Everyday and scientific psychology: examples, similarities and differences, relationships

Psychology emerged as an independent science in the middle of the 19th century. But a completely logical question arises: didn’t there exist psychological phenomena such as stress and neuroses before that, didn’t people communicate and conflict, didn’t there exist personal problems? Were. But this was in the nature of folk wisdom and observations. Before scientific psychology there was everyday psychology.

What is everyday psychology

Everyday psychology - facts obtained through personal observations. This is a subjective understanding of the psychological patterns and characteristics of the world. In another way, everyday psychology is called wisdom.

Sources of everyday psychology:

everyday communication and interaction;
Team work;
people who meet along the path of life.

Examples of everyday psychology: rituals, traditions, folk tales, sayings, proverbs, legends, beliefs and other folk art. Many public pages on the social network VKontakte or websites on the Internet are the result of everyday psychology. That is, this is someone’s personal experience, everyday observations, the story of the life or success of this particular person. Nowadays it is fashionable to understand psychology and talk about self-improvement.

Everyday psychology has an arsenal of tools. For example, art. Through paintings, music, books we get to know the inner world of other people. Each viewer develops his own subjective idea of the author and his life. No terms or theories - only everyday psychology and personal perception. But the main method of everyday psychology is “trial and error.”

Everyday psychology is personal experience and ways of living that suit one person. This is exactly the case when we say “I do this, but it’s not a fact that it will suit you.”

Thanks to everyday psychology, a person knows how to communicate with his own parents, friends, sisters and brothers. However, without certain scientific knowledge, a person does not know how to behave with a new acquaintance. For example, children who are accustomed to manipulating their parents with the help of tears are at a loss when this technique does not work on another adult.

Good everyday psychologists are drivers, security guards, bartenders. They communicate with a large number of people every day, listen to their problems and draw appropriate conclusions.

Knowledge about life

So, it is important to understand that everyday psychology is far from science, it is a kind of synthesis of people’s knowledge about life, about themselves, the quintessence of experience, observations and experiences. Of course, conclusions drawn on the basis of subjective experience can hardly be objective and acceptable to others

Everyday psychology, its main features and characteristic features:

1. Specificity and down-to-earthness. Everyday psychology tends to talk about specific people and the situations in which they find themselves; it relies on the subjective experiences of specific people. Usually, as an example, they give you stories that happened to some person who found himself in a certain situation and made certain conclusions for himself (naturally, this conclusion will be relevant and useful for him, but it is not a fact that this knowledge can be widely applicable and used other people).

2. Intuitive nature of knowledge. The peculiarities of everyday psychology are that it relies on intuition, on subjective feelings, and usually no one seeks to check their feelings or try to think about them. This is most often the main limitation of intuitive knowledge - it is almost impossible to explain it to another person, “I just realized something.”

3. Insufficient depth of knowledge. People make conclusions superficially, without examining certain motives, emotions or behavior of other people. As a rule, a conclusion is made quickly, without checking its reliability (this is where fears, beliefs, proverbs, superstitions come from, when people try to follow certain rules just because someone said so; following fashion or relying on popular books or articles lives here , which do not carry any scientific knowledge).

4. The main method is observation. Most of us make conclusions about something based only on periodic, short-term observation, which is not at all consistent with its scientific counterpart. As a result, this leads to a superficial perception of reality, since everything is verified only through personal experience, and, as we know, such a method is extremely subjective and limited.

5. Everyday psychology does not have a common terminology. The life experience of many people is connected with different times, eras, states, so everyone tends to describe this or that state “in his own words,” into which he puts his own meaning, which only he fully understands. This often leads to misunderstandings and substitution of concepts.

Such knowledge can be presented very confidently and openly, you can be convinced that a given method or point of view is correct, because it is written so in a magazine or because everyone does it. You can also be assured that this postulate has been tested by personal experience. For example, a person celebrated the New Year in a bad mood and the whole next year was not going well for him, after which he carries this knowledge to his friends as a dogma.

It is important to understand that not every person has inner instinct, insight, the ability to notice details and generate everyday psychological knowledge. Therefore, it is always worth remembering that not all other people’s knowledge can be useful for you, but sometimes you can listen and communicate with different people in order to have an idea about a certain phenomenon or learn about someone else’s experience, knowledge of which may be useful

What is scientific psychology

Scientific psychology is material obtained through experimentation and research. Psychology in scientific terms and theories.

Sources of scientific psychology:

books, scientific articles and other publications;
experiments;
teachers and mentors passing on theoretical experience (university studies in psychology).

The basis of scientific psychology is everyday psychology. Only after noticing something in practice do scientists decide to find a scientific explanation and determine the scale of the process.

Scientific psychology provides general guidelines for interaction. For example, it is known that all people are infected by the emotions of the group; Every person’s brain reacts by increasing their mood to a forced smile. And bright colors excite the psyche of each individual, cold shades make you sad, etc. This means that you can safely use these techniques in everyday life.

Knowledge about life

Everyday psychology, its main features and characteristic features:

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Differences between everyday and scientific psychology

The scientific type analyzes the similarities and differences between the two types of psychology. But among the studies it is impossible to find a single list of differences. However, general points can be highlighted:

Object of study. Scientific psychology studies mental processes, everyday psychology studies a specific person or condition. For example, everyday psychology says that all people are different, and scientific psychology explains this by the characteristics of the mental system (temperament).
Generalization. Everyday psychology describes specific people and specific conditions. Often this is abstract and figurative in nature or represented by a stereotype. Scientific psychology generalizes, classifies, systematizes.
A way to gain knowledge. Everyday psychology uses only unorganized observation and introspection. Scientific psychology uses a lot of tools: specially organized observation, experiment, tests, surveys, diagnostics and more.
Method of knowledge transfer. Everyday psychology is transmitted mainly orally, for example, from grandmothers to grandchildren. Or through folk art. Scientific psychology is transmitted through specialized literature, textbooks, and universities.
Facts, arguments, awareness. Everyday psychology does not provide point-by-point explanations. The person simply says that he suddenly realized something or simply knows that it works. Scientific psychology will explain why this works: what hormones are turned on, what lobes of the brain are involved, what mental property is used.
Language. Scientific psychology operates with terms and concepts. Everyday psychology explains something “in its own words,” in a simple way.

Approaches to the classification of psychological research methods

As we said earlier, the specificity of scientific psychology is that it uses a whole arsenal of scientific methods to accumulate its data. The way in which this or that knowledge was obtained also plays an important role. Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1896-1934) expressed this in the following laconic formula: facts obtained using different cognitive principles are different facts. There is a certain conditionality of the facts obtained in an empirical study by the scheme existing before this empirical study, the hypotheses put forward, preliminary knowledge about the reality being studied, etc. And such a relationship between the facts obtained in the study and the researcher’s preliminary ideas about the phenomena being studied and, accordingly, with the methods used can be traced in all psychological directions. Therefore, the problem of the methodology (means) of psychological cognition is one of the most significant and discussed problems of psychology. There are several views on the classification of psychological research methods. For example, G. Pirov divided the “methods” into:

the actual methods (observation, experiment, modeling, etc.);
methodological techniques;
methodological approaches (genetic, psychophysiological, etc.). (See additional illustrative material.)
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Sergei Leonidovich Rubinstein (1889-1960) in “Fundamentals of General Psychology” identified observation and experiment as the main psychological methods. The first was divided into “external” and “internal” (self-observation), the experiment - into laboratory, natural and psychological-pedagogical plus an auxiliary method - a physiological experiment in its main modification (the method of conditioned reflexes). In addition, he identified techniques for studying the products of activity, conversation (in particular, clinical conversation in genetic psychology by Jean Piaget (1896-1980)) and questionnaire. Naturally, time has determined the features of this classification. Thus, the “kinship-ideological” connections between psychology and philosophy deprived it of theoretical methods; a similar affinity with pedagogy and physiology was rewarded by the inclusion of the methods of these sciences in the psychological list. (See additional illustrative material.) We will consider the methods of psychology based on four main positions:

a) non-experimental psychological methods;
b) diagnostic methods;
c) experimental methods;
d) formative methods. (See additional illustrative material.)

Similarities between scientific and everyday psychology

The similarity between scientific and everyday psychology is that they help people understand each other. The result of combining two areas of psychology is practical psychology.

What does the unification of scientific and everyday psychology look like:

The study of the influence of a group on an individual and individuals on a group (psychology of management and leadership).
Determining the features of interaction between two groups or two people.
The study of human uniqueness, behavioral characteristics (personality psychology).

Practical psychology begins with everyday observation and ends with scientific study. And at the third stage, on the contrary, the put forward theoretical hypothesis is tested on special cases in everyday life, the breadth of its application is noted.

Everyday and scientific psychology are important to each other. These are mutually complementary types. Everyday psychology is everyone’s personal experience. Scientific psychology is the generalized experience of the entire society. But is it really possible to draw general conclusions about the laws of society without knowing the psyche of each individual? And it is also impossible to understand systematic knowledge without experiencing it personally in practice. Can a teacher only follow the material written in the textbook, ignoring the environmental conditions and characteristics of the very children with whom he interacts? So, in essence, we are talking about theoretical and practical psychology.

The view of science

To begin with, it is important to understand the definition of psychology as such. So, psychology is a complex science; it studies one of the most mysterious and complex mechanisms in nature - the human psyche. In this regard, this scientific discipline requires attention, depth of research, as well as special working methods

In this regard, this scientific discipline requires attention, depth of research, as well as special working methods.

Throughout the 20th century, this science gained momentum, developed, and found more and more new methods for studying humans. The professional view of many theorists has helped this science become one of the most influential in our time. The theoretical aspect within its framework is extremely important, because the theory gives general ideas about the world and man, which exist in almost every science.

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In the process of long-term experiments, collection and analysis of theoretical and practical data, scientific or academic psychology was formed, the main features of which are as follows:

1. Generalizations. This sign suggests that conclusions are drawn not on the basis of what one specific person experienced, but on the basis of many experiments and observations. And when a certain fact, a certain behavioral reaction manifests itself in similar circumstances in a larger number of samples, a certain conclusion can be drawn based on detailed analysis and generalization.

2. Rationalization. Scientific psychology gains knowledge through experimentation and detailed reflection on its results. Data must be rationally explained, and a cause-and-effect relationship between phenomena must be traced.

3. No restrictions - this means that the data obtained through scientific experiments is applicable to a large number of people

For example, data on the fatigue of schoolchildren, how attention functions and what is the maximum number of objects we can hold in short-term memory - all this is consistent for most of the general population

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4. Reliance on various methods. As you know, scientific psychology has a fairly large range of different methods - from content analysis to psychological experiment. When using various methods for studying the psyche and its mechanisms, data is checked in order to identify variables that influence the experiment and create the necessary conditions for research.

Observation is long-term monitoring of the manifestation of certain signs in those observed in natural and sometimes specially created conditions.
A survey is a collection of information from a large number of people using questions, the answers to which are processed and grouped.
Tests are a method of quantitative and qualitative assessment of a person’s mental processes, his behavioral and emotional reactions. With the help of tests, you can assess both a person’s mental and intellectual abilities, as well as the level of his anxiety or creative abilities.
Experiment - this method is aimed at studying specific mental phenomena in certain, specially created and controlled conditions. Almost any experiment serves to confirm or refute a theory or hypothesis.

5. Systematization of knowledge is a theoretical approach. Everything that science receives in the course of research and experiments is systematized, analyzed, on the basis of which certain conclusions are drawn. And it must be said that in order to systematize any knowledge or come to a certain conclusion, it takes a lot of time, sometimes several years.

6. The main features of the scientific approach are the presence of a single glossary and the use of a single terminology. Psychology as a science has a clear system of terms that describe certain states and processes. And this, in turn, eliminates discrepancies when one concept is replaced by another.

7. Use of mathematical statistics methods for data processing. They avoid unreliability, subjectivity, and eye-catching conclusions.

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The relationship between everyday and scientific psychology is obvious - one explores practice and accumulates experience, the other tests everything through experiment. But we should never forget that everyday psychological knowledge is not scientific, which means that it cannot always be applied by one person or another and be effective.

If we recall all the stages of the development of psychology as a science, we can say that this knowledge largely began with the use of the method of introspection, when the scientist observed himself and his subjective experiences. Based on this, many conclusions and conclusions were made.

Verification methods

Everyday knowledge proves its validity only over time, and what loses its relevance is gradually forgotten. In addition, their correctness is confirmed by personal experience, and not by scientifically regulated experiments.

In science, the researcher purposefully models the necessary conditions, rather than waiting for a favorable combination of circumstances. This allows you to study in its entirety the phenomenon of interest by changing the characteristics of the experimental environment.

Due to the fact that scientific knowledge is accumulated and information about a particular object or phenomenon is systematized, it becomes complex and diverse. The resulting material continues to be comprehended and analyzed, becoming fertile ground for its expansion and the emergence of new scientific disciplines.

General psychology develops through the improvement and enrichment of its individual branches. Everyday knowledge does not have a single system and such features.