Individual characteristics of thinking

Thinking is determined by a person’s needs, his interests, motives, tasks, goals, that is, a person’s thinking is purposeful in nature, associated with the needs and motivation of a particular individual.

A person’s individual thinking is directly related to his mind, but the concept of mind is broader: it includes features of both thinking and other cognitive processes. Thinking is the processing of information, a set of interconnected sensations, thoughts, and images. As a result, it gives us an idea of how everything in nature relates to each other. Thinking is a tool of the mind, one of its prerequisites. The mind is the repository of knowledge, intelligence, intuition, personality traits (its beliefs, positions, programs), it determines a person’s ability to think and solve emerging problems.

A person’s upbringing, his training, the chosen type of occupation, preferences, and the uniqueness of life constitute the features of the individual characteristics of a person’s thinking. Age, the type of higher nervous activity, and the ratio of the first and second signaling systems are also important. You can read more about types of thinking in our blog:

Two levels of individual characteristics of human thinking

Individual characteristics of human thinking in psychology are analyzed at two different levels: the individual and the personality.

When talking about a person as an individual, we consider certain neurodynamic characteristics and processes. We are talking about the following:

How do the first and second signaling systems relate and, accordingly, what type of thinking, artistic or mental, predominates.
How nervous processes proceed: the speed of acquiring knowledge, mental performance, and human sensitivity depend on their strength or weakness. The speed of thinking and its flexibility or, on the contrary, difficulty depend on their activity or, on the contrary, inertia.

Personal factors of thinking include:

1. Installation (operational and semantic).

Operating is the readiness to take some steps, while relying on previous experience and assuming the development of events taking into account existing conditions.

Semantic – a higher level setting. It acts as a kind of filter that corrects operating settings. Meaningful attitudes determine the content, pace of development, and performance of the individual as a whole.

2.Motives. They activate and structure thinking. Meaningful motivation imparts valuable personal meaning to thinking.

3.Emotions. They help evaluate information, activate thinking, reduce the time required to find a solution to a problem, and generate new information. perform four functions: evaluative, activating, the function of heuristics (techniques that reduce the time of searching for a solution to a problem), the function of a generator of new information.

4.Personal past experience. It is concentrated in a person’s knowledge and determines the characteristics of his thinking. Only well-structured knowledge turns a person into an intellectual and distinguishes him from an amateur.

5. Socio-psychological factors. Thus, the authoritarianism of teachers and parents gives rise to stereotypical thinking, absence or low level of creativity. On the contrary, parity in relationships creates the preconditions for independence, criticality, originality of thinking, the ability to take into account the position of another person and, as a result, for creative productivity.

Properties of thinking

The properties of human thinking allow us to perceive the world around us as we see it. Some of the properties include:

Direction is the main characteristic of thinking. Its presence is intended to tell about a certain final goal; the thought provides an answer to the questions raised (and the latter are not always important and can be arbitrary).
Thinking is also divided into: positive or negative . After all, a person perceives absolutely everything that happens in his life through the prism of personal thoughts and internal attitudes. Someone focuses only on the bad (manifestation of negative thinking). And someone else, on the contrary, even in the negative looks for something positive (an indicator of positive thinking). Psychology experts are unequivocal in their opinion that the last category of citizens (optimists) feels much better.
Mental activity is directed either to the past or to the future . In the first situation, the individual likes to analyze why events happened the way they did, rewinds his own actions in his head, criticizes himself for mistakes, and so on. In the case of future-oriented thinking, the individual will think about possible solutions to upcoming problems.
Mental activity necessarily creates concepts . It characterizes various situations, phenomena, objects, arranges them, compares them with each other, tries to detect differences, and the like.
Thinking cannot be called objective , since it is always characterized by subjectivity. This happens by adding personal emotions, thoughts and feelings. The listed properties force creative people to express themselves by creating something that conveys their ideas and images.
Thinking has logic . Moreover, it is not correct in all cases, but its presence is mandatory.
There are developed and undeveloped thinking . The second option, however, is typical exclusively for children, as well as narrow-minded individuals who do not seek to analyze what is happening. Such people are interested only in natural instincts and simple needs. In the majority of cases, adults have developed thinking, which is improved throughout their lives.

Find out what awaits you today - Horoscope for today for all zodiac signs

Due to numerous requests from subscribers, we have prepared an accurate horoscope application for mobile phones. Forecasts will arrive for your zodiac sign every morning - it's impossible to miss! Download for free: Daily Horoscope 2020 (available on Android)

Thanks to the properties of thinking, psychologists look at thought processes from different points of view. This, in turn, makes it possible to study more deeply the phenomena that constantly occur to us.

Basic qualities of human thinking

Individual characteristics of thinking in psychology are usually determined by the following qualities:

Logicity is the ability to follow a certain sequence when considering a question, i.e. order determined by logic. This is the ability to think, prove the correctness or fallacy of a conclusion, and check the course of reasoning.
Depth of thinking (thoughtfulness) is the ability to find the essence, the main thing, the most essential, often hidden. This is the ability to understand not appearance, but essence; formulate an idea based on a variety of facts, understand as a whole, notice patterns, understand the causes and anticipate the consequences.
Broadness of thinking is the ability to consider problems from all sides, interconnected with other phenomena and sufficiently critical, covering different areas of knowledge.
Flexibility (plasticity) – the ability to change ways of solving problems in changing circumstances. Flexibility of thinking allows us to consider phenomena and objects, relationships and properties in different aspects. If conditions change, flexible thinking allows you to restructure the initial data and use their relativity. When new inputs are received, plans change to take them into account, as a result of which the plan for solving the problem also successfully changes. This property is associated with the mobility of thought processes.
Inertia of thinking is the opposite of flexibility. Inert thinking does not look for new ways, preferring to reproduce what has already been learned and known, that is, it is a tendency to think in stereotypes when a person experiences difficulties when it is necessary to switch to another system of actions.
Originality of thinking is a person’s ability to pose new questions; use known experience, and at the same time show independence of judgment and find an independent solution. Independence, originality of thinking presupposes self-criticism (knowledge of one’s strengths and weaknesses). Independence also reveals the creative nature of thinking.
Critical thinking is the desire to evaluate objectively, apply only proven judgments, and carefully check objections before discarding them. It involves the ability to identify the advantages and disadvantages of reasoning and prove the truth of the propositions put forward.
Speed of thinking is the speed at which thought processes occur. It manifests itself in the amount of time needed to solve problems and in the ease of implementing ideas. Quick thinking is especially important in critical situations, when you need to make a decision very quickly and take action.
Clarity of thinking is simplicity, sincerity, and uncomplicated expression of thoughts.
Inquisitiveness is the need to find the most suitable solution to a problem.
Wit is the ability to quickly navigate the material and find the right solutions to problems.
Initiative is the desire to search and find a solution to a problem independently, in a wide variety of ways and means.
Originality is the ability to generate new ideas that are different from those already familiar.

In psychology, the following are also identified as individual characteristics of thinking:

The pace of development of thought processes, which is understood as the least amount of exercise that is required in order to understand and generalize the principle of the solution.
Economy of thinking is the number of sequential reasoning that allows one to learn a new pattern.
Stability is the preservation of a focus on previously identified important features and generally accepted patterns.
Awareness is the ability to verbally express both the result of the work done and the techniques that were used.

All individual characteristics of a person’s thinking are important for the correct assessment of his abilities and knowledge. But the fundamental sign of thinking is the ability to identify the main thing, the most essential, in order to then, thinking independently, move to new generalizations. Thinking is much more than a statement of an event or a fact. His path is to delve into the essence of a phenomenon and discover the general law of development of all somewhat homogeneous phenomena, no matter what their external differences.

Cognitive qualities of thinking are individual in nature and undergo changes with age, but the main thing is that they can be corrected, their performance can and should be improved. Thanks to the plasticity property of the brain, its cognitive functions can be developed at any age. Thinking and attention, memory, perception can be trained daily, with pleasure and benefit using exercises for the development of thinking in adults.

Specifics of the thought process

According to S.L. Rubinstein, any thought process is an act aimed at solving a specific problem, the formulation of which presupposes a PURPOSE and CONDITIONS. Thinking begins with a problem situation, the need to understand. TASK SOLVING is the natural completion of the thinking process, while its completion with an unattained goal is perceived by the subject as a breakdown or failure. Associated with the dynamics of the thought process is the emotional state of the subject, which is RELAXATIVE at the beginning and SATISFIED at the end.

Continuing, we note that such a definition applies only to reasoning aimed at solving specific problems, especially computational ones. The task of, say, counting changes in baccarat is a problem situation and a natural conclusion to the thought process. If it is not achieved, then the subject perceives it as a failure. If, on the other hand, the subject is thinking about, say, a weekend ski trip, then it is difficult to define the problem situation, let alone the goal, as the end of the thought process. Moreover, the emotional well-being of such a subject will not be tense at the beginning of thinking about the trip, but will remain satisfied throughout the entire thought process. It should also be noted that there are mental problems (including computational ones) that do not have a discrete, unique solution. For example, the question “Should I go to the lecture?” usually implies a discrete, qualitative answer, while thinking about the question “What kind of person is Subject A?” at best, can lead to a complex and multi-dimensional answer, and for a person with a more subtle emotional perception - to an answer that cannot even be verbally expressed, which makes one wonder if this new, deeper view of the person is the answer to the question asked. Thus, in addition to abstract thinking, a distinction is made between emotional thinking (appraisal), practical (visual-actual) thinking and others.

Solving a problem requires significant effort of will. This is well illustrated by the encephalogram: I remember well that when recording the encephalogram in laboratory classes, if I tried to “not think anything,” there was a clear alpha rhythm, and when my thoughts more or less formed and rushed in a certain direction (for example, when I noticed the noise of the recorder recording the alpha rhythm of large amplitude), the alpha rhythm was immediately replaced by the beta rhythm, which indicated increased activity.

Thinking is characterized by conscious purposefulness. The course of the thinking process is determined by the awareness of the task at hand. At the same time, there is review, control and criticism, which characterize thinking as a conscious process. It should be noted that only in the thinking process is ERROR possible, while the associative process can only give an unsatisfactory result. However, in the process of thinking, the subject is often able to recognize the error itself.

Any thought process is carried out in generalizations (concepts), but usually includes both images and concepts. The existence of artistic thinking, comparisons and metaphors prove that man can think in images. When an image is included in the thinking process, it is transformed: Features that are significant in a given case are brought to the fore, while others are obscured.

The first phase of the thought process is awareness of the problem situation. Even posing a problem is an act of thinking; this often requires a lot of thinking.

The first sign of a thinking person is the ability to see the problem where it is. The appearance of questions (which is typical for children) is a sign of the development of thinking. A person sees more problems the wider the circle of his knowledge. Thus, thinking presupposes the presence of certain initial knowledge.

Thinking moves from recognizing a problem to solving it. Problem solving occurs in various ways. There are special tasks (visual-actual and sensory-motor), to solve which it is enough to record the initial data and rethink the situation. (Representatives of Gestalt psychology mistakenly tried to reduce all problems to such a scheme).

As I have already noted, in most cases, solving problems requires a certain base of theoretical, generalized knowledge. Solving a problem requires using existing knowledge as means and methods for solving it.

Using a rule involves two mental operations:

Determining which rule to include in the solution.
Application of a general rule to specific conditions of a problem.

Automated action patterns can be considered as KNOWLEDGE.

It is important to note that the role of thinking skills is great, especially in those areas where there is a very generalized system of knowledge, for example, in solving mathematical problems.