort. This means maintaining the will for a long time. Anyone can gather strength for the day. Not everyone can make it through months and years.

There are two types of runners in athletics: the sprinter (fast, short-distance running) and the stayer (long-distance, endurance running). Willpower is just about stayers.

Development of the emotional-volitional sphere in adolescents

Volitional qualities undergo a thorough restructuring in adolescence. Teenagers tend to show independence and self-regulation. At the same time, their development of the volitional sphere is accompanied by contradictions. A teenager striving for independence critically perceives the instructions of adults. He becomes less disciplined, shows stubbornness, and is persistent only where he has an interest.

The ongoing process of puberty significantly affects nervous processes, which also negatively affects the will of the teenager. In his nervous system, excitation processes prevail over inhibition processes. Therefore, adolescents have weak self-control and do not apply sanctions based on moral considerations well. On the other hand, courage increases. Teenagers are even capable of performing heroic deeds, which happened repeatedly during the Second World War. It has also been established that children 12-15 years old tend to overestimate their level of will and energy.

Classification

Volitional qualities are divided into two main types: primary (extraordinary volitional qualities) and systemic (morally volitional qualities).

The latter are based on the former: on the basis of the primary ones, systemic ones are formed and developed. Next we will talk about these two types.

Primary

Let's look at the basic primary qualities and give them a brief description:

Energy .
Charged with positive emotions for activities. The ability to motivate yourself to be active. When a person talks about “lack of motivation,” he often has poorly developed willpower, and in particular, energy. If this quality is well developed, a person is able to mobilize internal resources into energy to achieve a goal with a simple mental effort. It is important to distinguish energy (as a parameter of willpower) from the general energy of a person, which depends on heredity and genetics (type of temperament).
Patience . The property is polar to the previous one. If energy is aimed at quick decisive action, then patience, the ability to take a long time to reach the goal, the ability to wait and remain calm in the absence of visible results. The ability to wait, but not wait, do not confuse patience with passivity.
Self-control . An important ability to maintain a cool head in changing circumstances. When things don't go according to plan, a person is persistent in achieving his goal, his emotional background is stable. That is, emotions and attitude do not fluctuate: not towards aggression, not towards panic, not towards reflection/apathy (when “you give up”). Self-control is the ability to put feelings aside and continue to act.
Courage .
Courage refers to the process of overcoming rational fears. On the way to the goal, a person can expect trouble: a threat to life and damage to social status (condemnation, misunderstanding). Courage, the ability to face fear and overcome it. This is a conscious, mental process. It should not be confused with extravagance, where a person risks life or position without any reasonable reason.

System

Now let's move on to systemic qualities based on primary ones. In a person who constantly pumps up willpower, the qualities described below form the foundation of character (these qualities are often used to describe a person and give him characteristics):

Determination . There are two types. Personal determination is perseverance in achieving a goal, despite obstacles and failures. General determination is a personality trait when a person outlines tasks and successfully solves them in life in general.
Persistence . Manifests itself in a long-term, unshakable attitude toward goals. Without this quality, a person will give up immediately after the first attempt. A persistent person is able to not give up on a task for a very long time, working on it for months and even years. No obstacles on the way can influence his decision to achieve a result.
Integrity .
It means compliance with one’s principles, beliefs, and worldview as a whole. This also includes defending one’s point of view if a person is absolutely confident in the objectivity of his arguments. Integrity is a discipline in the field of fidelity to one’s beliefs and words.
Initiative . Ability to offer non-standard solutions. A person’s focus on transforming the world around him. The opposite quality of passivity and laziness. Initiative is not only a characteristic of will, but also a quality inherent in the behavior of a leader.
Determination . The essence of the property is in operational decision making. When a problem arises (or a goal is set), a person with this quality remains collected and immediately looks for ways to solve the problem. Not to be confused with impulsiveness. The difference is that an impulsive person is spontaneous, he is guided by emotions, instincts and momentary desires, while a decisive person is guided by reason and logic. Decisiveness is not so much haste or speed, but rather the speed of transition from decision-making to action (they say about such people “a man of action”).
Strategic (consistency). The quality thanks to which a person sees the final goal, the result of his activities. And therefore he checks every step with the intended result. This also includes the ability to set priorities and not only draw up a plan, but also adapt it to changing conditions and force majeure.
Self-sufficiency (independence). An important quality with which a person carefully filters his goals. He does not allow other people’s desires to be imposed on himself; he looks at the world around him in accordance with his beliefs and principles based on personal experience. Also independence, the ability to act without resorting to the help of others, to work autonomously.

Development of the emotional-volitional sphere of a preschooler

In preschoolers, the main factor that stimulates volitional behavior is play. For this age, it represents the leading activity. Researchers studying emotional-volitional development have obtained the following data. If you ask a child to jump to a line on the floor, the length of his jump will be less than when he pretends to be a bunny jumping.

A preschooler can, at the request of an adult, stand at attention for about 18 seconds. But if a child pretends to be a sentry while playing, then his immobility will last much longer - up to 1.5 minutes. With age, the difference between volitional action in play and non-play situations becomes smaller.

At the age of 4 years, children already have sufficiently developed self-control. By the age of 4-5 years, children begin to obey adults, because otherwise they feel guilty. By the end of the preschool stage of development, the child is able to complete the work he has begun: he completes the task, showing perseverance, initiative, and independence. In a preschool child, the words “should” and “shouldn’t” become internal regulators of volitional action, which he pronounces mentally.

But preschoolers can also show the negative side of the developing will - self-will. The child may be capricious and stubborn. This can be due either to neglect, when a preschooler does whatever he wants, or to too high demands. In the latter case, self-will manifests itself as a defense mechanism.

Briefly about the formation

The will is formed and develops in the process of human life .

Volitional qualities are established in childhood, and their further progress largely depends on how the child relates to obstacles and how he copes with them.

In early childhood, the child is largely guided by survival instincts . The main role in his behavior is played by the needs for food and security (which must be provided by parents).

After 4 years, a child is able to make more informed decisions, since his behavior is now controlled not only by instincts, but also by upbringing .

Moral qualities also develop at this age.

If a child tries to actively overcome obstacles and achieves, albeit small, goals, the higher the likelihood that he will show willpower as an adult.

We will talk in detail about how to strengthen will and discipline in the section on the development of strong-willed personality traits.

Methods for developing volitional qualities

A person’s will is trained in the process of life while overcoming various obstacles. It is the ability to overcome obstacles along the way that shapes a person’s volitional sphere. The survival instinct, which is a stimulus to action, helps train the will. But as you grow older, a social stimulus is added to the survival instinct - the praise of parents, colleagues, teachers. That is, education and its requirements come into play. Education begins to form moral qualities, on the basis of which the systemic will is trained.

Methods of strengthening volitional qualities:

visiting the sports section;
visiting interest groups (art, photography);
increasing the complexity of the process;
analysis of failures and success.

It is necessary to strengthen the will from childhood. It will be useful for a child to attend a sports section, since collective overcoming of obstacles is a huge incentive to action. Children love to copy each other, so the results and achievements of others will encourage their own achievements.

Interest groups also cultivate strong-willed qualities. For example, when drawing a picture, you need to be patient and persistent. Even a hobby contributes to the development of will, because many hobbies require the same patient participation in the process as the sports section.

Note! To prevent your child from giving up drawing or other activities, praise him more often and do not set too difficult tasks.

An adult can strengthen his willpower through exercise on sports equipment. Strengthens the will and decision to lead a healthy lifestyle or get rid of any bad habit.

Remember that burdening yourself with difficult, impossible tasks is a recipe for failure. You should set small achievable goals and implement them. Completing a task brings pleasure, and pleasure is an incentive to complete the next task. From simple to complex - the best advice for strengthening strong-willed qualities.

Debriefing is an important milestone on the path to strengthening your will. You need to calmly analyze why you couldn’t do something. It is also necessary to record positive results so that they are stored in memory. Re-reading the achievements written in a notebook (or a photo/video report) helps to recharge with positivity if something doesn’t work out.

Determination

A person who has a clear goal and goes towards it is called strong-willed. Even if you do not seek to develop strong-willed qualities, it will be useful for you to define your goals so that you know exactly what you want and what you are striving for.

A person who has no goal floats with the flow and suffers from the meaninglessness of life. And if there is a goal, but no steps are taken to achieve it, then the person ultimately also suffers, only from frustration.

Volitional development of an adult

Adults are an age category for which emotional and volitional development is especially necessary. The main feature of the period of adulthood is generativity - the desire to generate new things . This quality is manifested in the ability to solve problems and a creative approach to various situations. Generativity is a life position that involves participation in a variety of social situations. A developed will is extremely necessary for it.

The opposite of generativity is the phenomenon of stagnation, or life stagnation. The more results a mature person achieves, the more she can reveal her abilities. Many adults find it difficult to understand what exactly they need - organization or willpower. An organized person is one who is not inclined to be late and does not forget things anywhere. You can learn to be organized without being strong-willed.

Those who have insufficiently developed willpower should shift their focus a little to other features of volitional development. Physical exercise is necessary for everyone, but a sick person must first recover before doing it. Volitional efforts are also a burden. Therefore, before you start training your will, you need a foundation. Almost all people are mentally healthy. But not everyone has peace of mind. Willpower is blocked by increased anxiety and fears. Also, the development of will is hampered by the psychological attitude of the victim. Willpower is incompatible with such an attitude.

What are human volitional abilities?

Volitional personality traits

Will not only stimulates human activity aimed at overcoming difficulties, but also inhibits its manifestation when it is necessary to achieve the goal. Thanks to the incentive and inhibitory functions, the will allows a person to regulate his activities and behavior in the most difficult conditions. These functions of the will are aimed at overcoming external and internal obstacles and require a person to exert all his mental and physical strength. When a state of tension aimed at implementing the incentive and inhibitory functions of the will manifests itself everywhere, it is consolidated and becomes a volitional property or quality of the individual.

Some of these properties are associated with the incentive function of the will, others with the inhibitory function. There are quite a lot of such properties in humans. Moreover, they can be both positive and negative. Positive properties help overcome internal and external obstacles, negative ones hinder.

Among the qualities inherent in a strong-willed personality, the most important ones are: independence, determination, perseverance, perseverance, endurance and self-control.

Independence is a strong-willed quality that manifests itself in a person’s ability to set goals on his own initiative and implement them, overcoming obstacles. An independent person is confident in the correctness of his goal and will fight to achieve it with all his might. At the same time, independence does not exclude the use of advice and suggestions from other people aimed at assessing the possibility of achieving a set goal.

The opposite qualities of independence are suggestibility and negativism. All weak-willed people who do not know what to do in the current situation and who are always waiting for advice or instructions from other people are susceptible to suggestibility. They often doubt the correctness and appropriateness of their actions and easily fall under the influence of selfish, immoral people. Subsequently, having become convinced of the wrongness of their actions, committed under the influence of these people, they bitterly repent of having trusted them.

Negativism is a negative volitional quality, under the influence of which a person performs actions that are opposite to the correct and appropriate advice that other people give him. Negativism most often manifests itself in adolescents who strive to show their autonomy and independence from adults.

Decisiveness is one of the important volitional properties of a person, which manifests itself at the initial stage of volitional behavior, when the person must make an effort when choosing the goal of action. A decisive person is able to quickly select the most important goal, comprehensively consider ways to achieve it, and foresee the possible consequences of his behavior.

Indecision is a negative volitional quality that prevents a person from quickly making the right decision and carrying out a volitional action. An indecisive person shows hesitation when choosing a goal, does not know which goal to prefer, has doubts about the correctness of the chosen goal, and is afraid of the possible consequences of his actions. Sometimes indecisive people, trying to avoid tension that is unpleasant for them, rush to quickly set any goal that comes to their mind, and without thinking about whether it is achievable or not, they begin to act.

Perseverance is the most important volitional quality, manifested in a person’s ability to patiently overcome all difficulties that arise on the way to achieving a goal. This quality is inherent in people who can demonstrate strong-willed efforts for a long time in order to solve the task as best as possible and achieve the highest results. A persistent person systematically and steadily moves towards his intended goal, regardless of all the obstacles encountered on his way. He can painstakingly follow the intended path step by step, without stopping when he fails and without succumbing to any doubts or opposition from other people. This person can insist on his own, convince others that he is right and mobilize them to solve the task at hand. People who do not have persistence show impatience and haste in their actions, trying to reach their intended goal as quickly as possible, although they do not always succeed.

Perseverance is a strong-willed quality that helps a person achieve, at any cost, the achievement of his goal, despite all the obstacles and opposition. A persistent person is convinced of the correctness of the chosen path, understands the expediency of his actions and the need to obtain the desired results. If, under the circumstances, achieving the goal turned out to be impractical, then a person who was previously persistently pursuing it may abandon it or postpone its achievement until a more appropriate time.

Stubbornness is a negative volitional quality, the opposite of perseverance. A stubborn person recklessly strives to achieve a goal, although it does not matter much to him and cannot be realized at the moment. However, despite this, he stubbornly continues to act, regardless of anyone or anything, guided only by his narrowly selfish desires and considerations. As a rule, a stubborn person not only fails to achieve his goal, but often gets results that are opposite to those he expected.

Self-control is one of the volitional qualities that perform an inhibitory function. It allows a person to show great willpower and withstand excessive mental and physical stress necessary to achieve the goal. Endurance can be manifested in a person’s resilience, in his ability to withstand adverse factors and see things through to the end, even in an extreme situation. A restrained person will not act rashly. He will sensibly assess the situation and his capabilities, carefully plan his actions and choose the most appropriate moment to achieve his goal. If necessary, he can stop his actions, postpone the work he has begun until the time when the most favorable conditions are created.

Self-control is a volitional property that provides a person with the ability to carry out self-regulation in the most difficult, extreme conditions of existence, mobilizing all his mental and physical resources. A person must often demonstrate self-control not only in everyday life, but also in life-threatening conditions. It helps a person overcome fear, panic and cowardice. A person who controls himself is confident in his abilities, is able to act expediently in any situation and achieve high results in his behavior and activities.

All these qualities do not exist in a ready-made form in a person, but are formed and developed in the process of life. In childhood, their formation is carried out under the influence of upbringing and play activities. Parents try to raise their children to be strong, dexterous, resilient, courageous, persistent, able to overcome difficulties and consciously regulate their behavior.

Play is especially important in the development of volitional qualities. Role-playing games and games with rules encourage children to demonstrate volitional efforts in order to best fulfill their role and achieve better results in following the rules compared to other participants in the game.

At school age, the development of will occurs under the influence of educational activities, which are mandatory and require students to carry out their behavior not “as they want”, but as “necessary”. To successfully master knowledge, skills and abilities, students must constantly strain their mental and physical strength, show persistence and perseverance to overcome emerging difficulties.

Self-education is of great importance in the development of volitional qualities. In no other area of mental activity does self-education play such a role as in the development of the will. Only self-education can give a person the opportunity to control himself, demonstrate volitional efforts, mobilize all his resources to overcome difficulties, and overcome negative personality traits and bad habits.

The need for self-education of will arises in adolescence and early adolescence. And this is natural, since teenagers strive to become independent and independent from adults. But since they do not know, and therefore do not follow the methods of self-education of the will, then instead of education they often engage in testing their will. Sometimes this kind of testing takes the form of torture. Thus, some schoolchildren, in order to “develop self-control and self-control,” prick themselves with pins, climb walls and cornices, jump to the ground from high objects, walk naked in winter, etc.

There are a number of rules and techniques for the education and self-education of the will that you need to know and, if possible, follow.

Strong-willed qualities should be demonstrated in all types of activities and not only in extreme situations, but also in everyday life.
Try to set only achievable goals. You cannot take on tasks that you know cannot be completed.
The set goal must be achieved. Any task must be completed, and its completion must not be postponed indefinitely.
You should not immediately try to overcome relatively large difficulties. You must first learn to overcome simple obstacles. If you fail, you should not despair. We must try again and again to overcome difficulties, showing perseverance and perseverance.
If something doesn't work out, don't give it up. Show endurance and patience, start all over again, correct the mistakes you made, come up with more rational ways and techniques for its implementation.
If you find yourself in an extreme situation, do not lose your composure, mobilize all your strength and capabilities to get out of it with dignity. Try to ensure that the decision made is carried out despite any obstacles.
When starting a task, first plan its implementation, then foresee possible difficulties and ways to overcome them, think about the results of your actions and their consequences.

Who is a strong-willed man?

Adolescence crisis in psychology - what is it, reasons

A man's strong-willed character must develop from the time he was a child. In psychology, strong-willed character traits predetermine a strong-willed individual capable of decisive action in any area of life. In many ways, they determine a person’s masculinity. Men can rightfully be called strong-willed people if they are practically the canonical image of a breadwinner.

To be strong-willed means to be responsible

To be a strong-willed man means to be able to make decisions, in short, to be responsible. The definitions of most elements of a strong-willed personality personify what is called an ideal man. He knows the value of himself, the people and objects around him. Acts according to his conscience, regardless of anyone’s opinion, if he is sure that his choice is most suitable for solving a particular problem. A strong-willed man is the most suitable example of a strong, sensible, morally stable person.

Ability to concentrate

Often you need to discard everything unnecessary in order to devote yourself entirely to the main thing. It is necessary to develop the ability to concentrate on what is important at the moment and ignore what is unimportant. Especially time wasters and unnecessary work.

In conclusion, we strongly recommend that you train your willpower as often as possible.

We wish you success!