Scientific and everyday psychology: what’s the difference?

Whether we realize it or not, we encounter mental phenomena every day: we observe our own mood swings, we see how the character of our children changes as they grow up, we understand when the leader is not in the spirit.

It would seem that we do not need special knowledge for this. Moreover, worldly psychology is certainly an older field. Even before the advent of psychology as a science, knowledge was fixed in the form of archetypes, fixed in proverbs and sayings.

Psychology, as a science and everyday practice, has a common goal: to learn to understand mental phenomena and manage them. So what is the difference between them?

Five differences were formulated by the Russian psychologist Yulia Borisovna Gippenreiter.

1. Everyday psychological knowledge is specific, scientific psychology deduces patterns

Numerous television programs (“Let’s get married”, “Let them talk”, “Male and female”, “About love”) are built according to the same scenario. The details of the problem are discussed, experts and viewers empathize with the hero, express opinions and advice.

But are psychological problems solved in this way? No. Most often, as a result of the discussion, there is a feeling of coincidence with the life experience of the invited experts. The viewer experiences an emotion, but does not solve his problem. The same thing happens if a girlfriend or neighbor acts as a «psychologist».

Everyday psychology

“Don’t leave it like that,” the neighbor gives universal advice. — Tell your husband to be stricter with him! Now ours has become like silk — so afraid of his father.

Scientific psychology

A professional psychologist will not give advice. First of all, he will try to find out what caused this behavior of the child. Maybe the scenes of aggression that he saw on TV? (The scientific basis for this assumption is Albert Bandura’s theory of social learning.) Or the lack of due attention from parents? (Psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud.) Or maybe the irritability of the mother or father on the weekends? («Sunday neurosis» or the manifestation of an existential crisis due to the lack of meaning in life according to Viktor Frankl.)

Having found out the reason, the psychologist will work with it, adequately choosing the method of correction.

2. Everyday psychology is based on the experience of everyday life, scientific — on experimental methods

In everyday life, we are forced to limit ourselves to observation and reflection: “Why did this happen to me?” The scientific path consists in the «experiment — theory — practice» scheme and is based on scientific methods: analysis and synthesis, experiment, projective methods.

Everyday psychology

A household answer may be: “Look not directly into the eyes, but a little higher, at the forehead area.” Even if a young person tries this method and temporarily solves the problem, such a «victory» will be imaginary.

Scientific psychology

The psychologist will address the deeper problem, not eliminate its «symptoms». In social psychology, a number of experiments are known that describe the behavior of informal leaders in an organization: this, probably, became a subordinate.

So, the experiments of Elton Mayo revealed that informal leadership is important for the activities of the group. And the task of the leader is not to be able to suppress when communicating, but to know the resources of his team and direct them as efficiently as possible to achieve organizational goals. That is what we should strive for.

3. Everyday psychological knowledge is intuitive. Scientific — rational and conscious

The ability to unconsciously process information allows even a one-year-old child to perfectly understand with which of the adults he can be capricious, with whom not, however, such data are not supported by either logical reasoning or evidence. This is intuition. Of course, some researchers have a well-developed intuition, but they always support their guesses with the results of experiments.

Everyday psychology

Intuitive “I feel” and “something” quite correctly prevent a woman from taking a wrong step, but she does not receive an answer to her question with the help of intuition.

Scientific psychology

What is the scientific explanation for this situation? In social psychology, the dependence of behavior on the presence of other people has long been studied and described.

At the end of the XNUMXth century, the American psychologist Norman Triplett noticed that cyclists rode faster when there were a lot of people around, and slower when the park was deserted. This was how the effect was discovered, later called social facilitation. It is he who stands behind the actions of a teenager, and reinforces his social motive “to take a certain status in the reference (reference, significant) group of peers”: he fails through marks, let’s try through jokes.

4. Scientific knowledge is transmitted through consolidation in terms and scientific literature. The possibilities of transferring worldly knowledge are very limited.

Is life experience passed on from the older generation to the younger? As much as we’d like to believe it, no. At the age of 30, we lament: “I should have listened to my mother,” but at 15 we are firmly convinced that “she doesn’t understand anything.” The accumulation and transfer of scientific knowledge is possible due to the fact that this knowledge is formulated and fixed in concepts, definitions and laws. The main way to transfer such knowledge is scientific literature.

Everyday psychology

In response, forum visitors actively recommend different literature: from the Gospel to Castaneda. The forum occupies several pages, on one of them the user offers to read a textbook on psychology. The reaction of the rest of the participants is purely negative: “fog”, “complicated terminology, absolutely useless for the average person”.

Scientific psychology

From the point of view of science, the violent protest against psychology textbooks is caused precisely by the desire to preserve one’s “I-concept” (according to Robert Burns): it triggers psychological defense mechanisms if the new experience does not fit into existing ideas about oneself, and helps the individual interpret the traumatic experience or deny his.

5. Scientific psychology relies on extensive factual material

In its entirety, such material is inaccessible to any bearer of worldly psychology, no matter how rich life he leads and how many people he communicates with.

Everyday psychology

An unprofessional scenario for resolving contradictions in a work team involves a situational recommendation, such as: “If you want to do it well, do it yourself” or “Write everything down in job descriptions.”

Scientific psychology

A psychologist, advising a client on the problem of leadership in an organization, will rely on the theories of transformational leadership by James Burns, types of leadership by Fred Fiedler, human resources by Douglas McGregor and others. Each of them is based on extensive empirical material.

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You should not consider scientific and everyday psychology as opposing sides: they complement each other. The practice of communication and life experience serve as material for the scientific understanding of mental phenomena and vice versa. The time of abstract ideas has passed: today the main task of those who deal with the problems of the human psyche is not to produce another brilliant idea, but to make it “work”.