Communication is a truly global social phenomenon, it reflects the very essence of human existence. Even a full-fledged person can become a child only in contact with adults. However, in everyday life, we often reduce communication to communication, that is, to the exchange of information. And we forget that this is impossible without its other, most important component – without interaction, or interaction.
The essence of interaction
Communication between people is always contact, albeit mediated. Even while reading a book, we come into contact with the writer who wrote it, think over the main ideas, reason, argue. True, for a long time this contact was one-way, but the Internet has successfully solved this problem. Now we can debate with the writer of interest to us on the issues that he raises in the book. If, of course, this writer is our contemporary.
In the real world, however, interaction, or interaction, is the basis of communication, the success of which is impossible without establishing contact with a partner.
Influence of interaction on human behavior
Interaction is so important that in the middle of the 20th century even a whole trend in social psychology was formed – interactionist. Representatives of this trend believe that all human behavior is in one way or another oriented towards society and is the result of human interaction. And it’s hard to argue with that.
A child in the process of his development acquires human forms of behavior only by interacting with adults of his own species. From birth, he is unable to speak or walk on two legs, let alone more complex activities.
And even as an adult, a person follows the norms and stereotypes of behavior formed in him in the process of interaction. Consider that one of those simple and habitual actions that you do in the morning is not sociotypic behavior? We get out of bed (as it is customary to sleep in our society) by an alarm clock invented by someone in order to go interact with other people to achieve some common goal. We wash, brush our teeth, have breakfast, drink tea or coffee, as it is accepted in society, learned by us from childhood and has become a part of our behavior.
And where is the individual here, only inherent in us? Even if a person wants to demonstrate his originality, then in this he will start from the norms of behavior known and assimilated by him.
It often seems that our personality is lost in the intertwining of social contacts and relationships, and the processes of interaction erase it. This, of course, is not the case. Man is the unity of the individual and the social, and a person cannot be assessed only from the point of view of everyday, insignificant affairs.
The role of interaction in society
The essence of interaction is manifested not only in the dependence of the individual on social relations and in sociotypic behavior. The interaction of people underlies the formation and development of society and its structural units – social groups. Any group is born from the need of people for joint activities, in concerted efforts to achieve a common goal. This has been the case since the days when a man had not become a man yet.
The group provides protection, gives confidence in the future and the ability to solve those problems that alone cannot solve. And any group, even a very small one, of 2-3 people exists as long as there are interactive processes, that is, the need for interaction, common efforts to achieve a goal, common interests, a common cause.
Think about it, and then it will become clear why marriages break up, why, after meeting 5-10 years after graduation, former classmates feel like strangers, why seemingly strong youthful friendship fades over time.
The success of an interaction depends on many factors that affect the interaction of people, but the main one is psychological compatibility.
Psychological compatibility as a factor of interaction
There are such phenomena in our life that become noticeable only when they are not. Paradox? Nothing of the kind, it’s just that these are so natural things that we don’t pay attention to them. Such phenomena include friendship, mutual assistance, peace, health and much more, including psychological compatibility.
What is psychological compatibility
As long as she exists in the group, no one thinks about her. In social psychology, even this very concept first appeared in its negative form – “psychological incompatibility.” It manifests itself in a situation when, due to individual characteristics, people simply cannot positively interact with each other and any contact becomes a reason for conflicts. The presence of psychological incompatibility is a disaster for any collective: intolerance and personal hostility, incongruity at the psychological, and even physiological level, can have disastrous consequences. Any leader, leader, manager should know the basic parameters of psychological compatibility and be able to identify them in the process of interaction between employees.
Psychological compatibility is understood as the optimal combination of individual characteristics that make the interaction of people effective. You can often hear that opposites converge or, on the contrary, normal relationships are possible only if people have a lot in common. Both of these statements are wrong. It’s not about the similarities and differences, but about the optimal combination, like gears in a complex mechanism. And this optimal combination, firstly, should be on an emotional level, and secondly, it depends on the nature of joint activities. People who are quite compatible in the field of professional activity may be incompatible, for example, in family relationships.
Psychological compatibility levels
Psychological compatibility (as well as incompatibility) is very rarely absolute. People who perfectly interact in the process of theoretical development of the project can not combine well in the conditions of practical activity. Or, for example, when performing some difficult task that requires patience, a hasty eccentric choleric person and a slow but thorough phlegmatic person are doomed to conflicts. More precisely, a person with traits of choleric temperament, who considers his partner to be stupid and lazy, will be in conflict. And his phlegmatic partner will patiently wait until the partner goes crazy or until he himself gets tired of correcting the jambs of the hurry. The task is likely to remain unfulfilled.
In another situation, with the correct distribution of roles and functions, a phlegmatic person and a choleric person may well form a productive and effective tandem. For example, a choleric person will act as a generator of ideas, and a phlegmatic person will carefully check them.
In psychology, several types or levels of compatibility are distinguished, which depend on various factors and manifest themselves in different ways:
- The physiological level is associated with the innate features of the physiology of the individual: with age, sex, physical qualities and bodily constitution, metabolism and the speed of the course of nervous processes. For example, often psychologically incompatible people turn out to be people between whom there is a big age difference. And in field conditions, compatibility may depend on the level of physical endurance – some members of the group are already tired and barely trudging, while others are cheerful and consider the first to be lazy.
- Psychological level: features of temperament, character, abilities, level of intelligence, etc. If a significant difference in the level of intelligence almost always guarantees psychological incompatibility, then the combination of temperament and character traits is much more difficult to calculate. They manifest themselves in a more diverse way, and the combination itself depends on the nature of the interaction, its purpose and significance. The more important and significant a partner is to us, the more patiently we treat his mental characteristics.
- The socio-psychological level includes a combination (most often similarity) of interests, values, ideals, beliefs, etc.
The optimal combination of partners on all three levels is very rare, therefore conflicts are an integral sphere of interaction. This is also an interaction that has its own laws and brings not only harm, but also benefit.
Types or strategies of interaction
Interaction strategies are special types of human behavior in the process of his interaction with other people. Despite the diversity of human relations in modern social psychology, there are only 5 strategies:
- Cooperation is a type of interaction when partners are interested in joint activities, since its goal can only be achieved by concerted efforts. This strategy is most effective when the participants in the interaction accept each other both on a social and personal level, that is, there is psychological compatibility between them and not only mutual interest, but also mutual sympathy.
- Rivalry is a strategy opposite to cooperation, in which there is also a common goal, but it can be achieved only by one of the participants in the interaction. Others are perceived as obstacles that need to be removed. Not necessarily in the literal sense, but in any case, complete or partial neutralization of opponents is necessary. Therefore, this strategy often results in conflicts. An example of this is the falling in love of two people with the same object or the desire to take up the same position.
- Compromise is a kind of intermediate and, perhaps, the most difficult strategy. There is no full acceptance of the partner, but there is an understanding of the need for a peaceful solution to the problem and interaction in order to achieve the goal. Compromise is a strategy of mutual concessions, when for the sake of basic interests, basic values, partners are ready to sacrifice something less significant. This type of interaction is often found in society, since the perfect match of goals and interests is rare. The ability to use a compromise strategy is an important condition for success and your own mental balance. We can say that human civilization has survived only thanks to those who are able to compromise.
- A device. People who choose this type of behavior prefer to sacrifice their own interests for the sake of a stronger and more confident partner. As a rule, the adaptation strategy is chosen by people with low self-esteem or highly dependent on their partner, fearing a break in relations and unable to actively resist.
- Avoidance is not interaction in the proper sense of the word, but a desire to avoid contact. This is a passive position, when a person refuses to satisfy his own interests, just not to get involved with an unpleasant partner.
The first three strategies are considered strong, and the last two are considered weak. They are ineffective, ineffective and unable to solve problems that only accumulate and lead ultimately either to open conflicts or to psychological problems: frustrations and neuroses.
Our life is a complex and varied thing, so in different situations we choose different interaction strategies. This choice is influenced by many factors: our individual characteristics, and the goals of the activity, and the quality of the partner, and our interest in him. Therefore, the processes of interaction are so diverse and reflect our unique uniqueness, allow us to manifest ourselves as individuals.
