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Man is a social being, it is inherent in him by nature. People deprived of the possibility of emotional contact with others, most often go crazy or at least earn nervous breakdown. Communication has its own rules and laws that involve certain stages of rapprochement - acquaintance, exchange of thoughts, interests, personal experience, secrets and feelings. This process almost always follows the same scenario.

Self-disclosure in communication is one of its most important components. With some people we open up as much as possible, with others we cannot get close at all. It depends on how similar views, interests, personal morals, hobbies, advantages and disadvantages are. No wonder they say: "Tell me who your friend is, and I will tell you who you are." We are most open with those who can understand us, most constrained with those whose views and way of life differ significantly from ours.

One of the main problems of many people is self-disclosure in interpersonal relationships, its complete absence or excessive gullibility. This in itself is not the root of distress, but a symptom of deeper psychological wounds. Therefore, today we will talk about rapprochement with people and the difficulties of self-disclosure.

Self-disclosure of personality in communication occurs gradually: when we get to know a new person and establish contact with him, this means that we already have at least one point of contact. It doesn't matter if you work in the same office or met on a forum of fishing enthusiasts. This is the starting point, after which people begin to wonder: does a new acquaintance look like them in something else? And the more commonality is found, the more likely it is that the two will become friends or lovers.

We begin to share general information, first posting information that can't harm you if shared. What area do we live in, are we married, do we have children, where were we born, what kind of food do we like and what kind of music do we listen to. This is the primary "probing" of the soil, which should determine whether there is a mutual desire to make contact.

After it comes the next stage - the exchange of principled positions. Politics, religion, gender and financial issues. This information can also be available to a wide range of people and not become a weapon against you. What is it about being a patriot of your country or that a woman has a place in the kitchen? Or do you like to drink beer, and your new friend is a supporter of a healthy lifestyle? But this is where the divergence usually begins - if the participants in the communication understand that their positions contradict each other, self-disclosure ends there.

A deeper rapprochement always begins with the fact that one of the interlocutors shares something personal - problems in the family, sympathy for a common friend, some secrets. If the other side listens with interest and gives advice, this is not yet an indicator. Self-disclosure and feedback are two important components of friendship and close communication. When, in response to revelations, another person responds with the same openness, shares his experiences, problems and joys, then a spiritual relationship begins to improve.

The last stage is the expression of feelings: love, affection, sadness, anxiety. If a person is ready to say and demonstrate to a person everything that he feels in this moment is the pinnacle of self-discovery.

This is the normal course of events: we do not share personal information with those we do not trust, so that we do not spread gossip, do not gloat and could not use this information for our own purposes. We talk about what is important to close people - friends, parents, lovers, brothers and sisters. Everyone has one or more of these people who will support and listen.

This self-disclosure algorithm is the most acceptable:

1. First point of contact;
2. Surface information;
3. Principles and position;
4. Transition to a deeper level, personal disclosure;
5. Disclosure of feelings and emotions.

It goes without saying that a certain style of communication involves a different level of self-disclosure. You can cooperate with partners for decades, but not become friends; there are also limits to openness in the work team. The highest level is expected and even required to be in the family, where the connection between people is the strongest.

But there are two types of individuals who have problems with self-disclosure. Those who are secretive even with their own people and those who are open with everyone they meet. Why do they behave this way and how are such lines of behavior formed?

Partizan

He does not tell anyone about what is happening in his life, no one knows what is going on in his head. The most common reason for this is internal fears and inability to open up, provoked either by scripts from the family or psychological trauma. Usually this happens because once sincere self-disclosure was answered with coldness, neglect or ridicule. It is sad that vulnerable and tender people often find themselves in this position - they would like to give their love to the whole world, but their wings were already chopped off on takeoff.

Often the inability to reveal oneself is closely connected with alienation from one's own "I". In such cases, a person has no contact with his own personality, he does not understand his own feelings and experiences, and, having become confused, closes. Most often, such people grow up in families where the parents were also closed and did not teach the child to share their emotions with them.

With closed people, you can sometimes talk about everything in the world, except for themselves. Often they seek solace in alcohol - it's easier to accept yourself, be more relaxed and make emotional actions.

Everyone about everything

And here is our antipode - he tells the most intimate details of his life to everyone he meets and crosses. Among his acquaintances, he is known as "a little bit of that", because the average people do not do that. Interestingly, this problem has the same roots as the previous one - rejection and disapproval of oneself, which is mixed with an ineradicable sense of guilt. A person is not sure that he lives correctly, that his actions are correct, so he tells everyone around him about them in the hope that he will be supported. The source of troubles must again be sought in childhood - this happens when parents did not approve of the child and did not praise him, but they reproached and punished him for any offense.

All his life he will feel that he is doing wrong. And it will be especially difficult in those cases when a person realizes that he really blundered. In the case when nasty things are done towards him, he again looks for guilt in himself. And again turns to others to hear: "You are not to blame." And he doesn't hear.

How to deal with it?

Since these problems have similar root causes, the method of struggle is the same.

Express yourself through your "I"

A person who is unable to reveal himself and is afraid of contact is often betrayed by attempts to hide behind faceless phrases: "We decided to do ...", "This option is offered." If you recognize yourself, try to express your suggestions, thoughts and feelings through the “I” form as often as possible - this helps to establish contact with yourself.

Get rid of guilt

In the case when everything is not going smoothly in your life, you do not need to take the blame. A loved one quit, was fired from work, equipment broke down ... No need to immediately reproach yourself and look for reasons in your behavior. The situation can be quite objective. Calm down and look from the outside - if you tried to avoid this, but could not, then it is not your fault. Maybe everything is even for the better - who knows what awaits around the next turn? By ridding yourself of guilt, you will automatically free yourself from the need to tell everyone your biography in a row, or vice versa, to hide it behind seven seals (about how to get rid of guilt you can find out from our article).

Learn to understand your feelings

It is very difficult for those who are always closed. Therefore, you can start with a simple one: admit them to yourself. Sometimes your own experiences become a revelation if you scrape off a touch of fear and self-deception from them.

By understanding what's going on inside you, you can learn how to express your true feelings and talk to people about emotional needs. And the most important thing here is to step over the fear that they can again offend, not understand, push away. Among hundreds of strangers there will always be kindred spirits of those who will accept, understand and support.

Self-disclosure is something that is quite difficult to live without. It is often said: "I feel lonely, although there are many people around." All because there are no those with whom you can completely liberate yourself, let them into your soul, find mutual language. Learning to open up correctly and appropriately is extremely important, because emotional connections with people are vital for us - loneliness on desert island and loneliness in the crowd are very similar. If there is no one to talk heart to heart with, stress accumulates, depressive states appear, and nervousness increases. And in order to be able to truly reveal yourself, you need to be able to find golden mean in communication, which allows you to stay at a proper distance with the general mass of acquaintances and at the same time be truly close to your relatives.

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Currently, the phenomena of adaptation are turning into one of the central problems for the theory and practice of psychological science. Now there is hardly any doubt that such global issues as ensuring the viability of a person despite the growing pathogenic impact of the environment, predicting the pace of his mental development, preserving his spiritual and moral character, forming new relations in society, can be solved without ideas about the mechanisms of adaptation. Analysis of theoretical and methodological approaches in different scientific fields made it possible to single out several generalized semantic aspects of adaptation: adaptation as life activity in changing conditions of existence, adaptation as adaptation to changed environmental conditions, adaptation as the achievement of stability in a changed environment. The logic of the development of society and psychological science puts psychologists in front of the need to study adaptation as a search by a person for the ways of self-disclosure that she needs. In this case, the emphasis is on the desire of the individual to acquire individual strategy interaction with the renewing surrounding reality in accordance with one's own worldview, with one's own vision of what is happening and oneself in it.

Such an approach is based on considering the personality as a subject of adaptation, which seems important for theoretical generalizations and solving practical problems. In this case, adaptation is understood as a mechanism of self-disclosure of the personality, which ensures the transformation of external changes into internal conditions for creating new ways of interacting with reality and with oneself, necessary to maintain one's own integrity.

The psychological portrait of an adapting personality is determined by: the peculiarities of understanding the changing environment, self-reflection in a new picture of the environment, self-regulation of the adaptive potential necessary to transform interaction with environment and yourself; transformation of ways of interaction with the environment; a pronounced ego-orientation as a possible consequence of an increased need for self-disclosure, a change in the image of the "I". One of the sources of self-disclosure of personality lies in the awareness of changes in the environment. The emergence of an individual image of what is happening means that the environment ceases to be indifferent to a person. A person from automatically responding to external influences turns into a reflective one, first of all, those transformations that affect his needs. A new picture of the environment leads to selectivity of behavior and attitude towards oneself. In the initial period of interaction of a person with unusual conditions of existence, a special role is played by the reflection of changes in one's own "I". Awareness of oneself indicates the features of the internal processing of changes that have occurred outside. This process is determined by the meaning of one's own existence, its significance for the individual. There is a kind of transformation of the image of the environment into the image of "I". The ego-orientation of an adapting personality reflects the priority of the value of one's own life. The role of ego-orientation especially increases when it is necessary to adapt to the changing image of the "I".

Largely due to ego-orientation, it is possible to master a new role, achieve self-worth and the necessary interaction with the environment and with oneself. One of the functions of the ego as the center of the conscious system is to create standards for determining the integrity and individuality of the human person. It can be considered that in the new conditions of existence, one's own Self becomes for the individual the main reference point for creating the necessary programs for adaptive behavior and the formation of a personally important system of relations with the world. Reflection activates the mechanisms of personal self-regulation. The main meaning of personal regulation is to provide internal conditions for the transformation of existing relationships with the environment. To this end, the personality converges the existing adaptive potential and all the possibilities contained in the environment. As much as possible, the personality is included in the regulation of the adaptive potential in the conditions of a real vital threat. Along with this, the personality directs its activity to overcome dependence on environmental influences. The greatest autonomy of personal properties is observed when self-preservation and self-disclosure depend mainly on the psychophysical organization, bodily potential. The transformation of the psychic adaptive potential into more complex and perfect forms of psychological integration, demonstrating the redistribution of accents of human interaction with the surrounding reality and with oneself, is based on the activity of personal regulation.

In this, the function of creation inherent in adaptation is realized. The result of adaptive transformations is reduced to a change in the image of the "I" and the type of adapting personality, to the formation of a personal adaptation syndrome. Does the addition of traditional views on adaptation to subject-oriented ones allow us to outline the main goal of adaptation in a different way? ensuring the integrity of the individual. This means that an adapting personality is able to maintain the internal unity it needs and regulate its own activity, which allows it to act as an internal determinant of interaction with a dynamic surrounding reality. The integrity of the individual at the initial stages of interaction with unusual conditions of life is ensured by the activation of the processes of integration of mental, psychophysiological manifestations and mechanisms of personal regulation. An essential role in ensuring the integrity of the personality belongs to unconscious mental processes. They are included in the structure of the personal adaptation syndrome, regardless of objective signs and subjective descriptions of the conditions of existence. This allows us to consider the unconscious as a mandatory component of the adaptive response of the individual. At the same time, an assumption arises that requires special experimental verification that the coincidence of the content of unconscious emotions and unconscious aspirations and conscious ideas means the adaptive maturity of the individual.

The substantive unity of the experiences deep and fixed by the social experience of the individual creates the harmony of her attitudes towards what is happening and her role in it. This increases the regulatory activity of the individual and makes a person more adapted. The discrepancy between the content of unconscious and conscious emotions and motives pushes the individual to search for both socially desirable and not sanctioned by society ways to compensate for the adaptation conflict. Consideration of personality as a subject of adaptation, on the one hand, complements the scientific vision of adaptation, on the other? opens up new facets of personality psychology. To understand the psychology of modern man, it is important that his personality structure combines variable and invariant psychological properties. Plasticity of psychological personality traits? an important adaptive acquisition necessary to maintain viability in a dynamic outside world. What are the greatest opportunities for modifying the psychological properties of a person, namely: for changing the range of their manifestations and structure? provide a global social transformation in our society. Short-term interaction with changed living conditions can lead to structural variations in personality traits. At the same time, personal properties can demonstrate the inertia of inclusion in adaptation processes. Thus, obviously, an additional reserve of adaptation is created, the activation of which is possible when operating systems are unable to ensure the integrity of the individual.

Invariance is the potential for preserving self-identity. Invariance allows the individual to retain his own adaptive experience. Thus, adaptation in the conditions of reforming the social system does not affect emotional security and sensitivity to the new, as well as the properties that ensure self-organization. For a long time, the properties that emphasize the importance of the individual's own "I" remain stable. Consistency is also preserved in the manifestation of the properties of self-control, risk appetite, ways of implementing communication skills and emotional stability. The integration of personality traits, reflecting the ability to self-organize, focus on group support, emotional maturity and life optimism, is steadily preserved. Despite the long term study of adaptation phenomena, an independent scientific discipline that systematizes knowledge about the psychological patterns of human adaptation in a changing environment of existence and reveals the scope of their practical application, is just beginning to take shape. Apparently, this is due to the protracted primary taxonomic stage of the analysis of the available results. At the same time, the accumulated information contains a fairly large potential for theoretical research and empirical development.

· Self-disclosure- this is a message to others (partner) of personal information about oneself (the concept first appeared in the work of the American psychologist S. Jurard in 1958).

· self-presentation(or impression management) are the various strategies and tactics that a person uses to make a certain impression on others.

The question of the relationship of concepts"self-disclosure" and "self-presentation": there is no theoretically substantiated distinction between these concepts. At the same time, a paradox is observed: in the literature on self-disclosure, self-presentation is considered as its special case, and in works on self-presentation, accordingly, vice versa.

Nevertheless, based on the analysis of foreign studies on the personal representation of a person in communication, self-disclosure and self-presentation can be compared on two grounds (criteria):

1. through the specifics of the content;
2. the specifics of the purpose (purpose) of the transmitted information.

With such a comparison, the following is revealed: on the one hand, the content of self-disclosure is limited only to information about oneself, and for this reason it is already self-presentation; however, the purposes (goals) of self-disclosure are quite diverse, and according to this criterion, it is wider than self-presentation.

On the other hand, the content of self-presentation is not limited only to information about oneself, and for this reason it is wider than self-disclosure; but the purpose (purpose) of self-presentation is mainly to control the impression made on the audience, and by this criterion it is already self-disclosure.

In this way, it seems appropriate to consider self-disclosure and self-presentation as two independent, albeit closely related phenomena. Most often, these two phenomena are correlated as follows: the more self-disclosure is expressed, the less self-presentation, and vice versa (i.e., according to the law of linear dependence with negative slope factor). Therefore, superficial, shallow self-disclosure is more often associated with pronounced self-presentation and can be described as self-presentation rather than self-disclosure.

Self-disclosure of personality in communication: types, specifications and functions:

Sydney Jurard defined self-disclosure as « the process of communicating information about oneself to other people; conscious and voluntary opening of one's self to another".

The content of self-disclosure can be: thoughts, feelings of a person, facts of his biography, current life problems, his relationship with people around him, impressions from works of art, life principles and much more. Self-disclosure plays a central role in the development and existence of interpersonal relationships. It is an indicator of the depth and degree of positivity of relations (sympathy, love, friendship). In fact, self-disclosure means the initiation of another person into his inner world, the removal of the curtain that separates the "I" from the "Other". It is the most direct way of transmitting your individuality to others.

Types of self-disclosure:

1) By the type of contact of the subject of communication and the recipient:

Immediate self-disclosure- is carried out in a situation of real contact between the subject of self-disclosure and the recipient, during which they can see and hear each other. It makes it possible to receive immediate feedback from the recipient and, in accordance with this, control the process of self-disclosure (expand or collapse, deepen, etc.). At the same time, the presence of a person fetters the speaker, especially when reporting negative information .;

Indirect self-disclosure- can be carried out by telephone, written text, electronic text on the Internet. Diary entries are a special form of mediated self-disclosure. They, as a rule, are conducted by a person for himself in order to fix the events of his life in memory and streamline life impressions. They differ in the degree of intimacy of the topics covered in them and the detail of the descriptions. The authors of the diaries have different attitudes towards the possibility of reading them by other people. On the Internet there are blogs- These are personal diaries that are open to the public.

2) According to the criterion of communication distance:

Role self-disclosure- unfolds within the framework of the role in which a person is at a given moment in time. For example, at a doctor's appointment, each person talks about himself mainly about what is connected with his illness. At the same time, a person can touch on intimate physiological details and not feel embarrassed, since communication takes place at the role level.

Personal self-disclosure- implies the existence of relationships of sympathy, friendship, love, which are the basis for self-disclosure. It is the nature of these relationships that regulates the direction of self-disclosure.

3) According to the degree of preparedness by the subject of the process of self-disclosure:

Unintentional - when a person in the process of communication spontaneously reveals information about his personality. Sometimes this happens in response to someone else's frankness, or out of a desire to entertain the interlocutor.

Prepared - when a person plans in advance to communicate some information about himself to another person or group of people. For example, a young man may carefully consider the wording of his declaration of love to his girlfriend.

Psychological methods of self-disclosure:

1) Depth- detail, completeness and sincerity of coverage of a particular topic;

2) Latitude- is determined by the amount of information and the variety of topics on which a person is revealed. When telling another about himself, the subject can touch on only one topic or several topics.

3) Selectivity- reflects the ability of the individual to vary the content and volume of self-disclosure in communication with different people. Psychologists have found great differences in the characteristics of self-disclosure of the same person in communication with different partners. Some people, when describing some event in their life, repeat the same story, other people modify it depending on their partner.

4) Differentiation- can be defined as the ability of a person to change the volume and depth of self-disclosure depending on the topic. individual differences consist in how much a person can change the volume and depth of self-disclosure depending on the topic. The combination of selectivity and differentiation makes it possible to judge the flexibility of self-disclosure, which reflects the ability to restructure the message about oneself depending on one's own goals, the characteristics of the situation and the partner.

5) Emotionality- is characterized by the general emotional saturation of the message, as well as the ratio of positive and negative information reported about oneself. The means used by the communicator to convey his feelings at the moment of self-disclosure include both verbal manifestations (use of metaphors, epithets, etc.), and paralinguistic characteristics (speed of speech, loudness, etc.), as well as extralinguistic (pauses, laughter , crying).

6)Duration- is measured by the time spent on it by a person in the process of experiment or natural behavior. The indicator of this parameter was the duration of statements about oneself in the analysis of audio and video recordings of the conversation. The temporal characteristics of self-disclosure also include the proportion between listening and narration, as well as between narration about oneself and on abstract topics.

In this way, the main characteristics of self-disclosure are: depth, completeness and breadth (which together make up the volume of self-disclosure), duration, the ratio of positive and negative information about oneself (affective characteristics), flexibility (which consists of differentiation and selectivity). If we compile a table of types of self-disclosure based on the criteria discussed above, then it will look like this:

« Types of self-disclosure":

Self-disclosure features:

1. Promotes the mental health of the personality of the communicator(every person has a need to open himself, at least to one person, and the frustration (i.e. vain expectation) of this desire can lead to psychological problems.

2. Develops personality(this is possible due to the fact that it serves as a powerful means by which self-knowledge, personal identification is possible).

3. It is a means of personal self-regulation due to the following mechanisms:

A) emotional release, which is a consequence of the transfer of their feelings in the process of self-disclosure. The main result of this mechanism in terms of self-regulation is a decrease in the severity of experience and mental stress.

B) Clarification of the problem situation through its verbal analysis- when presenting some facts to another person, a person structures and interprets them, which leads to a better understanding of them and the narrator himself. In self-regulation, this aspect is most consistent with the analysis of significant conditions for achieving the goals of further actions.

C) The mechanism of social comparison- enables the narrator, on the basis of reciprocal frankness, to compare his own problem situation with similar situations of other people.

D) Mirror mechanism- consists in the receipt by the subject of self-disclosure of direct assessments of their own competence, given by the partner in response to the reported information.

E) Receiving emotional support from the interlocutor- it significantly reduces the mental stress of a person and is the main goal of confessional forms of self-disclosure.

G) Getting real help from a partner, expressed either in advice or in specific actions aimed at resolving a problem situation.

Strategies and tactics of self-presentation in communication:

Tactics of self-presentation - this is a certain technique by which the chosen strategy is implemented. Self-presentation strategy- may include many individual tactics. Tactics of self-presentation is a short-term phenomenon and is aimed at creating the desired impression in a particular life situation.

E. Jones and T. Pittman in 1982 created one of the first classifications of self-presentation strategies based on the goals and tactics that people use in communicating with others:

1. The desire to please - integration. This strategy is designed for the power of charm. The main tactic is to please other people, to flatter and agree, to present socially approved qualities. The goal is to appear attractive.
2. self-promotion Demonstration of competence, which grants the power of an expert. The main tactic is to prove their superiority and boast. The goal is to appear competent.
3. exemplification- the desire to serve as an example for other people, which gives the power of a mentor. The main tactic is to demonstrate spiritual superiority, combined with boasting and the desire to discuss and condemn other people. The goal is to appear morally blameless.
4. Intimidation- a demonstration of power that makes others obey and gives the power of fear. The main tactic is threat. The goal is to appear dangerous.
5. Demonstration of weakness or pleading. Obliges others to help, which gives the power of compassion. The main tactic is to ask for help, to beg. The goal is to appear weak.

The most detailed classification of self-presentation strategies was carried out by A. Schutz, who identified her own criteria for categorizing tactics and strategies of self-presentation:

1. Positive self-presentation - motto "I'm good." This type of self-presentation contains active but non-aggressive actions to create a positive impression of oneself. This group includes the strategies of striving to please, self-promotion, and setting an example. The main tactics are as follows:

· To bask in the rays of someone else's glory - is based on associating oneself with famous and respected people.

· Strengthening the significance and importance of those events in which a person participated, and those people with whom he had a chance to communicate.

Demonstration of influence - a person inspires others with the possibility of greater positive consequences from their actions. This tactic is especially characteristic of politicians.

· Demonstration of identification with the audience - a person demonstrates the proximity of his views, attitudes to those people who are directed to self-presentation.

2. Offensive self-presentation - based on the desire to look good, denigrating other people. This is an aggressive way of creating the desired image, all tactics of which are aimed at criticizing a competitor. Here apply the following tactics:

· Undermining the opposition - negative information about a competitor is reported in order to look better against its background.

· A critical setting in evaluating any phenomena of reality - it creates the illusion of the speaker's competence in relation to the topic under discussion.

· Criticism of those who criticize him - this creates the illusion of bias on the part of the critics.

· Changing the topic of the discussion in a winning direction.

3. Protective self-presentation - aims not to look bad. A person avoids the opportunity to give a negative impression of himself by avoiding interaction with other people. The tactics used in this case are as follows:

avoidance of public attention;

Minimal self-disclosure.

· Prudent self-description - a person does not talk not only about his shortcomings, but also about his merits, so as not to be in a situation where he cannot confirm his skill.

· Minimization of social interaction.

4. Defensive self-presentation - the subject behaves actively in creating an image, but has an attitude to avoid a negative image. This strategy usually unfolds when a person is accused of being involved in some undesirable event. The greater the role of a person in this event, and the more difficult it is, the more difficult it is for a person to change his negative image towards a positive one. This strategy is characterized by the following tactics of self-justification.

Denial of the event - a person denies the very fact of a negative event, in connection with which he is accused.

· Changing the interpretation of the event in order to reduce the negativity of its assessment - a person recognizes the very fact of the event, but presents it in a more positive way.

Dissociation - a person underestimates the degree of his negative participation in this event, seeks to dissociate himself from it.

Justification - a person can insist on the legality of his actions, or give arguments in his favor.

· Apologies - the person claims that he could not do otherwise, because he could not control the course of events.

Confession of guilt and repentance, a promise not to repeat mistakes in the future.

In this way, a person uses many tactics of self-presentation, depending on the situation in which he finds himself, but at the same time he has the most preferred methods that most adequately correspond to his image. Each person builds his image based on his gender, age, belonging to a particular culture, social class, profession and his personal characteristics.

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Page creation date: 2017-10-25

Are you familiar with one of the following situations:

• you find it difficult to attract and hold the attention of a person or audience
• you hesitate to ask your boss for a raise
• you are afraid to make an offer and receive a misunderstanding or rejection in response
• you can't refuse
• it was difficult for you to deservedly dismiss a subordinate
• you find it hard to get someone to work the way you want
• you get lost when you enter the office of a "very important person"
• you hesitate to call if you think you won't be welcome
• you do not know how to effectively talk to a neighbor who turns on loud music in the middle of the night
• you do not know how to successfully respond to someone else's aggression?

In all cases, we are dealing with manifestations of confident behavior. All people, without exception, periodically experience awkwardness, experiencing such moments. Another thing is when such manifestations become a pattern in human behavior. Such a life turns into an endless hell, and it would seem that there is no way out of the vicious circle of troubles. Salvation here is seen in the development of self-confidence.

This article focuses on various aspects of confident behavior. It contains both theoretical material and practical recommendations for developing skills of confident behavior.

Aggressive and confident behavior

The problem of aggressive behavior of the individual, although it is one of the most urgent at the present stage of development of society, reminds the scientific community of a huge cornerstone that is easy to approach, but finding a fulcrum that is advantageous for moving and moving it in practice is not an easy task. Indeed, today there is a digestible definition of the concept of "aggressive behavior", there are a number of scientific approaches to explaining this phenomenon, bookshelves and search engines of the network are full of scientific and practical publications on the correction of aggressive behavior, but ... Clearly define the very nature of aggressive behavior, the boundaries of its, so to speak, localization in the system of vital activity of the individual, and even more so the specifics of its differences from other types of individual behavior, is difficult. There are similar problems with assertiveness. There is no clear definition. Often, assertive behavior is used either as a synonym or simply as a translation of the concept of "assertive behavior". In the analysis of the latter, psychologists have not yet shown miracles of scientific refinement. So, Salter (1949) revealed only a number of the most important characteristics of confident behavior, the number of which and their very logical sequence have not been sufficiently verified. A.A. Lazarus (1973) identified four major classes of behavior, which are united by the concept of assertive behavior. At the same time, the author puts cognitive aspects, such as attitudes, life philosophy and assessments, into the understanding of this phenomenon. According to the researcher, is assertive behavior meaningful? these are: 1) the ability to say "no"; 2) the ability to speak openly about feelings and demands; 3) the ability to establish contacts, start and end a conversation; 4) the ability to openly express positive and negative feelings. In a formal context, this behavior includes: 1) facial expressions, gestures; 2) the use of "I"; 3) eye contact; 4) posture; 5) intonation.

Domestic researchers position confident behavior both as a “style of upbringing” and as a “style of business behavior”. V. G. Romek presents confidence as "a generalized positive cognitive-emotional attitude towards one's own skills." Ushakov's explanatory dictionary of the Russian language presents the concept of "confident" as completely convinced of something, firmly believing in someone or something. In Russian, self-confidence? it is self-confidence, faith in yourself and your strengths. Faith in itself is positive, negative fullness is unbelief. Thus, confident behavior can be interpreted in the broadest sense of the word as fidelity to certain internal and external principles manifested in behavior, combined with faith in oneself and one's own strengths. However, the analysis of the presented material? only one of the attempts to come to a more or less clear definition, the essence of which is still not clear in psychology. Despite all of the above, a number of practice-oriented firms using modern business technologies will teach anyone who wants the skills of assertive behavior, i.e. the same behavior, a clear definition of which and differences, for example, from aggressive behavior, modern scientific thought has not yet been proposed.

Any definition that is torn out of the established range of related scientific concepts sooner or later reveals both scientific and practical inconsistency. That is why, for a scientific assessment of the concept of confident behavior, we will try to compare it with such a definition as aggressive behavior. The prerequisites for understanding the phenomenon of confident behavior in the system of such concepts as aggressive and insecure behavior appeared earlier. So, A. Lange and P. Jakubowski believed that confidence is something between aggressiveness and uncertainty, something that has clear differences from both one and the other. There are more developed approaches in science to understanding the definition of “personal confidence”, which is interpreted as one of the most important basic personality traits, than to the interpretation of the concept of “confident behavior” and its connection with other types of behavioral activity of a person. Let's try to analyze the concept of "confident behavior" through the prism of such a phenomenon as "aggressive behavior", to find common and different between these two concepts.

Modern scientific sources offer many and often far from unambiguous definitions of the concept of "aggressive behavior". In foreign studies, in all the variety of interpretations of the concept, the idea of ​​aggressive behavior as inherently harmful is common.

Domestic scientific thought is also inclined to understand the analyzed behavior as aimed at causing harm to another. This, in particular, is evidenced by the following definitions of the phenomenon of interest to us. E. V. Zmanovskaya interprets aggressive behavior as “behavior aimed at suppressing or harming another living being that does not want such treatment.” In the psychological dictionary edited by A. V. Petrovsky, M. G. Yaroshevsky, aggressive behavior is considered as “a specific form of human actions characterized by a demonstration of superiority in strength or the use of force in relation to another person or group of persons whom the subject seeks to harm” . But this general concept is significantly transformed in the interpretations given in the framework of various psychological theories and approaches. Common to various approaches in the field of defining aggressive behavior is only the understanding of it as basically harmful.

In order to more clearly reflect the very specifics of precisely aggressive behavior, we will supplement the definition proposed earlier by E. V. Zmanovskaya of such an important component as the participation of the emotional-volitional sphere of the personality in the behavioral act itself.

Emotions and will are often combined into one emotional-volitional sphere. The specificity of the will is a mechanism that ensures the overcoming of difficulties, or, in other words, negative emotional states. The volitional aspect in any of the human manifestations cannot be discounted in any way: both its presence and absence. If we consider two such definitions as aggressive and confident behavior, then in this dichotomy a significant difference will be observed precisely when the emotional-volitional sphere of the personality is reflected in the behavioral act itself, or rather, in the ratio between the three important psychological blocks of the presented sphere: emotion - volitional effort - behavioral Act. Aggressive behavior involves:

1. the prevalence of a negative emotional background, hence the construction of a reflection system through the prism of a harmful response to an external stimulus (a frustrator, an offender, etc.);
2. minimal participation of the second block (volitional effort) in the system from emotion to real behavior;
3. the maximum reflection of the negative emotional background in behavior (and therefore a greater tendency to affective emotional manifestations).

Confident behavior is based on:

1. the system of accepting one's own both negative and positive emotional background, hence the construction of a system of reflection through the prism of the usefulness of the response to one's own personal development, i.e. dominance of a positive emotional background;
2. the maximum participation of volitional effort in the system from emotion to real behavior, i.e. choosing between several response strategies in favor of one that is useful for one's future;
3. reflection of the chosen response strategy in behavior.

Quite often, when describing the reasons for demonstrating aggressive behavior, aggressors use the following: “if they piss me off ...”, “until they bring me ...”, in other words, until a situation occurs in which emotion becomes in fact the only impetus for the manifestation of behavior (in this case, in the case of aggressive), bypassing volitional effort. Thus, this effort, as a result of medium-term or long-term "bringing" is depleted to zero. This fact, along with numerous studies of the nature and patterns of affective aggressive reactions of people of different age groups, once again testifies in favor of the connection between the emotional, volitional and behavioral components in the system of the origin and manifestation of aggressive behavior.

Thus, the supplemented version of the definition looks like this.

Aggressive behavior- behavior based on the prevalence of a negative emotional background, with minimal participation of volitional effort, aimed at suppressing or harming another living being who does not want such treatment.

The refined version of the definition immediately removes a number of discrepancies found in modern scientific and popular science literature, when aggressive behavior is positioned as “one of the types of confident behavior of an individual” or as “a form of manifestation of self-confidence and one’s own well-being”. In this case we are talking, most likely, about such a psychological phenomenon as self-confident behavior, when the assessment of one's own emotional state is distorted (replacement of self-control management) along with changes in the self-esteem of the individual (inflated self-esteem, which manifests itself in a negative emotional background in relation to others and a positive emotional state in relation to to yourself). This type of behavior can be interpreted as a return, i.e. returning the personality to earlier - aggressive forms of response.

The proposed three-component behavior assessment model also allows us to formulate the concept of confident behavior.

Confident Behavior- behavior based on the prevalence of a positive emotional background, with the aim of externally implementing a certain system of ideas based on a positive attitude towards oneself and others. In other words, not every emotional reaction and inner reasoning is clothed in behavior. Emotion goes through a certain number of "siftings" through the system of attitudes and representations. Wherein this system representations of the individual is nothing more than the basis for the inclusion in the behavioral act of volitional effort, the very one that is minimally represented inside aggressive behavior. Another difference between confident behavior and aggressive behavior is the prevalence of a positive emotional background in the course of its implementation. Whereas with the manifestation of aggressive behavior, a person is under the control of a negative emotional background (sadness, despondency, anger, disgust, despair, resentment, disappointment, annoyance).

Thus, the relationship between aggressive and confident behavior in the system of psychological interpretation of a person's behavioral activity can be reflected using three psychological blocks: emotion - volitional effort - behavioral act.

Aggressive behavior: emotion (-) - volitional effort (-) - behavioral act (- -).
Confident behavior: emotion (+) - volitional effort (+) - behavioral act (+ +).

Psychological features of a confident and insecure personality

Self-confidence refers to the ability of a person to make demands and requests in interaction with the social environment and achieve their implementation. In addition, confidence includes the ability to allow oneself to have requests and demands (attitudes towards oneself), to dare to manifest them (lack of social fear and inhibition) and the possession of skills for their implementation (social skills).

Confident behavior is self-expression without harming others.

The essential characteristics of confident behavior are:

1. Optimism and self-efficacy. In other words, this characteristic of a person can be described as a feeling of self-confidence: faith in the good, the best, the bright. This complex of emotional-cognitive characteristics is described as follows: at most moments of time, a person highly (positively) evaluates his skills and abilities, the likelihood of fulfilling desires and achieving personal goals. Successes are considered personal merit, shortcomings are attributed to a temporary unfavorable set of circumstances. Habitual positive assessments prevent self-abasement in any of its forms and humiliation of other people.

2. Openness. All desires, feelings, requests, demands and claims are expressed in open form, first person. Orders, advice, instructions, generalized assessments are reformulated into "I-statements". This kind of verbalization rarely raises categorical objections and prevents misunderstandings and misinterpretations. Most psychologists agree on this point, using other synonymous names (congruence, truth, self-identity, etc.)

3. Spontaneity. Actions are performed spontaneously, without much deliberation and postponing a decisive conversation. Possible misunderstandings are resolved not as a result of intrigues and scandals, but in an open and honest conversation. The reaction to the different behavior of others is different and momentary (non-delayed).

4. Acceptance. Open, spontaneous and appropriate statements and actions of other people (regardless of their “polarity”) are taken seriously and are accompanied by an adequate reaction to the inner feeling. Moreover, spontaneous and open reactions are supported.

The ethics of confident behavior lies in the fact that the differing needs, opinions and rights of different people are listened to, accepted and compared in order to find the most acceptable form of their satisfaction, acceptance or protection for all.

There are quite obvious and easy to observe characteristics of behavior that distinguish self-confident people.

First of all, a self-confident person always appreciates his abilities. He believes that his own forces are more than enough to carry out almost any task assigned to him. A self-confident person always speaks openly about his feelings, desires and requirements, knows how to refuse, is able to establish contacts, start and end a conversation. He is not afraid to set new goals for himself and enthusiastically takes on their implementation.

Self-confident people speak loudly, but do not shout, often look into the eyes of the interlocutor, but do not “drill” his eyes, always maintain a certain distance of communication, not coming close to the interlocutor. They know how to pause in conversation, rarely interrupt partners, and are able to clearly and clearly express their thoughts. Self-confident people speak openly about their feelings, desires and claims, accompanying them with a brief and clear justification, often use the pronoun “I”, and are not afraid of expressing personal opinions. It is rare to hear insults, reproaches, accusations from self-confident people. They express all claims to others on their own behalf. It cannot be said that these abilities are formed by themselves or that a person is already born self-confident. Like all socio-psychological qualities of a person, self-confidence is formed in the course of socialization, that is, in interaction with the social environment.

What about an insecure person? In relations with others, such people are afraid (or simply do not know how) to express their opinion, talk about their desires and needs. In the end, they cease not only to actively act to achieve goals, but also cease to set themselves any goals at all, losing faith in themselves and the reality of realizing their own intentions.

The main feature of an insecure personality is that in social activities such a person seeks to avoid any form of personal self-manifestation. Demonstration of one's own opinion, achievements, desires or needs is either extremely unpleasant (due to fear, shame, guilt associated with self-manifestation), or impossible (due to the lack of appropriate skills), or does not make sense within his system of values ​​and ideas.

In reality, of course, we are most often dealing with a complex combination and interdependence of these three factors, which together lead to the rejection of personal and personal participation in social life. There is not only a refusal to take active steps to achieve certain goals, but also a refusal of these goals as such, a lack of faith in oneself and the reality of the implementation of one's own intentions.

The first person to seriously study self-doubt, and tried to find ways to correct, treat or weaken its neurotic influence, was Andre Salter, the owner and chief physician of a fairly large and wealthy neurosis clinic in America. Referring to the theory of I.P. Pavlov, Salter suggested that the cause of uncertainty could be the predominance of inhibition processes over excitation processes, leading to the formation of a "brake" personality, incapable of open and spontaneous expression of one's feelings, desires and needs, limited in self-realization and experiencing as a result of this difficulty in contacts with other people. According to Salter, most of his contemporaries suffered to some extent from this kind of nervous imbalance. Based on his clinical experience, Salter identified and described six characteristics of a healthy, self-confident personality.

A confident person is characterized by:

1. the emotionality of speech, which corresponds to an open, spontaneous and genuine expression in speech of all the feelings he experiences. By this, Salter understood, firstly, the openness of the individual. From his point of view, a confident person of feelings “calls by their proper names” and does not make the partner (partners) in the conversation guess what exactly the feeling is behind his words. Secondly, a self-confident person expresses feelings spontaneously, that is, at the moment when they arose. Thirdly, a confident person speaks exactly about the feelings that he experiences. He does not seek to hide or "soften" the manifestations of his both positive and negative feelings;

2. expressiveness and congruence of behavior and speech, which means a clear manifestation of feelings and correspondence between words and non-verbal behavior;

3. direct and honest expression of one's own opinion, without regard to others;

4. use of the pronoun "I" in speech;

5. the ability to listen to praise without hesitation. They are not characterized by self-abasement and underestimation of their strengths and qualities;

6. ability to improvise, ie. spontaneous expression of feelings and needs.

This characteristic corresponds to children of preschool age. They are emotional, spontaneous, expressive, open, cheerful. What happens as you get older? Where does the child's natural and confident behavior disappear?

There are several complementary explanations for the causes of self-doubt. The simplest explanation comes from Albert Bandura's "learning from models" theory. According to this theory, a new repertoire of skills of aggressive, confident or insecure behavior arises as a result of imitation - the copying by the child of those stereotypes of behavior that he observes around him. Parents, relatives, friends serve as "models" for copying. As a result, a confident, aggressive or insecure personality emerges as a kind of "cast" of behavior patterns that dominate in the environment surrounding the child.

Another equally popular explanation for insecurity is Martin Seligman's "learned helplessness" theory. He suggested that the formation of a child's personality is influenced not only by "models" that serve to copy, but also by the reaction of parents, and more broadly - of the entire surrounding social environment - to one or another behavior of the child. This feedback allows (or does not allow) the child to correlate different stereotypes. social behavior with different reactions of the social environment. The nature of the connection between the child's behavior patterns and the reaction of the environment (the behavior of the parents) determines the positive, healthy, or impaired development of the child. In the second case, so-called "learned helplessness" may occur.

Seligman defines helplessness as a state that occurs when external events are beyond our control and there is nothing we can do to prevent or modify them. The feeling of helplessness arises when external events proceed completely independently of our voluntary actions (objective conditions of helplessness), or if they seem to us to proceed independently of us (subjective conditions). As a result of conjugation in time of active voluntary actions and uncontrolled consequences, a sad result occurs - the motivation for any actions that involve changes in the external environment is lost.

So, learned helplessness occurs when a child either does not receive any response to his actions at all (a situation, for example, in an orphanage, where the attention of educators is distributed to a large number of children); or receives monotonous negative (“they will punish you anyway”) or monotonous positive (“sissy”) feedback.

Further, another explanation for uncertainty may be the lack or lack of faith in the effectiveness of one's own actions. Low self-efficacy arises as a result of massive negative assessments from close people, educators, teachers, which subsequently change into negative self-assessments of their own intentions and capabilities. These negative self-assessments block, on the one hand, social initiative, and on the other hand, they cause negative (unpleasant) emotions.

Arnold Lazarus was the first to draw attention to the "deficiency of behavior" as one of the causes of self-doubt. He suggested that the cause of self-doubt may be a lack of behaviors that should ensure full mastery of social reality, rigidity and non-adaptation are not a large number behavioral alternatives. The lack of behavioral alternatives, behavioral skills, Lazarus called "behavioral deficit", and proposed to consider its absence as the basis of self-confidence.

From the above explanations of the causes of uncertainty, it follows that the child is born with some inclinations and abilities, perhaps with some physical or mental disabilities. These inclinations, abilities and shortcomings facilitate or complicate the task of socialization, but do not directly and directly determine the formation of the level of self-confidence. At the initial stage of socialization, many factors play their role in the formation of confidence, but first of all, the variety of opportunities for acquiring (copying, learning) new social skills and the variety of adequate and direct reactions to these skills of the social environment.

Otherwise, there is a "negative" option. Uncertainty is formed when

• the social environment in which a person is born is extremely poor in impressions and monotonous. The repertoire of skills that can be observed and copied is very limited;
• the social environment, the reactions of parents or educators are also monotonous and mostly negative;
• the achievements and successes of this environment are denied, not noticed or criticized;
• negative feedback (or no feedback at all) constantly causes the experience of failure;
• negative self-assessments and expectations of failure become habitual ways of internal dialogue and lead to the abandonment of one's own initiative in mastering new aspects of reality, passivity and timidity in the implementation of one's intentions.

As a result, an insecure person achieves less in life. Life itself, any form of activity for him is associated with a mass of negative experiences, these experiences, in turn, affect the health of the person himself and his loved ones. In a broader context, a society or organization in which insecure people live and work lacks the initiative of its members. In such a society or organization, stagnation dominates, too much energy is wasted on useless discussions and doubts. Reasonable cooperation of people for the implementation of common intentions does not arise, everyone lives within their own (rather painful) world.

One of Salter's students and collaborators, Joseph Wolpe, discovered that the social fear experienced by a person in certain situations plays a significant role in the emergence of uncertainty.

• Once established, social fear is strongly associated with certain social situations and then reinforces itself.
• Fear reduces the chances of success, and failure, in turn, increases fear.
• Fear sets the stage for failure in the social situations that cause it, and failure further reinforces the fear.

Thus, fear and the behavior associated with it is learned, automated, maintained and reproduced, spreading to adjacent social situations. Social fear manifests itself in the most various forms and in the most different situations.

Joseph Wolpe identified and detailed fears:

• fear of criticism
• fear of being rejected
• fear of being the center of attention
• fear of appearing inferior
• fear of superiors
• fear of new situations
• fear of making claims or not being able to refuse a claim
• fear of not being able to say no.

To one degree or another, these fears, of course, are present in the psyche of any person. The problem of the insecure is that their social fear becomes the dominant feeling that blocks their social activity. Psychologists have found that feelings of guilt and shame also play a significant role in insecurity, along with a lack of social skills.

Scientists emphasize the key role of self-esteem in confident behavior. Social fear, under certain conditions, provokes some negative self-verbalizations (“I can’t handle this ...”, “This is beyond my strength”, etc.) At the same time, a person’s attention is concentrated on negative attitudes, and confident behavior is inhibited. The resulting experience of failure is reinforced. An unpleasant experience is stored in the form of mental images and emotional reactions. The resulting situation of failure, negative experience reduces self-confidence, which in turn causes uncertainty.

In addition, past experience also determines the way one evaluates oneself. A person asks himself the question: how do I look, how I would like to look, how, presumably, others perceive me. Self-doubt arises as a result of negative assessments, a “disturbed image of oneself”, one's own achievements are underestimated in comparison with others. As a result, the individual begins to habitually negatively evaluate himself, his achievements, abilities and goals.

Uncertainty is also characterized by insufficiently clear statements of intent; incomplete action plans; a negative assessment of the results of actions that lead to the emergence of "defective" or "deficient" stereotypes of behavior. Thus, attitudes towards one's own person, self-verbalization and self-esteem of a person decisively influence a person's behavior, form a type of confident or insecure behavior.

Based on many other studies, it can be assumed that self-confidence is a personality trait, the core of which is the individual's positive assessment of his own skills and abilities as sufficient to achieve significant goals for him and satisfy his needs. The basis for the formation of such assessments is a sufficient behavioral repertoire, a positive experience in solving social tasks and successful achievement of own goals (needs satisfaction). For the formation of self-confidence, it is not so much objective life success, status, money, etc. that is important, but a subjective positive assessment of the results of one's own actions and assessments that follow from significant people. Positive assessments of the availability, "quality" and effectiveness of one's own skills and abilities determine social courage in setting new goals and tasks, as well as the initiative with which a person takes on their implementation. However, positive evaluations of one's own behavioral repertoire presuppose the presence of some behavioral "foundation" of these evaluations.

Uncertainty is characterized by:

• insufficiently clear statements of intent
• incomplete action plans
• a negative assessment of the results of actions that lead to the emergence of "defective" or "deficient" stereotypes of behavior.

Thus, attitudes towards one's own person, self-verbalization and self-esteem of a person decisively influence a person's behavior, form a type of confident or insecure behavior.

Based on these and many other studies, we can assume that self-confidence is a personality trait, the core of which is a positive assessment by the individual of his own skills and abilities as sufficient to achieve significant goals for him and satisfy his needs. The basis for the formation of such assessments is the positive experience of solving social problems and successfully achieving one's own goals (meeting needs). For the formation of self-confidence, a subjective positive assessment of the results of one's own actions and assessments that follow from significant people is important. Positive assessments of the availability, "quality" and effectiveness of one's own skills and abilities determine social courage in setting new goals and tasks, as well as the initiative with which a person takes on their implementation.

Numerous cultural and socio-political prerequisites are of particular relevance to confident and insecure manifestations of individuality. Public goals and collective responsibility for the results of actions in the recent period of history were valued above personal goals and personal responsibility. Using the pronoun "I" is a rather awkward form of expression in a society where the "we" party rules. And if it happened to say “I”, then after “I” I had to constantly add “on behalf of our organization”, “I, like the whole people, like all the people of my city, like all progressive humanity.” So it's convenient, profitable, socially approved, normative and no personal responsibility. “I” is the last letter in the alphabet,” the teachers repeated.

But such a statement is false and unproductive. People are a lot of 'I's. Progressive humanity is made up of different people, with different selves, with different motivations and varying degrees agreement with accepted normative opinion. Moreover, it is the opinion of a minority, and at decisive moments of history, of individuals, which is even lexically difficult to express in an impersonal form or in a third person (“there is an opinion”, “some believe”), often has a decisive influence on the adoption of the most creative and productive decisions. Sometimes it happens that personal opinions, doubts, desires and values ​​are not accepted by the social environment. And this leads to sanctions from the social environment. In other words: is it good to speak openly and explicitly about your desires, opinions and feelings? Does it not turn out that a person who is self-confident is a person who overestimates his capabilities and does not know how to hide his emotions and feelings? Indeed, self-confidence is an overestimation of the positive aspects of one's skills, abilities, an overestimation of the chances that the world around us gives us, this is self-confidence. But it is precisely this positive assessment that allows its owner to take on a lot and achieve a lot at a time when the unsure is constantly in doubt and cannot make a decision.

Regarding the expression of emotions: a confident person often expresses emotions, and feelings that others do not care about. But this is what helps him become the soul of the company, make new friends, save him from loneliness, etc.

Is it possible to achieve self-respect without humiliating others? Is it possible to be self-confident and not destroy the self-confidence of others? Are there ways to treat yourself and others with respect? Of course you can, of course there are. But we do not have a sense of self-confidence and we do not own the ways of respectful interaction, and therefore we cannot teach others. The environment itself, the society itself and the norms adopted in it are “not tuned” to self-confidence and self-affirmation.

There are many facts that make it difficult to build self-esteem and self-confidence:

• the repressive nature of all rules and regulations, most often not providing for a system of incentives
• shakiness of the legislative framework that does not protect personal rights
• weak system of protection of intellectual property and property in general, neglect of personal property. In addition, self-confidence with great difficulty fits into the modern system of school values, into the system of socialization, and is often understood almost as a complete analogue of self-confidence, arrogance and aggressiveness.

For quite a long time, aggressiveness and arrogance, on the one hand, and uncertainty and passivity, on the other hand, have been tried to be presented and analyzed as some polar qualities that are unacceptable from an ethical, medical and economic point of view. It has been proven many times that aggressiveness and insecurity negatively affect health, both physical and social, economic performance, family income, and so on. The development of this line of research led to one important result: insecurity and aggressiveness began to be understood as two different forms of manifestation of lack of self-confidence.

If a partner humiliates others, is rude, rude, and such behavior becomes his lifestyle, this is evidence of personal insecurity. It is safe to say that they are humiliated from a lack of education and from the inability to achieve their goals in another way.

At the same time, self-confidence allows one to acquire such a personality quality as social competence. Social competence is defined as a special skill, the ability to find a compromise between self-realization and social adaptation, the ability to achieve the maximum realization of one's own desires, without infringing on the right of others to realize their own desires. It is assumed that if in all actions and verbalizations a person is limited to informing others about his rights and desires, and at the same time does not allow any pressure on partners, then this itself gives the partner the right to agree or reject the request or demand.

Social competence is the result of a special style of confident behavior, in which confidence skills (different in the sphere of official and interpersonal relations) are automated and make it possible to flexibly change the strategy and plans of behavior, taking into account the narrow (features of the social situation) and broad (social norms and conditions) context. Such an understanding of the relationship between self-confidence, aggressiveness and social competence has become the basis for solving the ethical problem of self-assertion, one way or another affecting the personal interests of other people or public interests.

Socially competent people have certain communication skills. Four groups of skills have been identified that are sufficient for a full-fledged life, and, consequently, for self-confidence:

1. The ability to speak openly about your desires and requirements.

The use of "We" does not contribute to the open expression of needs, desires, and, moreover, requirements. Many will have to give up personal desires in favor of the opinion and desires of the majority. It is difficult to imagine such a close-knit team in which common goals would maximally correspond to the needs of its individual members (people are still different).

2. The ability to say "No". And with this skill there are certain problems, very similar to those just described. A unanimous collective "No" is very difficult to achieve. Desires, goals, values, intelligence level, etc. are all individual.

3. The ability to speak openly about your feelings.

Expressing one's own feelings openly without using the pronoun "I" is impossible. It is difficult for a generation accustomed to “We” to express personal feelings.

4. Ability to establish, maintain and end a conversation.

The presence of these skills is a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite for self-confidence. Analyzing the features of self-confident behavior, psychologists are faced with the problem of determining the fine line between confidence and aggressiveness.

Some did not see the difference between them at all. Moreover, training for assertive and aggressive self-assertion was practiced as a method of correcting insecurity. Others thought that confidence was a cross between aggressiveness and insecurity, something that was clearly different from either one or the other. Still others argued that aggressiveness and insecurity are essentially two different forms of manifestation of a lack of confidence, in which the energy unrealized in external interaction, caused by the actualization of certain needs, is transferred either inside the organism itself and leads to self-destruction (most often to neurotization), or turns against others and leads to unjustified aggressiveness. But most authors believe that aggressiveness and insecurity are two different personality traits. This is confirmed, in particular, by very low correlations on the scales of aggression and self-confidence.

A high degree of confidence and aggressiveness can coincide if, through aggressive actions, a person easily and reliably achieves the fulfillment of his needs and does not see any negative side effects. In this case, aggressiveness should be understood as another, along with confidence, individual personality trait. Similarly, insecurity and aggressiveness can coexist if only aggressive behavior is present in someone's repertoire of behavior. Even if aggressiveness does not bring anything, a person continues to behave aggressively whenever, overcoming uncertainty, he nevertheless decides on something. But most often, self-confident people are extremely rarely aggressive, because for a life that suits them, other, non-aggressive actions are quite enough.

The definition of aggressiveness as an instinctively inherent quality of a person is erroneous and does not help to understand this model of behavior. Aggressive behavior is best defined as an inadequate response to irritation.

The table below lists behavior patterns typical of actors who behave insecurely, confidently, or aggressively. The same table shows the most obvious consequences of such behavior for the person towards whom the actions are directed.

The actor who reacts passively in a conflict situation usually deprives himself of the opportunity to express his feelings. As a result of such a reaction, he feels disadvantaged, because, by allowing others to decide for themselves, he rarely achieves the desired goal.

A person who seeks self-expression and resorts to extremes of aggressive behavior usually achieves his goal by infringing on the interests and pride of others. Aggressive behavior usually humiliates the person towards whom it is directed. His rights are infringed, he feels resentment, anger and humiliation. Although an aggressive person may achieve his goal, he, at the same time, can cause feelings of hatred, anger and resentment, which can subsequently manifest as retribution.

On the contrary, confident behavior in the same situation will cause a feeling of satisfaction in the actor. Honest expression of feelings usually leads to the achievement of the goal, and as a result, the actor experiences a sense of satisfaction.

If these three patterns of behavior are viewed from the point of view of the person towards whom they are directed, a similar situation is observed. Passive as well as aggressive behavior often evokes a wide range of feelings towards the passive or aggressive person - from feelings of sympathy to feelings of anger and contempt. And, on the contrary, acting confidently, a person expresses his feelings, achieves his goal and remains satisfied with himself, without humiliating or suppressing the other, that is, without causing sharply negative emotions in relation to himself.

Should and can a person always act confidently? Is there one “correct” way to behave in a given situation? Because people are so different.

There is no “right way” to solve all the problems in life or a “magic formula” that will put everything in its place. However, a self-affirming course of action in most cases helps to achieve the goal. The most important thing is the ability to stand up for yourself when the situation requires it. Expressing your feelings in a confident way, that is, standing up for yourself without prejudice to the interests of others, is almost always possible. Unfortunately, for many people this choice is not possible. They are influenced by their habits, influenced by other people, influenced by circumstances and unable to make the right choice for themselves.

People generally know how to act only passively or only aggressively. They are able either to be under the control of others or to control others themselves and are not able to act self-assertingly.

Passivity as a common style of behavior, and passivity in certain situations
Passivity as a normal style of behavior is characteristic of people who are characterized only by a passive reaction in any life situations. Such a person is usually shy and withdrawn, he is constantly "on the lead" of others.

In cases where most others even try to protest when their rights are violated, such a person will suffer in silence. For example, when some, breaking the silence in the hall during a performance, deprive others of the opportunity to hear the actors, most of us will politely ask them to stop making noise. A person for whom passivity is a common style of behavior will endure and suffer silently. Moreover, he will even mentally reproach himself: "I must be an egoist." People with this style of behavior ask permission to do what many others consider their birthright.

A person for whom passivity is a common style of behavior, usually has a low opinion of himself and feels uncomfortable in almost all situations. The feeling of inferiority and emotional discomfort constantly experienced by such people most likely require the attention of a professional psychologist. Passivity in certain situations is characteristic of that category of people whose behavior is usually confident, but who in certain life situations experience significant stress, which prevents them from responding correctly in these situations.

In cases of passivity in certain situations, we are dealing with relatively emotionally healthy people who want to act more effectively in situations in which they are currently experiencing difficulties.

Aggressiveness as a common style of behavior, and aggressiveness in certain situations
Do not confuse a confident style of behavior with an aggressive one, as is often the case.

A confident style of behavior excludes humiliation of others or any manifestation of disrespect towards others.

By analogy with passive behavior in general and passive behavior in some situations, a typically aggressive individual is characterized by typically aggressive behavior in various situations.

Such a person from the outside gives the impression of a highly self-confident person. Often this is the result of upbringing, when the boy is taught in the family that he must be strong, courageous, not yield to anyone, etc.

Women's aggressiveness often manifests itself in a slightly different way: it is a desire to dominate the conversation, disregard the opinions of others, and in all cases keep the last word. Such a - usually aggressive - person often has a bad or strained relationship with most of the people with whom he communicates. Such a person is very sensitive to criticism and easily vulnerable. And even a small reason is enough to cause an aggressive reaction in him. Men with this quality are usually tyrants in the family, their wives always yield to them, and their children are afraid of them. They resort to physical punishment of children, beat their wives. Aggressive man of any gender is most often lonely and gloomy, he has difficulty communicating with friends and colleagues, and therefore he often has to change jobs.

Since he often offends others with his behavior, he has few friends, attempts to get close to the people around him usually end in failure, he suffers and withdraws even more into himself.

A person who behaves in a usually aggressive manner can overcome his inability to adequately respond to emotionally difficult life situations, but for this he may need professional help from a psychiatrist.

A person who is aggressive in certain situations usually seeks help in solving a certain problem and readily listens to the advice of others on how to deal with such situations.

Aggressive and passive behavior manifests itself in various forms. Each of us sometimes acts aggressively or passively. In this sense, we are all aggressive or passive in certain situations. Yet care must be taken to ensure that these extremes do not become the norm.

Do you avoid certain people or certain situations because you are afraid of them? Can you control these unwanted situations, or are they out of your control?

If you are often dissatisfied with yourself, if you cannot choose for yourself how you will act in this or that situation, if your passivity or aggressiveness has not yet become your main form of behavior, then you should seriously think about correcting your behavior.

Image formation according to the Stanislavsky method

“The whole world is a theater,” wrote William Shakespeare. - Men, women play in it the role assigned to them by fate. There is a way out for everyone."

Stanislavsky came to a conclusion that is interesting for each of us: if a person wants to achieve something on stage, then he must consciously influence the creative processes in the subconscious. By the way, the recommendations of numerous manuals for achieving success in business and personal life boil down to this.

Confident leadership behavior is manifested through the image, or image. The concept of "image" includes not only the appearance, it also means a feature of behavior, and a way of thinking, and a way of acting included in group communication. To acquire an image, it is necessary to change the behavior in role-playing activity. More than one concept is devoted to the peculiarities of this process, and among this variety, one can single out the concept of Stanislavsky, which explains the process of gaining an image from the position of performing roles.

At the heart of any aspirations of a person is a super-task, it implies the goal of activity, which lies in the implementation of the main life tasks. The desire for a super-task, according to Stanislavsky, is the core of human life. The most important task is hidden in our subconscious and is able to subdue any life situation. The supertask carries out a constant reminder to a person of the ultimate goal of his activity. And the focus of a person on the most important task is carried out within the framework of a cross-cutting action, and not chaotically. Under the cross-cutting action, Stanislavsky meant the scale of role-playing behavior, which is composed of various fragments of human behavior.

So the super-task and through action bring organization into the process of playing a role by a person, allowing him to get used to these roles and make them a part of his life. Any leader is able to direct this phenomenon in the right direction and, thus, bring the manifestation of his image to perfection.

The complexity here is as follows: the leader is forced to play two roles, the first includes innate and acquired reactions in the course of life; the second is a set of those reactions that correspond to the newly acquired image. Therefore, the activity of a leader presupposes the presence of two super-tasks at the same time and, accordingly, cross-cutting actions.

At the same time, the second super-task (the formation of a newly acquired image) is a priority in relation to the first. But it is the first super-task that determines everything that ensures the role behavior of a person within the framework of his new image.

Now let's try to figure out how the supertask is formed. Stanislavsky believes that it is fixed in the psyche and exists in the form of a verbal formulation, which includes many verbal turns. After all, it is easier to designate any action with a verb, and the most important task implies exactly the action. There are two verbs in the formulation of the super-task, one of them is motivating, the second is aiming at a certain action. For example, "I want to do..."

Consider the situation. Suppose there is a certain team led by a leader. In the process of interaction, the nickname “shark” was assigned to the leader, since such traits as self-confidence, assertiveness, excessive irritability, and rigidity were clearly manifested in his behavior. One day, the leader begins to realize that such an image harms his interaction with the team and, accordingly, affects the productivity of the activity. He decides to change the image of the "shark" to a more friendly, let's say, the image of the "dolphin", if we continue the fish theme. But before proceeding with actions aimed at changing the image, it is necessary to formulate the most important task for the new image.

So, what do you think would be the best wording for the new overarching challenge? Naturally, it must meet several parameters: firstly, the wording must be a well-aimed and vivid verbal phrase; secondly, it should affect the subconscious, induce to action; and thirdly, it must necessarily contain a targeting verb. In our case, this wording can look like this: “I want to act according to the dolphin model!”

Now we have the super task phrase ready, but this is not enough. Other details need to be considered and clarified. After all, the wording can have a more detailed form. Say: “I want to act like a dolphin. I want to show more friendliness and patience with my subordinates. I want to earn their trust and encourage them to follow me. ”But remember that you can’t formulate the most important task in this form: “I want to be a“ dolphin ”!” To become a dolphin, you need to eliminate the innate super-task, since it will contradict our new super-task. And this is almost impossible to do. In the wording “I want to act according to the dolphin model”, the verb “act” aims our leader only at individual elements behaviors that involve a change in the model of interaction with people, but they do not require a complete change in the person's personality. To change the model of behavior, it is necessary to merge with the role that denotes a new image, this process involves three stages:

• Step One – Analyze the Action Lines of the Roles
• Stage two - creating the role of "life of the human body"
• Stage three - creating the role of "life of the human spirit"

Analysis of the line of action involves the analysis of the actions of the role, first by large events, and then by detailed events. And then, for each of the segments, formulate a super-task and a through action.

Therefore, in our case, the leader will first have to present in detail the elements of the behavior of the "shark" model, then the elements of the behavior of the "dolphin" model. The leader is tasked with blocking the features of the "shark" and developing the qualities of the "dolphin", and then form the role of behavior that corresponds to his new image.

Developing Confident Behavior Skills

Confident behavior is impossible without inner balance. The foundation of our inner balance is formed by four feelings:

• self esteem
• inner satisfaction
• inner freedom
• Self-confidence

self esteem
Self-respect is a very important sense of self, it is inherent only in a person who has clear convictions and inevitably acts according to his convictions.

Self-respect and self-recognition by others are two different, in many ways opposite feelings of self. The calmer and more confident a person respects himself, the less he needs to be recognized by other people. And vice versa: the more a person craves recognition, the more desperately he boasts of his achievements, his property or connections, the more miserable his self-esteem becomes. Popularity is necessary for us only in the case when we lack confirmation of ourselves and self-respect, first of all, self-respect.

It is necessary to clearly understand the difference between self-respect and recognition (validation of oneself). Confirmation is a statement of what a person is capable of. For example, the ability to read and write, foreign language, the presence of a profession. Interest in a person, his attractiveness in the eyes of other people is also a confirmation of himself. Recognition develops self-confidence, but not self-respect. Men and women who behave like in a poultry yard, sending sexual signals into an indifferent space, people in general who want to be admired by others, as peacocks are admired - they all experience and experience a lack of self-esteem. Such characters lack true respect for a partner, that is, the basis for true love.

Some individuals, especially often women, believe that in order to achieve self-respect, one must certainly do something special, at least give birth to a child. Such "orthodox" focuses on what others do to gain validation for themselves, and through what acts others gain high social status. But following other people's models does not lead to self-respect. Self-respect comes to a person only when the person himself is honest, conscientious and impeccable. But a person can achieve confirmation of himself through deeds that he considers worthy of his aspirations. Self-affirmation is carried out in an academic title, a political career, impressive wealth, an admirable machine, or, in the most “ultimate” version, a glorifying obituary.

Normal self-respect is characteristic of people for whom it is quite natural to speak and act decently, honestly and conscientiously, in accordance with their convictions. Arrogant pride is alien to these people, just as servile opportunism is alien to them. You need to have a good instinct to recognize the worthy modesty of such people, based on self-respect.

Normal self-respect is possessed by people for whom speaking and acting decently, honestly, conscientiously, following their convictions is a self-evident behavior. People who behave and act differently and destroy their self-respect by their lifestyle are not difficult to recognize. They dodge all the time, looking for workarounds to carry out their intentions. They find all sorts of excuses not to do something, or say the opposite of what they intend to do. They are insincere, they lie out of habit. "Cunning snakes" I mean male and female individuals who do not consider anything for their own benefit, who lie rampantly in order to exercise their influence and gain power.

All fanatics suffer from inflated self-esteem, especially important characters: confessional, political and public figures. There are scientists who confuse the value of their achievements with the value of their own person.

Along with self-respect, there are two associated negative connotations:

• overestimation of oneself and self-compulsion of a person (vanity, stubbornness, claims to power and arrogance);
• underestimation of oneself, a kind of liberation of oneself from the need for self-realization, which is replaced by evasiveness and resourcefulness in order to obtain recognition and confirmation of this recognition, obtained without real efforts of fruitful activity.

inner freedom
A person who is capable of both demanding and, at the same time, refusing his own requirements has his own inner freedom. You feel inner freedom if you can safely ignore phone call when you don't want to be interrupted. You experience inner freedom if you decline without explanation an invitation that you are not interested in. You have inner freedom if you find the courage to express a desire, even if you are sure that you will be refused. The one who does not hide his feelings and intentions is free. A free man simply says, "I don't want to," rather than pretending he doesn't have time. It would not occur to him to be hypocritical in front of someone in something. Someone who claims to use excuses to spare another person is actually afraid of becoming unpopular. He spares himself. Fear of losing popularity leads a person to lack of freedom. This is how the fear of disgrace is born, this is how an unpleasant feeling of embarrassment and embarrassment arises, this is how the color of shame flares up.

Only a person who feels free can be sincere and resourceful. Like that attractive woman who, when asked by her admirer whether she could be seen off and in which direction she was going, answered: "In the opposite direction."

In order to feel internally free, one must have self-respect and be in harmony with one's convictions. Whoever strives to be loved and seeks confirmation of love for himself from others will never experience the feeling of an internally free person.

We cannot unmistakably recognize the normality of feeling ourselves - the real conscience in us and knowledge about ourselves have become dulled. This knowledge, the "moral law in me" that Kant admired, cannot be instilled in us from outside, neither through a confessional teaching about morality, nor through a well-thought-out teaching of what is valued as socially desirable and decent, nor through a socio-political ideology. .

Social ideals are rendered untenable if they are imposed on people from the outside, and do not become an internal conviction on the basis of a personally experienced insight.

The physician and philosopher Paul Dahlke (1865-1928) spoke about this with amazing clarity: “The true coercion of a person comes, ultimately, not from things, but from thinking, therefore there is no coercion from the outside, there is self-coercion. Indeed: a person is forced to do something only when he forces himself. And this is possible only when a person has realized the necessity of what he is obliged to force himself to. From which, again, it follows that progress is not made by laws, ordinances, or even violence, but only by instruction. For a long time the world needs not great men, but teachers. And since ancient times, in the perception of a thinking person, not victories and conquests, not discoveries and inventions, not mastery of the world, but comprehension of oneself were considered the greatest achievement. And the only true way to true achievement is to know yourself.”

“Know thyself” means to understand the reason: why I do something. To "know thyself" means to be sensitive and honest with oneself in order to recognize one's true motives and one's own intentions. We must constantly ask ourselves: am I hurting my self-esteem with what I say and do? and do I feel free inside?

Inner freedom has two antitheses:

• overestimation of oneself as a way of escaping from oneself. An individual with high self-esteem is in constant search for the best, new, different. This is living in a world of illusions.
• underestimating oneself as a way of oppressing and limiting oneself. An individual with low self-esteem is constantly worried about something, forever afraid of losing a partner, health, property.

inner satisfaction
In relation to others, dissatisfaction with oneself is expressed in internal distancing, in alienation, in the desire to escape, in anxiety, irritability and in the search for an object for inexhaustible criticism. An exaggerated need for satisfaction leads to self-satisfaction and self-pampering. Self-satisfaction is often embodied in a long-past or longed-for future love. In addition to sexual satisfaction are found different sources pampering yourself. Excessively plentiful food, excessive satiety often fills the spiritual emptiness of dissatisfied people.

If the vicious circle rotates faster and faster, then self-indulgence grows to self-stupefaction. Indulging yourself with sweets can still be attributed to self-indulgence, but heavy smoking, alcoholism and regular use of sleeping pills and drugs is already absolute self-stupefaction. “Satisfaction comes from within,” one psychotherapist recently wrote in a patient handbook. Well, the installation is correct, but useless. Not only satisfaction, but also vanity, envy, aggressiveness come from within. And we want to know what to do in order to achieve inner satisfaction and balance.

First of all, you should wean yourself from expecting that the other person will do what you want of their own free will. Having gained patience and readiness for understanding, one should try to understand the other person, want to belong to a partner, feel connected with a partner, instead of humiliating with picky criticism and pushing away.

They write a lot about what happiness is, and even more guess. Children who collect coins in a piggy bank believe that the piggy bank brings happiness. Many adults never get rid of this childish faith: they continue to believe that money is needed to achieve happiness. Many are unshakably sure: the more money, the more happiness. Whoever thinks so will walk through life in a crowd of unfortunates. A lost person needs more and more, he runs faster and faster towards happiness, but remains in the same unhappy place. If the aspirant to happiness could experience happiness, how pleased he would be. To be happy, you need to be able to be content.

Whoever perceives the beauty of a sunset, who is captivated by the sound of a melody, who is impressed by the organic naturalness of a person, does not require anything more than these values. He is full of life and happy with it. He who is satisfied with his work and his experiences experiences constant happiness.

There are two negative opposites of inner satisfaction:

• overestimation of oneself (inflated self-esteem) in the form of self-indulgence: food, sweets, alcohol, drugs, purchases (clothes, cars) - all for the sake of satisfying one's own desires.
• underestimation of oneself as dissatisfaction with oneself. A dissatisfied person wants everything to be different, wants to have more. He feels neglect of himself and is alienated from himself.

Self-confidence
The four senses of self form the foundation of our inner balance: self-respect, inner freedom, inner satisfaction, and self-confidence. Self-confidence is different from self-respect. Self-confidence is the feeling of self that has nothing to do with self-respect. If the head of the mafia claims about himself that he allegedly has high self-esteem, then he does not know what he is talking about. The mafioso certainly feels a strong self-confidence, and he really has it. Any business that the head of the mafia successfully carries out confirms his efficiency. This is how self-approval of the highest degree arises, and this develops self-confidence in the “boss”.

A person undermines self-confidence if he expects too little or too much of himself. Or if it requires too little or too much of itself. Anyone who makes too high demands on himself undoubtedly wants to admire himself - the strongest, most courageous, greatest. Hero, star. Making too high demands on yourself reflects a worthy goal - to admire yourself. Of course, for those who admire themselves, it is necessary that others admire them. Therefore, they are overly boastful.

The other side of self-admiration is self-compassion. One who has low self-confidence needs the admiration of others. One who is dependent on the admiration of others falls into depressive self-compassion if for a long time there is no support and recognition. Therefore, many politicians and art stars rush to read the morning paper every day, hoping to find their name there.

Many of those who admire themselves give themselves away with exorbitant boasting when, as if by chance, they mention with what influential people they are intimately familiar or with what famous personalities they seem to be friendly.

There are two negative opposites of self-confidence:

• overestimation of oneself as narcissism: boasting, provocative, emphasized sex, aggressiveness.
• self-underestimation as self-pity: weakened self-confidence, feelings of weakness, incapacity, helplessness.

How do you rate your own self-confidence? After all, one way or another, each of us initially experiences some kind of uncertainty when, by coincidence, we find ourselves face to face with an unfamiliar situation. This is completely normal, and there is no need to talk about insufficient self-doubt here. But if anxiety and stiffness accompanies you all your life, in any environment, even in the most familiar environment for you, even when communicating with people you know well?! Well, in this case it makes sense to take care of increasing self-confidence.

By the way, it happens that a person feels insecure only periodically. For example, when you find yourself in an awkward position or have to communicate with some people who inspire a person with that very uncertainty. What to do? A simple solution immediately turns up - to use the so-called opposite method, that is, to avoid meeting with this circle of people, try not to get into those conditions that in any way can affect the level of self-confidence.

You can get away from a situation in which you feel insecure, but you should not abuse this method: you can easily get used to trying to avoid difficult situations for yourself all your life, like the notorious ostrich, hiding its head in the sand at the slightest danger. You can’t lay straws everywhere, no matter how hard you try. Difficult communication situations, one way or another, will always arise on the path of life, which obviously will not contribute to increasing self-confidence.

You can develop the necessary skills by watching how other people deal with situations that require self-confidence. The following recommendations, which studies show are characteristic of self-confident people, can help with this issue:

• avoid confusing emotions: If you are angry, offended or emotionally hurt, you should expect others to react to your emotions, and not to what you want to convey to them. This can confuse the issue and direct efforts away from solving the problem;
• keep it simple: sometimes the importance of what people want to convey to others is lost due to excessive complexity or attempts to deal with several issues at once;
• get your way: work on resolving issues, despite the possible need for a long time to clarify your intentions (until you are satisfied with the opportunity to solve the problem);
• don't "drop yourself": if something is important to you, get others to know about your position;
• make sure you don't get knocked down: others, often unconsciously, will try to take you away from what you want to convey to them. This may be due to the pressure placed on them. Get to know their point of view, but do not insist on your own;
• the error does not weaken: if you make a mistake - which happens to everyone sooner or later - do not let the feeling of inadequacy arise. This feeling undermines your position;
• strive for victory after victory: try to create situations in which your work will bring you victory, but not at the expense of other people. Spend some time learning how they can win too. In this case, both parties in a personal relationship can feel the benefit, thus creating the basis for further productive contacts.

Many people who have been able to fundamentally change their lives and succeed in their chosen careers have started by changing their position. They felt insecure at first, and in the end they gained self-confidence, concentrating on their positive qualities, mentally saw that they had achieved success and imagined that they had achieved prosperity and recognition by others of their efforts and achievements.

The reason this approach works is that if you believe in your greatness, you are great! And first of all, you must start with this faith, because this faith helps you to gain practical experience that confirms this faith. For example, if you are convinced that you will get a certain job or promotion, you will radiate an aura of confidence and act like you have that job, and then people will imagine you in this role. Also, with this faith, you will be convinced that you can do whatever is required and you can do it. And soon you will find that you have this job because you are creating a reality that reflects your faith. Of course, external circumstances and the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time can help you gain self-confidence. But if you lack that inner sense of self-confidence, no amount of luck and favorable circumstances will give you that sense of self-power that you need to make circumstances take the turn you want.

For example, consider the many people who were promoted to a new job and then, for various reasons, found themselves unable to take on the additional responsibility. In fact, the Peter principle is at work here, and it consists in the fact that people are promoted until they reach a level where they are incompetent. However, the reasons for the operation of this principle are the old positions, which some transfer to the new position. Consciously or subconsciously, they still see themselves in their old role, and they don't feel the real confidence to step up their responsibilities. They feel like they don't deserve a raise, that they don't deserve it, and so on. As a result, they eventually fail and may be demoted to a position in which they feel comfortable. Conversely, when you feel inner self-confidence, you think, “I can do this, no matter how difficult it may be,” and you are ready to take on new challenges, responsibilities, and are ready to grow. You believe that you can do it, and therefore you can do it.

So everything is based on faith. You must believe that you have the strength to achieve the success you desire, and then that faith will give you the strength you need to do so.

To build self-confidence and self-esteem, overcome fears, anxieties, self-doubts and self-limitations like “I can’t do this” or “I’m not skilled enough”, the main thing is to concentrate on what you can do, to know that you you can do it and imagine that you will do it. Then, using this mind power technique, you can let go of those fears and anxieties and gain the self-confidence you need to successfully face the challenges ahead and regain your good health. In fact, you can use this technique to prevent you from having any doubts about your abilities by regularly using these methods to confirm that you are capable of doing anything you want. You can then use this technique to feel confident in yourself because you are in complete control of the situation.

Here are five main ways to gain self-esteem through this technique.

1. Be aware of and realize your positive qualities, talents and achievements.
2. Settle in the thought that you have the qualities you want to develop, and confirm this all the time as you work to develop those qualities.
3. Imagine that you are a successful person who has achieved some goals, or that your efforts are recognized by other people.
4. Imagine yourself prosperous, rich and having everything you want.
5. Feel confident, feel confident in your abilities and in control of the situation, wherever you are.

Self-confidence - the willingness of a person to decide enough challenging tasks, when the level of claims is not reduced only because of fear of failure.

The readiness to solve complex problems, that is, the state of internal psychological mobilization, is the right attitude, way of thinking. The stability of this quality, despite the possibility of failure, provides self-confidence.

Thus, to gain self-confidence, work is indicated in two directions. First, we change our way of thinking, life philosophy and self-esteem. Secondly, we change our behavior, develop a number of specific skills that express self-confidence.

Change in mindset

Best Moments
Recall those moments in your life when you felt like a real winner. Restore in memory all the details of the situation, sounds, smells, catch admiring glances on yourself, plunge into that moment and live it again.

Feel the taste of victory and the feeling of pride overwhelming you, fix this image in your mind, transfer it to the current situation and say to yourself: “It worked then, it will work now.”

I am a hero
Who would you call the true embodiment of confidence? Whose image immediately arises in your imagination? Perhaps this is a hero from some cult movie or a character from your favorite book, a famous presenter or someone from your environment? Or maybe it's you yourself, but without the slightest hint of timidity, indecision and doubt?

Create an image of such a hero in your imagination, watch how he holds himself, what habits he has, how he speaks. Get used to this image, connect with it, you are it.

Remember your hero before going to bed and, falling asleep, tell yourself that tomorrow morning you will wake up in the image of this 100% self-confident person. The next day, behave the way your hero would behave. Repeat this technique for a week.

winding gesture
Our body is the strongest emotional conductor. When we are afraid or worried, it is visible to the naked eye: our whole body contracts, the head is drawn into the shoulders, the shoulders drop, the back stoops. But if emotions affect our body in such a way, is an inverse relationship possible? Yes, and this technique is called “winding gesture”. It is often used by actors in order to quickly enter the desired image.

This technique allows you to change the internal state in seconds. Stand up straight, take a deep breath, straighten your shoulders, raise your head, look straight ahead ... stay like this for a few seconds ... say something in a firm and even voice, you can even command something. Fix this image on yourself. You are a winner, you are filled with confidence and self-esteem.

Symbol of confidence
What object, animal or plant is the epitome of confidence for you? It can be anything: a hundred-year-old oak, the king of beasts - a lion, an impregnable rock or a fortress.

Form this image in your imagination, feel how you are filled with energy and power. Capture that feeling and enjoy it.

cloud of confidence
Sit comfortably, close your eyes and relax. Take a deep breath and tell yourself that with each breath you breathe in confidence, strength, energy, and with each breath you breathe out timidity, excitement and anxiety. Take 5 pairs of slow breaths.

Now, without opening your eyes, imagine the color you associate confidence with. What color do you think confidence can be painted? When you decide on a color, imagine a cloud of the color of confidence, surround yourself with a cloud, immerse yourself in it. Enjoy the feeling of calm and security.

Now add some music. What kind of music inspires and energizes you? Perhaps it will be the March of the bullfighters by J. Bizet or something even more life-affirming. To this music, enter the stage of a huge hall, where thousands of people will applaud you. Hear the applause? This is all for you, you are honored. Embrace success, fixate on it. Take a deep breath and open your eyes.

Filling with confidence
This technique includes elements from the Cloud of Confidence technique. Relax, close your eyes, imagine the color you associate with confidence.

Now feel how the energy of confidence, colored in the color you have chosen, fills your entire body, penetrating into every corner, filling your every cell. Now put on your confidence music and keep energizing.

The music gets louder, you feel energized and full of determination. If you know the smell that you associate with confidence, then remember and smell it. Maybe it's the smell of leather in a car, the smell of boxing gloves, or a special perfume. Let everything around you be saturated with energy, music and the aroma of confidence. Take a deep breath and open your eyes.

Here are some tips to help you change your mindset.

Do not be afraid to make mistakes, enjoy life, expand your circle of friends. It is safer to actively overcome your own fears. How to do it? Here are some simple tips...

Get a monkey. Observe how someone you think is a model of self-confidence behaves, and now try to copy his manner of communication. From fear, the hamstrings can shake and suck in the stomach, but if you at least outwardly - behavior, voice, appearance - demonstrate confidence, then gaining true inner confidence will not take long. Live in the moment. It is in every single moment that real life lies, where there is no place for fear, anxiety, worry or regret, because the reason for them has already remained in the past or with some degree of probability will arise in an indefinite future. Do not become like a broken record, constantly scrolling inside yourself of long-past events - enjoy life here and now.

Few people feel insecure when communicating in a familiar environment with loved ones or doing a well-known business. Psychologists call this the comfort zone. By expanding our social circle, mastering new things - even if for this we have to overcome a certain psychological barrier - we expand the boundaries of our own comfort zone and, thereby, become more confident in our abilities.

Give up selfishness. If you are tempted to criticize yourself, your loved one, try to replace negative thoughts with positive ones that increase self-confidence. For example, if your inner voice nags and nags: “You failed again, hopeless loser,” then remind yourself that you learn from mistakes, and next time you will do everything right.

If such a need arose, always insist on your own, not being afraid to be branded as an egoist. False delicacy is the other side of self-doubt.

Openly express your emotions - both positive and negative, without fear that someone will not like it.

Calmly accept your own imperfection. No one can ever be perfect in every way.

Accept your own mistakes and failures calmly. It has long been known that only those who do nothing do not make mistakes.

Life acquires meaning only in achieving goals. So set goals for yourself - different, near and far, and, achieving them, you will feel more and more confident in your abilities.

Learn to visualize in detail your ultimate goal, i.e. in very, very different contexts, manifestations, and to present in great detail the process of achieving it.

The technique of mental rehearsal also helps, when in your imagination you scroll through your typical problem situations many times, but at the same time in them you already behave as you see fit, and not as you did.

A person who is characterized by an aggressive style of behavior is more difficult to realize the negative consequences of his actions. If, however, he admits that he does not know any other way to achieve his goals, except for humiliation and insulting the feelings of others, and at the same time he will feel guilty, he will be able to develop a confident style of behavior.

Psychologists say that a number of aggressive people develop a "façade of bravado" to protect themselves from emotional closeness to others, which they fear. In fact, they feel "lower" to those around them, and put on a kind of mask of a "strong person" to keep others at a proper distance. Such people can undergo group training, which, according to psychologists, will help them develop adequate self-affirming reactions to replace the previous ones - militant and rude. Instead of training to remove the wrong attitudes, you can use NLP techniques.

Behavior change

A person who is used to being passive or aggressive in his dealings with others usually has a poor opinion of himself. His attitude towards others causes ridicule and neglect from those around him. He notices this and thinks: “Something is wrong with me. I'm worse than others." Convinced of his inferiority, he continues to act as before. Thus, the cycle is repeated. Inappropriate behavior, the negative reaction of others, a sense of their own inferiority.

The most clearly observable component in this cycle is the behavior itself. We can easily observe the behavior and actions of a person in contrast to his feelings, which a person can hide if he wants to. Plus, behavior is easier to change.

The goal of assertive behavior is to express your thoughts, feelings, desires, and beliefs honestly, effectively, and directly. By behaving confidently, you stand up for your own rights, while not violating the rights of others.

The purpose of aggressive behavior is to dominate. People who behave aggressively defend their rights at the expense of other people.

The purpose of passive behavior is to please others, avoid conflict, be perceived by others as a pleasant person, and hide one's own feelings. Passive people keep their opinions to themselves and do not stand up for theirs. legal rights. As a result, their rights are often infringed upon by other people.

1. If you want to refuse something to another person, tell him clearly and unequivocally "no", explain why you refused, but do not apologize for too long.

2. Answer without pause - as quickly as possible.

3. Insist on being spoken to honestly and frankly.

4. Ask for clarification on why you are being asked to do something you don't want to do.

5. Look at the person you are talking to. Watch your partner's non-verbal behavior: if he shows signs of insecurity (hands near his face, a shifty look).

6. If you are angry, make it clear that this is about the partner's behavior and does not affect him as a person.

7. If you are commenting on the behavior of another, use the first person pronoun “I”: “If you behave in this way, then I feel like this and that ...” Suggest alternative ways of behavior that, according to your opinion will be better received by you.

8. Praise those (and yourself) who, in your opinion, managed to behave confidently (regardless of whether the goal was achieved or not).

9. Don't blame yourself if you were insecure or aggressive. Instead, try to figure out at what point you "gone" off the right path and how you can deal with similar situations if they arise in the future.

10. Don't allow yourself to be a passive observer.

The preferred style of behavior is self-expression and self-affirmation.

Self-expression is discussed in the next section.

self-affirmation
Take a closer look at those areas of life where you do not use your rights, where you are manipulated or not allowed to develop. This exercise will help you develop self-affirmation skills and determine where to focus your energy.

Most self-affirmation materials list personal rights with some variation, depending on the author's interpretation of the topic. These rights are not inscribed on the tablets, do not have the irresistible force of law, these are rules based on common sense that help in the self-development of a person and the strengthening of interpersonal relationships.

An important point to remember is that if you have a right, the other person has exactly the same right. For example, you have the right to ask for what you need. The other person has an equal right to refuse you this or to make their own request. If you ignore or grossly violate the rights of another person, this can be considered violent behavior. If you ignore your own rights, you do not have a sufficient degree of self-confidence, your behavior is passive. A solid "system of rights" is built on mutual respect for each other's needs, opinions and feelings.

The fundamental right from which all other personal rights flow can be stated very simply: you have the final right to decide who you are and what you do.

Your decision does not depend on the role you play in life, what others expect of you, how you imagine how you should act. This right applies to any area of ​​life: business, public and private spheres.

It's easy to say, just agree, that you have the right to voice your needs and set your own priorities in order to take full responsibility for every aspect of your life, but it's probably not that easy to put into practice. Think a little about what this means. Most likely, in order to do this, you need to change your concept of personality. It is equally difficult to recognize the rights of other people.

Despite the fact that there are well-known human rights, which are discussed in many books, including those devoted to self-affirmation, there are as many options for revealing this topic as there are books themselves. The following is a list of 40 fundamental rights; some of them may seem similar, but each has its own scope.

1. To be accepted as an equal, regardless of gender, race, nationality, age or physical condition.
2. Feel respect for yourself.
3. Make decisions about how to spend your time.
4. Ask for what is needed.
5. Ask for an opinion about their productivity, behavior, appearance.
6. Be heard and taken seriously.
7. Have own opinion.
8. Hold certain political views.
9. Cry.
10. To make mistakes.
11. Saying “no” without feeling guilty.
12. Defend your interests.
13. Set your priorities.
14. Express your feelings.
15. Say "yes" to yourself without feeling selfish.
16. Change your mind.
17. Sometimes fail.
18. Say "I don't understand".
19. Make statements that do not require proof.
20. Get information.
21. Be successful.
22. Stand up for your faith.
23. Adhere to your own value system.
24. Take time to make decisions.
25. Take responsibility for your own decisions.
26. Have a private life.
27. Confess to ignorance.
28. Change/evolve.
29. Choose whether or not to get involved in other people's problems.
30. Don't take responsibility for other people's problems.
31. Take care of yourself.
32. Have time and space for solitude.
33. Be an individual.
34. Request information from professionals.
35. Don't depend on other people's approval.
36. Judge your own worth.
37. Choose what to do in a given situation.
38. To be independent.
39. Be yourself, not what others want to see.
40. Don't make excuses.

Remember that standing up for your rights requires knowledge and competencies.

Finding out which personal rights you have difficulty with is only the first part of the task. Remember that other people have exactly the same rights.

Read the list again. What other people's rights are you violating? How do you manipulate other people to get them out of your way?

Although your task is to protect your interests and achieve your goal, remember that essential value self-affirmation is a feeling of inner satisfaction after you have expressed your feelings. And, more often than not, you will have the opportunity to make sure that your new style of behavior - self-expression and self-affirmation - will bring you this feeling of satisfaction. Keep in mind that you have very little chance of protecting your interests and achieving your desired goal if you do not do anything about it!

Remember that self-affirmation has two sides: respect for the rights of others and respect for your own rights.

Anger and anger
Anger and anger are natural human emotions. We all experience these feelings from time to time. How we express these feelings is another matter.

People who are self-deprecating passive form behavior, say: "I never feel angry." We don't believe it. It's just that some people are in control and don't show these feelings openly. Often such a self-controlled individual suffers from migraines, asthma, stomach ulcers, or skin diseases. The expression of anger and anger is helpful, and that intelligent expression of these feelings prevents aggressive actions.

Spontaneously expressing feelings of anger and anger as soon as you experience them, without letting those feelings build up, is the healthiest method we know of to deal with these negative emotions.

In these situations, the following words and expressions may be useful:

I do not like it.
I am very angry (evil).
I am very dissatisfied (dissatisfied).
I think it's unfair.

Very often we have met people who express their frustration and dissatisfaction with others using dishonest, covert, cowardly and cruel methods. Such methods are rarely successful if your goal is to change someone's behavior.

Sometimes a person feels better after reacting aggressively to an unpleasant situation, "letting off steam of emotions." Nevertheless, a self-affirming reaction in conflict situations will not only enable you to reasonably respond to an unpleasant situation, but will also enable your opponent to adequately respond to you and, possibly, even change his attitude towards you (that is, eliminate the possibility of a recurrence of the conflict in the future).

Non-verbal communication
The fact that you have decided to protect your interests and the path you have chosen to do so is the main thing; what you say about it is not so important.

Let's dwell on some components of communication without words. Psychologists call this side of communication non-verbal communication.

Eye contact. Looking directly at the person you're talking to is the best way to let them know you're sincere. Looking away from the person you are addressing indicates your timidity and lack of self-confidence. Aggressive, "sparkling" look can be understood as an attempt to suppress the opponent. But a calm look into the eyes of the interlocutor, interrupted from time to time by glances to the side, emphasizes your interest in the interlocutor.

Pose. The “weight” of what you want to say to the interlocutor increases if you stand or sit relatively close to him, and leaning slightly towards him. Observing your own posture and posture in conversation will help you determine their effectiveness.

Gestures. The appeal, accentuated by expressive gestures, acquires additional meaning. Particularly expressive gestures are an angry wave of the fist towards the opponent, a soft touch on the arm or shoulder of the interlocutor, open hand towards the interlocutor (“Stop!”).

Facial expression, voice, tone. When you want to appear stern and/or angry, you will not smile, but adopt an expression that matches your feelings, and vice versa, your smile will be more natural when you are in the right mood.

A monotonous whisper will not convince the interlocutor that you have firm intentions, and a loud epithet addressed to him will make him wary. So your tone can hurt in achieving the goal. A statement made in an even, firm, calm voice, without intimidating intonations, will sound convincing enough and will have the greatest effect.

And finally, regarding the volume of the voice. Do you usually speak so quietly that others can hardly hear you? Or do you always speak so loudly that people think you are constantly angry? Control your voice and you'll have another powerful element in your effort to become confident.

The pace of speech. Insecure tone and hesitations in speech are a signal to others that you are not confident enough in yourself. You don't have to be a natural speaker to get your point across, but you do need to develop the ability to speak fluently. Comments made clearly and in a measured tone have a better effect than quick but hesitant speech full of meaningless words, such as: "well", "you know", "um", etc.

Pick the right time. Although spontaneity of self-expression is preferable to hesitation and delay, it is still necessary to choose the right time for a conversation. For example, it is preferable to talk with the boss in his office and in the absence of strangers. No one likes to "look bad" or admit their mistake in front of others. Such a conversation should take place in an appropriate setting, that is, in private.

Don't worry about the thought that it will be too late. Even if your conversation can no longer change anything, anyway, let it take place. If you hold a grudge, it will bother you and negatively affect your relationship. It's never too late.

You should express your own feelings, taking responsibility for them. Notice the difference in the expressions: “I am extremely indignant (a)” and “You bastard!”. There is no need to humiliate another (aggressiveness) in order to express your feelings (self-affirmation).

Conflicts
constructive conflict resolution. Conflict resolution is made easier:

1. When both sides avoid the scheme: "I will be the winner, and you will be the loser." Then both sides have the opportunity to win at least partially, and neither should lose.
2. When both parties have the same information regarding a problem that has arisen. Check the facts!
3. When the main goals of the parties are compatible (for example, "relax and have fun on vacation", but not "where we will go").
4. When the parties are honest and open with each other.
5. When each party takes responsibility for their feelings.
6. When each side is willing to deal with the problem openly, without avoiding or not wanting to see it.
7. When something like an exchange system is used. Negotiation, quid pro quid, is at the heart of conflict resolution.

If we cooperate in solving a problem and each side concedes something that the other side wants, it is very likely that we can find a mutually acceptable solution.

A conflict that has reached the point where both sides feel intense dislike can only be resolved when feelings are expressed honestly and openly. Confidently: “I am outraged by your unwillingness to understand my point of view,” can be the beginning of a constructive dialogue. Passive: "Let's forget all this" (to avoid a problem) or aggressive: "You stubborn ass!" – will definitely leave both parties frustrated and dissatisfied.

There is nothing wrong with being angry! But use a positive, honest, confident way of expressing your feelings. You and those around you will benefit from this!

Personal expression in communication

Functions and individual features of self-expression

We understand the self-expression of a person in communication as a wide range of verbal and non-verbal behavioral acts that a person uses to convey information about himself to others and create a certain image of himself.

In psychology, the problem of self-expression of a person in communication is studied through two phenomena: self-disclosure, which refers to the communication of information about oneself to other people, and self-presentation, which consists in the purposeful creation of a certain impression of oneself in the eyes of others. Most of the works on this issue are devoted to the general patterns of these processes, as well as the factors that determine them.

It is possible to single out several levels of self-expression of the individual according to the criterion of awareness, purposefulness and correspondence of the expressive behavior of the individual and its internal content.

1. Involuntary non-verbal self-expression.
2. Arbitrary self-expression using non-verbal means.
3. Arbitrary verbal and / or non-verbal self-expression corresponding to the internal state of the individual;
4. Arbitrary verbal and / or non-verbal self-expression, aimed at forming a distorted idea of ​​\u200b\u200bhis personality.

As the transition from the first level to the fourth increases awareness, purposefulness, as well as the degree of artificiality of actions performed by the person. In a specific communicative act, these levels of self-expression can be combined. For example, verbal behavior can occur at the fourth level, i.e. carry distorted information about a person, and non-verbal behavior at the same time can unfold at the third level, i.e. express true feelings.

It is proposed to single out the following functions of self-expression.

1. The existential function is that, by sending information about his personality, a person asserts the fact of his existence and claims that others include him in social interaction.

2. The adaptive function is manifested in the fact that self-expression, first of all, is aimed at including a particular person in a complex social system, since a person acts as a performer of a large number of social roles that society provides him.

3. The communicative function is genetically original, since all information sent by a person is addressed to other people; without an audience, it is devoid of any meaning.

4. The identification function consists in the fact that the self-expression of a person is aimed at reflecting his belonging to certain social groups or psychological types. This allows the audience to immediately recognize the person as a representative of some social community.

5. The function of regulating interpersonal relations is based on the fact that the amount of information sent, its content, frequency, reciprocity, leads to a certain nature of interpersonal relations. People build their relationships using self-expression to achieve a certain distance, position and sign of the relationship.

6. The transformative function is that the self-expression of one person causes certain changes in those people who have become the recipients of the information received. Changes can occur in them with different signs (socially desirable or negative), different in magnitude (another's example can even become an impetus for a change in lifestyle), self-expression can affect a different number of people (fans or opponents of this style of presenting oneself). All this will depend on the scale of the individual and the degree of novelty of his contribution to the development of the tradition of self-expression.

7. The function of self-regulation is due to the fact that self-expression serves as a means of coordinating the self-concept of the individual and her behavior. Self-expression also helps to reset emotional tension and discharges.

8. The function of self-embodiment is related to the fact that, by expressing himself in communication with other people, a person creates in their minds an image of himself that exists regardless of his earthly existence. Using indirect forms of self-expression (written texts, portraits, photographs, audio and video materials), a person perpetuates himself as a representative of a certain era and geographical environment.

People differ significantly in the means that they use to express themselves in communication, and in the tasks that they set for themselves in this regard. An analysis of the literature allows us to identify seven main characteristics that are important for describing an individual strategy for self-expression of a person in communication.

1. The degree of awareness and purposefulness of the information sent about oneself. People vary greatly in their ability to manage the process of forming impressions of themselves in others. In Western psychology, the process of controlling one's own impression is called self-monitoring. M. Snyder revealed that people who are prone to self-monitoring follow more social norms, control their self-expression better, imitate others more, are more demonstrative and conformal.

2. Naturalness or artificiality of the created image. This is one of the key points in the problem of self-expression of the individual in communication. Often it is solved in a simplified way by attributing naturalness and sincerity to the phenomenon of self-disclosure, and artificiality and distortion of the image to the phenomenon of self-presentation. In fact, self-disclosure has many types, and far from all of them a person remains completely sincere. In addition, self-disclosure is never completely complete and factual. Any story about oneself contains a "literary" component, which includes the interpretation of what happened, genre moments, orientation to the audience's expectations, and much more, which leads the narrator away from the true event. Self-presentation also takes many forms, ranging from the presentation of traits that are really inherent in the subject, to the presentation of absolutely incorrect information about oneself. Each person uses the whole palette of opportunities for self-disclosure and self-presentation, depending on the requirements of the situation and their own motives, however, the ratio of truthful and distorted information, as well as the boundaries of acceptable lies, is different for each person.

3. The activity of self-expression of the individual in communication. In relation to self-disclosure, it can be defined through such characteristics as its volume, duration and frequency. In self-presentation, activity is manifested in the desire of the individual to be in the center of attention of others, in demonstrative behavior, in the use of integration and self-promotion strategies. As a rule, the activity of self-expression is more characteristic of persons striving for leadership, social recognition, and the development of their professional career.

4. The breadth of self-expression of the individual. It can be determined by the number of areas of communication, which are covered by the transmission of personality characteristics. First of all, these are family-related, business and friendly spheres of communication. Through the spheres of contact communication, a person enters wider social communities in which he can also present himself. These include professional, national, religious, party, club and other social groups. The next level of presentation is related to the national level, and an even higher level is related to international influence. The breadth of self-expression is connected with the scale of the personality, with its ability to influence events of different social levels.

5. Variability of the presented images. This characteristic is manifested in the ability to change images in different situations of interpersonal interaction. The need to look and act differently is connected, firstly, with a large number of roles that a person performs, and secondly, with the variability of situations in which his communication takes place. In accordance with these two factors, one can conditionally single out cross-partner variability of self-presentation, which means that a person changes the strategy of his behavior depending on the partner with whom he communicates, and cross-situational variability, which is associated with a change in behavior depending on the requirements of the situation. . Psychologists assess the tendency of a person to variability of their behavior in different ways. M. Snyder regards it as evidence of the desire to manage the impression made on others, others consider it as a manifestation of social competence. There are big differences between people in the ability to change their image and behavior.

6. Normativity or cultural self-expression of the individual. It has already been said above that a person in his self-expression must be in a certain role position. Each social role contains prescriptions for its performance, which exist as a tradition in the culture to which the person himself refers. In the past, these regulations were very strict, and a person who deviated from traditional behavior within the framework of a social role was severely punished, up to expulsion from society. The modern world provides a person with ample opportunities to choose both the roles themselves and the options for their performance based on different cultural traditions. Personal identification mechanisms have a great influence on the choice of the way of presenting oneself in communication with other people, since a person strives to be perceived not only as an individual, but also as a representative of a certain social community.

7. Creativity of self-expression of the individual. Each person has the opportunity to take a ready-made image for the performance of a social role or bring new aspects to its performance based on personal experience. Creative people create new opportunities for expressing themselves through clothes, speech, self-presentation strategies used, which then become the property of the masses.

The identified individual features of personality self-expression are stable and can serve as the basis for predicting the behavior of a person in a particular act of communication.

Self-disclosure in interpersonal communication: types, characteristics and functions

The study of self-disclosure began within humanistic psychology in the 1950s. This was no coincidence, since it was this direction that began to consider a person as a subject of his own life. This was also manifested in the terms introduced by its representatives: self-actualization, self-expression, self-disclosure and self-development. Fundamental for the formation of humanistic psychology were the works of A. Maslow, in which self-creation was first considered as an integral property of human nature.

Self-disclosure is defined as the process of communicating information about oneself to other people; conscious and voluntary disclosure of one's Self to another. The content of self-disclosure can be thoughts, feelings of a person, facts of his biography, current life problems, his relationship with people around him, impressions from works of art, life principles, and much more.

The need for self-disclosure is inherent in every person, and it must be satisfied, since its suppression can cause not only psychological problems, but also various mental and somatic diseases. Every person has a need to open himself to at least one significant other. Self-disclosure plays a central role in the development and existence of interpersonal relationships. It is an indicator of the depth and degree of positivity of relations (sympathy, love, friendship). As relationships progress to more intimate ones, people talk about themselves more fully and deeply. In essence, self-disclosure means the initiation of another person into one's inner world, the removal of the curtain separating the "I" from the "Other". It is the most direct way of transmitting your individuality to others. Self-disclosure is a complex and multifaceted process of expressing a person in communication, sensitive to many individual, personal, socio-demographic and situational factors. It can take place in a direct or indirect form, with varying degrees of awareness, using verbal and non-verbal channels of information transfer, and be focused on a different number of recipients. Consider the main types of self-disclosure.

According to the criterion of the source of the initiative, self-disclosure can be voluntary or compulsory. The degree of voluntariness varies: from the fervent desire of the person himself to tell another person about his feelings or thoughts to the “pulling out” of this information by the partner. Telling about yourself in an interrogation setting can be an example of forced self-disclosure.

According to the type of contact between the subject of communication and the recipient, one can single out direct and indirect self-disclosure. Direct self-disclosure is observed in the situation of physical contact of the subject of self-disclosure with the recipient, during which they can see and hear each other. Indirect self-disclosure can be done by telephone, written text, electronic text on the Internet. Direct self-disclosure allows the subject to receive audio-visual feedback from the recipient and, in accordance with this, control the process of self-disclosure (expand or collapse, deepen, etc.). At the same time, the presence of a person fetters the speaker, especially when reporting negative information. It is no coincidence that Z. Freud came up with the idea during a psychoanalytic session to sit down behind the head of a client lying on the couch so that there would be no eye contact between them. IN Everyday life people prefer to report negative actions (such as breaking up a relationship) by phone or in writing. The written form distances partners and deprives them of a large amount of information transmitted through a non-verbal channel (voice intonation, facial expressions, etc.). In addition, it is associated with a large delay in the exchange of information, although this is overcome on the Internet: in the forum you can communicate in real time.

Diary entries are a special form of mediated self-disclosure. They, as a rule, are conducted by a person for himself in order to fix the events of his life in memory and streamline life impressions. They differ in the degree of intimacy of the topics covered in them and the detail of the descriptions. The authors of the diaries have different attitudes towards the possibility of reading them by other people. There are blogs on the Internet - these are personal diaries that are open to the public. Readers can comment on entries, discuss the identity of their author. Newspaper or Internet advertisements for a desire to enter into a love or friendship can also be considered as examples of self-disclosure, although self-disclosure of personality prevails here.

Self-disclosure is greatly influenced by the number of people for whom it is intended. In Western psychology, the person or group of persons to whom information is addressed is called the target of self-disclosure. Most often, the target is one person, and his characteristics (socio-demographic and personal characteristics, the nature of relations with the speaker) to a large extent determine the content and formal characteristics of self-disclosure. Sometimes the target of self-disclosure is a small group (for example, family members, work colleagues, fellow travelers in a train compartment). In this case, as a rule, the degree of intimacy of the reported information, its detail decreases. A special form is self-disclosure in psychological training groups or in psychotherapeutic groups. They first create an atmosphere of mutual trust and looseness, which allows its participants to fearlessly report information about themselves that can compromise them in the eyes of those present.

The target of self-disclosure can be large groups of people, up to the whole of humanity. This can be called public self-disclosure. His examples are interviews of famous people in the media, autobiographies published in the form of books. The goals of such self-disclosure are different from previous forms. Public self-disclosure is always aimed at drawing attention to oneself and creating a certain impression about oneself. It includes a large element of self-presentation, since it is not always sincere.

According to the criterion of distance and formalization of communication, self-disclosure can be personal and role-based. Role self-disclosure unfolds within the framework of the role in which a person is at a given moment in time. For example, being in the role of a patient at a doctor's appointment, a person talks about himself mainly that is connected with his illness. At the same time, a person can touch on intimate details and not feel embarrassed, since communication takes place at the role level. Personal self-disclosure presupposes the existence of relationships of sympathy, friendship, love, which are the basis for self-disclosure. The nature of these relations regulates the direction and content of self-disclosure.

According to the degree of preparedness by the subject of the process of self-disclosure, one can single out the unintentional and the prepared. When a person spontaneously discloses information about their personality in the process of communication, this is an example of unintentional self-disclosure. Sometimes this happens in response to someone else's frankness, or out of a desire to entertain the interlocutor. When a person plans in advance to communicate some information about himself to another street or group of people, then we are dealing with prepared self-disclosure. For example, a young man may carefully consider the wording of his declaration of love to his girlfriend. Moreover, he can take care of the environment in which this will be done.

Another important indicator of self-disclosure is the degree of sincerity of the subject of self-disclosure, which is manifested in the reliability of information reported about oneself. Any information provided by a person about himself is not complete and absolutely reliable. When a person makes deliberate changes to this message, then we are dealing with pseudo-self-disclosure.

In addition to the above features, self-disclosure has a number of characteristics that can be determined using psychological methods.

The depth of self-disclosure is understood as the detail, completeness and sincerity of the coverage of a particular topic. In contrast, superficial self-disclosure involves incomplete and partial coverage of some aspects of one's personality. Some authors attribute the intimacy of disclosure to depth. In our opinion, this is wrong, since intimacy is associated with the subject of self-disclosure.

Studies of foreign and domestic psychologists have shown that there are open and closed topics. Open Topics are characterized by high self-disclosure and contain, as a rule, neutral information about the interests and tastes, attitudes and opinions of a person. Closed topics include information about the sexual sphere, about the human body, its personal qualities and finances. Self-disclosure on these topics is intimate, as it is about what the person hides the most. In the US, the topic of sources and volume of income is more closed than the topic of health.

The breadth of self-disclosure is determined by the amount of information and the variety of topics on which a person is revealed. Telling another about himself, the subject can touch on only one topic or several topics. The depth and breadth of self-disclosure make up its total volume (or intensity). People vary greatly in their degree of self-disclosure, which reflects the notion of the “openness norm.”

The selectivity of self-disclosure reflects the ability of a person to vary the content and volume of self-disclosure in communication with different people. Psychologists have found great differences in the characteristics of self-disclosure of the same person in communication with different partners. Some people, when describing some event in their life, repeat the same story, other people modify it depending on their partner.

Differentiation of self-disclosure can be defined as the ability of a person to change the volume and depth of self-disclosure depending on the topic. Individual differences lie in how much a person can change the volume and depth of self-disclosure depending on the topic. The combination of selectivity and differentiation makes it possible to judge the flexibility of self-disclosure, which reflects the ability to restructure the message about oneself depending on one's own goals, the characteristics of the situation and the partner.

The emotionality of self-disclosure is characterized by the overall emotional saturation of the message, as well as the ratio of positive and negative information reported about oneself. To convey his feelings at the moment of self-disclosure, a person uses verbal means (use of metaphors, epithets, etc.), paralinguistic (speed of speech, loudness, etc.) and extralinguistic (pauses, laughter, crying) means. Self-disclosure can be boastful, entertaining, plaintive, instructive.

The duration of self-disclosure is measured by the time spent on it by a person in the process of experiment or natural behavior. The temporal characteristics of self-disclosure also include the proportion between listening and narration, as well as between narration about oneself and on abstract topics.

So, the main characteristics of self-disclosure are: depth, completeness and breadth (which together make up the volume of self-disclosure), duration, the ratio of positive and negative information about oneself (affective characteristics), flexibility (which consists of differentiation and selectivity). If we make a table of types of self-disclosure based on the criteria discussed above, then it will look like this.

Table. Types of self-disclosure

Self-disclosure permeates the fabric of interpersonal communication of people, performing a number of important psychological functions.

1. It promotes the mental health of the communicator's personality.

2. Self-disclosure develops the personality because it promotes self-knowledge and self-determination.

3. It is a means of personal self-regulation due to the mechanism of emotional discharge, clarification of the problem situation through its verbal analysis, receiving emotional support from the interlocutor. The latter significantly reduces a person's mental stress and is the main goal of confessional forms of self-disclosure.

Self-disclosure is also important for the recipient. It helps him to get to know the subject of self-disclosure better, and also gives him the feeling that he is needed, that he is trusted. In general, self-disclosure contributes to the development and maintenance of interpersonal relationships.

The influence of the personality of the recipient and the relationship with him on the process of self-disclosure

In terms of the influence of the time factor of acquaintance on the process of self-disclosure, it should be mutual and gradual. If one of the partners begins to force things and give too much intimate information about themselves, then the suddenness and untimeliness of such self-disclosure can even lead to a break in relations. If people are focused on long-term relationships, then they self-disclose slowly and step by step, but if the relationship is obviously short-lived, then self-disclosure can be deep and easy at once (as, for example, with a fellow traveler on a train).

Mutual openness is necessary condition relationship development in the early stages. Once the relationship has been strengthened, reciprocal frankness does not have to immediately follow the partner's self-disclosure. But if it does not occur for a long period of time, then the relationship worsens.

If people long time do not feel reciprocity in self-disclosure from each other as the emotional relationship deepens, then their relationship will never reach the stage of integration. People who are in long-term intimate relationships (for example, spouses) are more selective in the topics of reciprocal self-disclosure to their partner than in relation to unfamiliar people. Apparently, this is due to the great consequences for close people of mutual self-disclosure.

When analyzing the stage of development of interpersonal relations, the functional purpose of each stage and the change in the personal states of communication partners are distinguished.

1 stage. Accumulation of consent. Partners develop an idea of ​​the desirability and possibility of building relationships. Both parties strive to agree on assessments.

2 stage. Search for common interests. Partners are looking for a field of common interests. The topics of communication are neutral: hobbies, sports, politics.

3 stage. Acceptance of the personal qualities of the partner and the principles of communication that he offers. Self-disclosure at the level of personal characteristics, habits, principles.

4 stage. Finding out the qualities that are dangerous for communication. Deeper probing of the partner. A challenge for frankness in the realm of shortcomings. Attempts of self-disclosure in the area of ​​negative personal qualities, sometimes in a veiled form.

5 stage. Adaptation of partners to each other. Acceptance of each other's personality traits. Deepening mutual frankness based on greater mutual trust.

6 stage. Achieving compatibility in pairs. The distribution of roles, the formation of a system of relations. Developing a sense of "we". Identification of the partner's way of thinking and lifestyle. Self-disclosure at the level of meanings and life plans.

As can be seen from a brief description of the stages of development of relations, self-disclosure acts, on the one hand, as a means of developing relations, and on the other hand, as their result. It moves from neutral and superficial to intimate and profound.

There is a lot of evidence that the process of self-disclosure and satisfaction with the result of self-disclosure to a very large extent depends on the behavior of the recipient.

Modern psycholinguistics recognizes the active role of the listener. The addressee (the target of self-disclosure) is a full participant in the communicative act throughout its entire length. If we keep in mind the dialogue model of communication, which is most typical for a situation of self-disclosure between close people, then there is a constant change in the positions of the communicator and the recipient.

One of the important problems of personality psychology and social psychology is the study of the characteristics of the recipient's personality, which contribute to a more complete and easy self-disclosure of the communicator. There are a number of professions (journalists, doctors, lawyers, psychologists) for which the ability to call other people to frankness is a professionally important quality. The effectiveness of any type of psychotherapy is based on the client's trust in the psychotherapist and the willingness to give intimate information about himself.

Foreign researchers call people who know how to call the interlocutor to frankness, "opener", which literally translates from English as "opener".

The personal and behavioral characteristics of people capable of causing self-disclosure of a communication partner were studied. It was found that women rate their ability to cause someone else's self-disclosure higher than men. An additional survey of the subjects revealed that when filling out this methodology, they adhere to different strategies. When answering questions, women usually imagined their past experience of communicating with strangers, while men imagined their past experience of communicating with friends and relatives. In addition, it turned out that the motivation for calling their partner to openness differed: women did this in order to initiate a new acquaintance, and men in order to determine the partner’s ability to help them. This confirms the data on greater egocentrism and pragmatic orientation in the communication of men compared to women.

The study examined how the ability of the interviewee to challenge the partner to be frank affects the success of the interviewer. For this purpose, 72 pairs of unfamiliar female students were formed with extreme values ​​for the ability to cause a partner to be frank. They found that interviewers with high ability were only more skillful when interviewing girls with low ability. Conversely, girls with low scores on the Miller Inventory performed better when interviewed with highly capable girls. In the latter case, interviewees with high social skills exerted a positive influence on inept interviewers. They relieved their stress, which led to better situation communication, which ultimately contributed to greater self-disclosure of the respondents.

Thus, it can be concluded that self-disclosure depends on many factors related to the personalities of the subjects of communication and the relationships they are in at the moment.

Strategies and tactics of self-presentation

In foreign psychology, one of the central problems in the study of self-presentation is the question of strategies and tactics of self-presentation. Interest in this problem is due to its great practical significance, since each person, on the one hand, wants to skillfully master these strategies, and on the other hand, seeks to see and recognize them in the behavior of their communication partners. To date, a large empirical material has been accumulated, indicating the influence of many socio-psychological and personal characteristics of the subject of self-presentation and his partner, as well as the circumstances of their interaction on the implementation of different strategies and tactics for presenting one's image.

The strategy of self-presentation is a set of behavioral acts of a person, separated in time and space, aimed at creating a certain image in the eyes of others. The self-presentation tactic is a certain technique by which the chosen strategy is implemented. A self-presentation strategy can include many individual tactics. Tactics of self-presentation is a short-term phenomenon and is aimed at creating the desired impression in a particular life situation.

A classification of self-presentation strategies was created based on the goals and tactics that people use in communicating with others. Self-presentation allows a person to use various sources of power, expanding and maintaining influence in interpersonal relationships.

1. The desire to please - integration. This strategy is designed for the power of charm. The main tactic is to please other people, to flatter and agree, to present socially approved qualities. The goal is to appear attractive.

2. Self-promotion is a demonstration of competence that grants the power of an expert. The main tactic is to prove their superiority and boast. The goal is to appear competent.

3. Exemplary - the desire to serve as an example for other people, which gives the power of a mentor. The main tactic is to demonstrate spiritual superiority, combined with boasting and the desire to discuss and condemn other people. The goal is to appear morally blameless.

4. Intimidation - a show of power that forces others to obey and gives the power of fear. The main tactic is threat. The goal is to appear dangerous.

5. Demonstration of weakness or pleading. Obliges others to help, which gives the power of compassion. The main tactic is to ask for help, to beg. The goal is to appear weak.

The first three self-presentation strategies are the most common, as they correspond to socially approved behavior.

He distinguishes two strategies of self-presentation, differing in the way they are achieved and in the rewards they achieve: "pleasant strategy" - aims to present oneself in a favorable light, is driven by external criteria (adjustment to the audience) and achieves an external reward - approvals; "self-constructing" - criteria and rewards within the person himself, a person maintains and strengthens his "ideal self", which makes an impression on others.

There are assertive and defensive types of strategies:

• affirmative strategy involves behavior aimed at creating a positive identity in the eyes of others;
• the defensive strategy is aimed at restoring a positive identity and eliminating a negative image.

The first strategy consists of an active, but not aggressive, effort to create a positive impression. Defensive strategies include justification, intimidation, pleading, and other forms of socially frowned upon behavior.

The most detailed classification of self-presentation strategies was carried out by A. Schutz, who, on the basis of summarizing a large amount of literature devoted to this problem, identified her own criteria for categorizing tactics and strategies of self-presentation.

As such criteria, she proposed to consider the attitude towards creating a positive image or avoiding a bad image, the degree of activity of the subject in creating the image, and the degree of manifestation of the subject's aggressiveness in the process of self-presentation. Based on a combination of these criteria, she identifies four groups of self-presentation strategies.

1. Positive self-presentation. The motto is "I'm good." This type of self-presentation contains active but non-aggressive actions to create a positive impression of oneself. This group includes the strategies of striving to please, self-promotion, and setting an example. The main tactics are as follows:

• Bask in the rays of someone else's glory. It was first described by R. Cialdini, who studied the psychology of influence. It is based on associating oneself with famous and respected people.
• Associating oneself with important and positive events (for example, a person characterizes himself as a participant in a battle or construction site).
• Strengthening the significance and importance of those events in which a person participated, and those people with whom he had a chance to communicate.
• Demonstration of influence. A person inspires others with the possibility of great positive consequences from his actions. This tactic is especially characteristic of politicians.
• Demonstration of identification with the audience. A person demonstrates the closeness of his views, attitudes to those people on whom self-presentation is directed.

2. Offensive self-presentation. Based on the desire to look good, denigrating other people. This is an aggressive way of creating the desired image, all tactics of which are aimed at criticizing a competitor. The following tactics apply here:

• Undermining the opposition. Negative information about a competitor is reported in order to look better against its background.
• Critical installation in the assessment of any phenomena of reality. It creates the illusion of the speaker's competence in relation to the topic under discussion.
• Criticism of those who criticize him. This creates the illusion of bias on the part of the critics. For example, politicians often accuse journalists of being bribed.
• Change the topic of discussion in a winning direction for yourself.

3. Protective self-presentation. Sets a goal not to look bad. A person avoids the opportunity to give a negative impression of himself by moving away from interaction with other people.

The tactics used in this case are as follows:

• Avoidance of public attention.
• Minimal self-disclosure.
• Careful self-description. A person does not talk not only about his shortcomings, but also about his merits, so as not to find himself in a situation where he cannot confirm his skill.
• Minimizing social interaction.

4. Defensive self-presentation. The subject is active in creating an image, but has an attitude to avoid a negative image. This strategy usually unfolds when a person is accused of being involved in some undesirable event. The greater the role of a person in this event, and the more difficult it is, the more difficult it is for a person to change his negative image towards a positive one.

This strategy is characterized by the following tactics of self-justification.

• event denial. A person denies the very fact of a negative event, in connection with which he is accused.
• Changing the interpretation of an event in order to reduce the negative assessment of it. The person recognizes the very fact of the event, but presents it in a more positive way.
• Dissociation. A person underestimates the degree of his negative participation in this event, seeks to dissociate himself from it.
• Justification. A person can insist on the legality of his actions, or give arguments in his favor.
• Apologies. The man claims that he could not do otherwise, because he could not control the course of events.
• An admission of guilt and repentance, a promise not to repeat mistakes in the future.

These tactics can be deployed sequentially as the blaming party gains more information about the negative event, but can also be used separately.

This classification also does not cover the full range of self-presentation strategies and tactics. In the works of M. Seligman, the tactics of learned helplessness was described, which consists in the fact that a person deliberately pretends to be incapable of the actions or actions required of him, in the expectation that the people around him will help him. This tactic is implemented as part of the strategy of demonstrating weakness, because other strategies are based on demonstrating superiority over a partner. If a person was actually able to cope with the problem on his own, then this behavior can be classified as a manipulative tactic.

Psychologically close to it is the tactic of creating artificial obstacles by the person himself on the way to achieving the goal. A person defends his self-esteem and his public image, explaining failures by external circumstances or situational factors (malaise, lack of time for preparation, competitive advantages, etc.). The tactic of praising an opponent is a win-win, because if he wins, a person proves to others that he had a strong and worthy opponent. If the man himself wins, then his victory is doubly honorable. False modesty tactics also significantly increase the positivity of the image of a person, especially in those cultures that value self-restraint (for example, in Japan, China, Russia). But the same tactics in the USA will bring a person the opposite effect, since it is customary there to openly declare one's successes and abilities.

Allocate such tactics as painting. In English, it was called "Adonization" by the name of the mythological hero Adonis, who was in love with himself. The goal of this tactic is to look outwardly attractive. The implementation of this tactic is quite complicated, since the criteria for attractiveness are different for different people, so the subject of self-presentation must know the tastes of the audience for which the design of his appearance is designed.

In conclusion, it should be noted that a person uses many tactics of self-presentation, depending on the situation in which he finds himself, but at the same time he has the most preferred techniques that most adequately correspond to his image. Each person builds his image based on his gender, age, belonging to a particular culture, social class, profession and his personal characteristics.

Self-feed techniques

Each of us at least once wondered what impression he makes on others. That is, what are the results of his self-feeding. Meanwhile, the perception of a partner, an interlocutor can be quite successfully controlled, directing his attention to the necessary factors.

Our interlocutor, like us, has his own goals, his own idea of ​​the nature of interaction, but most importantly, he is able to greatly influence how we see it. This process, which implies the ability of a living object to interfere with the process of perceiving one's own image in a communication partner, is called self-feeding. And, in fact, is to control the attention of the interlocutor.

When perceiving an inanimate, passive object, we form our attitude, for the most part, based on our own internal state. If you are not in the best mood, then your attention will be directed to all the shortcomings of the object, on the contrary, a good mood will allow you to focus only on the positive aspects of the object. When we evaluate an object, it cannot influence our perception of it, but when it comes to evaluation, the perception of the interlocutor, everything is different here.

Each of us is able to control the attention of the interlocutor, and for this we have at our disposal a lot of means - bright clothes, facial expressions, gestures, intonation and much more. With the help of these tools, we can create a hierarchy of elements of our image, putting and displaying in the first place the most interesting elements that will help make our image more attractive and interesting to the interlocutor. We seem to tell the partner “pay attention to this first of all, then to this, this and this, and then to this, and now look here ...”. The interlocutor's attention can be controlled both consciously and unconsciously. At the same time, the awareness of the process has nothing to do with the success or failure of our self-presentation. But, of course, perfect conscious self-giving is much more effective in a number of cases. This is akin to the "magic" of magicians who masterfully control the attention of the audience.

Self-feeding is a tool that allows you to control the attention of others. But the purpose of self-feeding is not this control. The purpose of self-presentation is to create the desired image in the eyes of the interlocutor, which is determined by our goals. It should also be remembered that the basis of self-feeding is intuitive knowledge about the features of the formation of the first impression. We unconsciously (for the most part) direct the perception of the interlocutor along any particular path. This process may include either imposing a certain stereotype that can set the context for your relationship, or communicating information that will help the interlocutor better determine your motives and goals, or ways to manage the interlocutor, which are aimed at closer and more accurate interaction.

Management of attention, perception of the interlocutor occurs by means of emphasizing and highlighting those features that “turn on” the corresponding mechanisms of social perception. Next, we will look at the most common of them.

How we look greatly influences how others perceive us and our behavior.

Self-feeding excellence
Such self-presentation, in order to be successful, must necessarily be based on certain signs, namely, signs of superiority - the appropriate manner of dressing, speaking and behaving. That is, the emphasis is on those details that show a high social status. It is very important that key points, to which the attention of the interlocutor is directed, were underlined and highlighted.

So, for example, fashionable and expensive clothes will be a necessary accent only when others are dressed out of fashion. If everyone is dressed approximately the same, this element will not work. That is why in certain circles there is a "race" for the latest fashion, it is necessary to maintain self-feeding at the required level. And since superiority is mostly expressed through the cost of clothing, accessories and other attributes of high social status, then it is these moments that should be highlighted during self-feeding. Accordingly, if for some reason you need to hide superiority over your interlocutor, then the emphasis should be on completely opposite things.

Self-feeding attractiveness
Such an aspect as attractiveness also allows you to manage yourself. At the same time, this aspect is important for everyone, in contrast to superiority, which is not always appropriate and expedient to emphasize.

The tools with which emphasis is placed on attractiveness can be different - these are the costs of cosmetics, efforts aimed at creating an image. There is a rule of self-delivery of attractiveness, which is known to almost everyone: clothes alone cannot decorate a person, a person is adorned by the work that he has done so that the clothes correspond to his external data.

There are times when we still need to reduce our attractiveness - receiving guests (there is a stereotype that the hostess should not be more beautiful than the guests), someone else's wedding (the stereotype says that the bride should outshine everyone with her beauty), passing an exam to a female teacher (not why to emphasize, especially to a student girl, her attractiveness and cause irritation). In these cases, self-serving attraction is also produced, but only the emphasis is on less time and effort.

Self-feeding relationship
The self-feed of the relationship is much superior to both of the above self-feeds, because the main thing for any communication is the demonstration of the attitude towards the interlocutor. At the same time, it is important in some cases to demonstrate not only a good attitude, but also a bad one (disapproval, for example). Underestimating the self-feeding of a relationship can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of communication.

We begin to learn the basics of self-presentation techniques from childhood, when parents explain to the child what is good and what should not be done, what to say, etc. Therefore, the self-feeding of the relationship occurs more consciously than the self-feeding of attractiveness and superiority. After all, everyone knows that a frown, impatience in gestures, formality of tone cannot set the interlocutor in a friendly way, while an open look, posture, smile, on the contrary, have and help to establish contact.

However, this knowledge is more intuitive, because how to distinguish an open look, for example, from a fixed one, which is more often interpreted as hostility? Only based on your feelings, experience and intuition. But intuitive knowledge is more related to non-verbal ways of self-feeding attitudes. The verbal methods of self-presentation are well known to us and it is much easier to classify them according to the type of “positive self-presentation” and “negative self-presentation” - this is our agreement or disagreement with the interlocutor, expressed in verbal form.

A very important point in the self-presentation of the relationship is that the verbal method does not contradict the non-verbal one, since the presence of a contradiction will always be noticed by the interlocutor (on an intuitive level, at least), which means that the interlocutor will be forced to conclude that you are lying to him, which leads to to a negative assessment of you in his eyes.

Self-feeding of the current status
This is a manifestation in our appearance and behavior of the current state of the moment. In some cases, when we want to emphasize some experience so that the interlocutor understands us better, we can “replay”, that is, unnecessarily emphasize our excitement, for example, or anger. This can happen both unintentionally and on purpose, but in any case it is a self-presentation of our current state, which is aimed at ensuring that the interlocutor understands the true motives of behavior. If we hide our state, we strive not to show our feelings outwardly, then we are talking about negative self-presentation, because in real communication an attempt to hide our true feelings only makes it difficult to understand each other. If you are interested in your interlocutor, you need to get rid of negative self-feeding, that is, to behave more naturally and openly. Self-presentation of the current state is very essential and important for successful communication.

Self-feeding causes of behavior
An equally important role is played by self-presentation, the purpose of which is to inform the interlocutor about the reasons for his behavior. Most simple ways such self-presentation are phrases and phrases that we often use - “circumstances have developed in such a way that ...”, “I was forced to ...”, “I am not to blame that ...”, etc. In this case, the attention of the communication partner is drawn to the reason for the action, which, in our opinion, is the most acceptable.

There are more complex methods of such self-feeding. For example, people's stories about various life difficulties, and regardless of the desire or unwillingness of the interlocutor to listen to them. Such self-presentation is of a long-term nature, because when a person decides to ask about the state of affairs of such an interlocutor, he immediately recalls such “stories”, and therefore often attributes the reason to already known circumstances, and not to the qualities of a person. The opposite position of a person, which is expressed by the phrase “I am always lucky,” usually leads to the fact that others see only the behavior of the “lucky one”.

All aspects of self-presentation cannot be described, but it is important to remember that they affect the understanding of us by our partners. Therefore, think about why, for example, you are constantly to blame for all your failures, and Vasily Vasilyev, like you, is always a victim of circumstances ... Apparently, in addition to the injustice of the opinions of others, your efforts are also manifested in this.

Self-feeding always affects our communication with partners, it does not depend on how fully we imagine this process and how we relate to it. For example, two people are going to have an “important” conversation with their superiors. At the same time, the first one puts on an official suit, white shirt, tie; the second, on the contrary, chooses informal clothes - worn jeans, a sweater and sneakers. However, in this case, self-feeding is performed by both people, regardless of their attitude towards this same self-feeding. The first is trying to emphasize formality and respectability, the second - on independence and independence.

Self-feeding is present in absolutely any communication process, regardless of whether a person wants to produce it or not. Therefore, it is necessary to recognize its presence in communication and try to understand the patterns, means and methods of this process.