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CONFLICTOLOGICAL CULTURE OF THE PERSONALITY AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN THE FRAMEWORK OF MODERN VALUE-BASED INNOVATIONS
O.I. Scherbakova
An important role is played in analysis of interpersonal relationships and conflict behaviors of an individual by such phenomena as “significance” and “personal meaning”, which should be taken into account in the subsequent development of conflictological culture of the personality. Psychological dictionaries (1985, 1990) do not include the concept of “meaning”, but they do include the concept of “personal meaning”, which is, in particular, defined as an individualized reflection of an individual’s real attitude toward the objects which are the target of the individual’s activities, and which is perceived as a “meaning for myself” of impersonal knowledge of the world absorbed by the individual. It’s noteworthy that meanings are not created or produced, but are found out and realized by a person. Meanings are individual in nature and their discovery and comprehension requires a special type of interaction between a teacher and a learner, and special forms and methods of training. Meanings cannot be communicated to us as ready to be used, or given from the outside. The concept of “significance” is a form of existence of social experience of mankind. The role of “significance” is to preserve, translate and ensure reproduction of social experience. At the same time, “meaning” reflects the individual bias of a person which is summarized into a motivational system. It is individual and dynamic. Its general function is to create and structure the space of living (A.S. Sukhorukov, 1998).
“Value” is a structural unit presenting the meaning and significance closely interpenetrated with each other. The concept of “value” is traditionally correlated with the concept of “personal meaning”. T.D. Dubovitskaya notes that meaning exists in two forms: objective (subject-specific) meaning conveys the social significance of an object/phenomenon serving as objective values (objective value characteristics) that exist in the form of general, social and panhuman values; and subjective (personal) meaning conveys the personal significance (or simply significance) of an object/phenomenon serving as subjective values, that is, in the form of characteristics of the object/phenomenon that are most important for a particular person. In fact, the objective (subject-specific) meaning and subjective (personal) meaning intersect (overlap) with each other; but it well may be that what is socially important is not significant for an individual, and vice versa. Indeed, generally accepted moral values may be inconsistent with one’s personal values. What is important for an external environment may be inconsistent with a person’s individual aspirations. This creates the basis for both an internal and external conflict. Therefore we can argue that the development of the conflictological culture of a professional in fact represents an active transformation of the person’s inner world toward the development of abilities and qualities of one’s personality that ensure that problems of interpersonal interaction in their future professional activity are solved in a constructive way. A system of inner personal values is one of the essential components of conflictological culture of the personality.
What is relevant here is the development of specific behavioral skills of how to behave in conflict situations, as well as of inner personal qualities that ensure that problems are solved in a constructive manner. Teaching techniques of
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behavior in conflict situations alone, without taking into account the essential components of one’s personality, is ineffective for mitigating social conflicts. In this case, it is not so much about forms of behavior in conflict situations as it is about the underlying personal qualities and traits.
In the last decade, the conceptual vocabulary of education has shifted from favoring the concepts of “proficiency”, “accomplishment”, “general culture” and “good manners” to the concept of “competency” or “competence” (including professional competence) of actors of the education process. This has correspondingly led to developing a competency-based approach to education. In order to describe awareness in the field of conflictology, scholars use two concepts: “conflict competence” and “conflictological competence”. Other known concepts are “conflictological culture”, “personal resilience to conflicts”, “creative conflict management”, etc. The preservation and blending of the concepts of both “conflict competence” and “conflictological competence”, along with their broad content, render them cumbersome in terms of practical use. Training of a high-level skilled professional initially becomes a deadlock situation, since it involves developing a large number of personal traits which turn out to be very complicated and poorly diagnosable. This does not mean that the development of conflictological competence should be abandoned. Rather, the focus should be on a few levels of conflictological training corresponding to the levels of natural psychic development of a personality.
What becomes relevant in this context in our opinion is the idea of psychological/conflictological culture of the personality. Conflictological culture of the personality is an integrative quality covering the culture of thinking, the culture of senses, communicative and behavioral culture based on the humanistic values of responsibility, freedom, personal autonomy and self-fulfillment. It manifests itself in optimal behavior patterns in a conflict corresponding to the context that provides a constructive solution to problems of interpersonal interactions and professional fulfillment. Conflictological culture of the personality represents the highest level of conflictological training of an individual. Levels of conflictological training include: (a) the basal behavioral activity, (b) conflictological literacy, (c) conflictological competence, and (d) conflictological culture of the personality.
Conflictological culture of the personality is not homogeneous and includes the following components: the culture of thinking, the culture of senses, and communicative and behavioral culture, which are based on humanistic values and comprise the value- and meaning-related culture. We believe that values such as freedom, responsibility and autonomy play a special role in the conflictological culture of the personality.
Conflictological culture is developed in accordance with the mechanisms of psychosocial development of an individual. According to L.S. Vygotsky, cultural development includes not only the assimilation of culturally given means and acts with objects by a child, but also the assimilation of culturally given relationships with other people and mastering of the culturally given means of controlling themselves, their psychic activity and their behavior. It is only through all these that the higher psychic human functions develop, and the personality is built. Since we are speaking about the peak characteristic of the personality, conflictological culture should be persistently built and developed starting from childhood and throughout one’s adult life. This will help cover many aspects of human life, thereby reducing the level of conflict in society.
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