25. Development of a person’s will, volitional qualities In the structure of a person, one can distinguish volitional qualities, the significance of which in a person’s life is very great. Purposefulness is manifested in a person’s desire to subordinate his behavior to achieving a sustainable life

Will refers to a person’s ability to perform deliberate actions aimed at achieving consciously set goals, consciously regulate their activities and manage their own behavior.

Will- a mental function consisting in the individual’s ability to consciously control his psyche and actions in the decision-making process to achieve his goals. Positive qualities of will and manifestations of its strength contribute to the success of activities. Strong-willed qualities often include courage, perseverance, determination, independence, patience, self-control, focus, endurance, initiative, boldness and others. The concept of “will” is very closely related to the concept of “freedom”.

A person not only reflects reality in his feelings, perceptions, ideas and concepts, he also acts, changing his environment in connection with his needs, intentions and interests.

An animal in its life activity also influences external environment, but this impact occurs in the process of unconscious adaptation. Human activity, aimed at changing the environment and adapting it to one’s needs, has a different character than that of animals: it is expressed in volitional actions, preceded by an awareness of the goal and the means necessary to achieve this goal.

Volitional processes- Will is expressed in a person’s ability to consciously regulate and activate his behavior. Any action is always, to one degree or another, associated with mental regulation, i.e., a volitional process.
The sources of the volitional process are needs and interests, expressed in aspirations. Depending on the degree of awareness, aspirations are divided into drives, desires, and desires. Aspirations, in turn, are expressed in setting goals.

Volitional processes - This is a person’s conscious regulation of his behavior and activities, associated with overcoming internal and external obstacles, with the mobilization of all his forces to achieve his goals. A person uses his will when making decisions, when choosing a goal, when taking actions to overcome obstacles on the way to the goal.
Volitional processes can be simple or complex. TO simple include those that unwaveringly lead a person to the intended goal, and decision-making occurs without a struggle of motives. IN complex volitional processes distinguish the following stages:
- awareness of the goal and the desire to achieve it;
- awareness of the possibilities to achieve it;

The emergence of motives associated with achieving the goal;
- the struggle of motives and the choice of opportunities for achievement;
- making decisions about possible actions;
- implementation of the decision made.
Along with volitional actions, a person often performs involuntary(automatic and instinctive), which are performed without conscious control and do not require the application of volitional efforts.
Depending on the nature of the course of volitional processes, the following volitional qualities of a person’s personality are distinguished:
- determination;
- self-control;
- independence;
- determination;
- persistence;
- energy;
- initiative;
- diligence.
By volitional actions are those actions of a person in which he consciously strives to achieve certain goals

Volitional actions are interconnected with thinking processes. If without thinking there cannot be a real conscious act of will, then thinking itself is correctly carried out only in connection with activity

Stages of the volitional process - The emergence of an idea, awareness of desire, desire, execution of a decision.

The emergence of representation. The volitional process arises from a clear idea, or thought, of a goal related to the satisfaction of a need, and the desire to achieve this goal. This moment in the course of a volitional act, when there is a clear consciousness of a goal associated with the desire for it, is called desire. Not every emergence of a need is conscious. In some particular cases, the emerging need is either not yet realized at all, or is only vaguely realized; then we have that mental state that is usually called attraction. Unlike desire, which is the result of a conscious need and is associated with a clear idea of ​​a goal that can satisfy the need, attraction is vague, indefinite, the object to which it is directed is not clear.

Awareness of desire, manifestation in the mind of a clear idea of ​​the goal. Attention is concentrated on the object of the goal, images associated with the presentation of the goal appear in consciousness with exceptional brightness, and thinking intensively seeks means to achieve this goal.

Wanting. A desire is supported or not supported by the availability of appropriate means and the intention to fulfill this desire. Not every desire comes true. Sometimes a person faces several goals at once, or doubt may arise as to whether he should strive for a given goal. The process of the so-called struggle of motives begins. It is as a result of the struggle of motives that the final choice and decision arises, and as a result this stage it may be either determination or faded desires.

Execution of a decision, i.e. putting it into effect. The essence of a volitional act lies precisely in this stage.

An act of will is a complex, multi-stage process, including a need (desire) that determines the motivation of behavior, awareness of the need, struggle of motives, choice of method of implementation, launch of implementation, control of implementation.

Desire, desire, will are states of consciousness that are well known to everyone, but cannot be defined in any way. We want to experience, have, do all sorts of things that we are not currently experiencing, having, or doing. If with the desire for something we are associated with the awareness that the object of our desires is unattainable, then we simply desire; if we are sure that the goal of our desires is achievable, then we want it to come true, and it comes true either immediately or after we take some preliminary actions.

The only goals of our desires that we realize immediately, directly, are the movement of our body. Whatever feelings we wish to experience, whatever possessions we strive for, we can achieve them only by making several preliminary movements for our goal. This fact is too obvious and therefore does not need examples: therefore, we can take as the starting point of our study of the will the proposition that the only immediate external manifestations are bodily movements. We now have to consider the mechanism by which volitional movements are made.

Volitional acts are voluntary functions of our body. The movements that we have considered so far belonged to the type of automatic, or reflex, acts, and, moreover, acts, the meaning of which is not foreseen by the person performing them (at least by the person performing them for the first time in his life). The movements which we now begin to study, being deliberate and knowingly constituting an object of desire, are, of course, performed with full awareness of what they should be. It follows that volitional movements represent a derivative, and not a primary function of the body. This is the first point that should be kept in mind to understand the psychology of the will. And reflex, and instinctive movement, and emotional are primary functions. The nerve centers are so constructed that certain stimuli cause their discharge in certain parts, and a being experiencing such a discharge for the first time experiences a completely new phenomenon of experience.

The main features of a volitional act:

1) applying effort to perform an act of will;

2) the presence of a well-thought-out plan for the implementation of a behavioral act;

3) increased attention to such a behavioral act and the lack of direct pleasure received in the process and as a result of its execution;

4) often the efforts of the will are aimed not so much at defeating circumstances, but at overcoming oneself.

Functions of the will

The will ensures the fulfillment of two interrelated functions - incentive and inhibitory - and manifests itself in them.

The incentive function is provided by human activity, which generates action due to the specific internal states of the subject, revealed at the moment of the action itself (for example: a person in need of obtaining the necessary information calls out to a friend, experiencing a state of irritation, allows himself to be rude to others, etc.).

In contrast to volitional behavior, which is characterized by unintentionality, activity is characterized by volitionality, i.e. conditioning of action by a consciously set goal. Activity may not be caused by the requirements of the momentary situation, the desire to adapt to it, to act within the boundaries of the given. It is characterized by supra-situationalism, i.e. going beyond the initial goals, the ability of a person to rise above the level of the requirements of the situation, to set goals that are redundant in relation to the original task (such as “risk for the sake of risk”, creative impulse, etc.).

According to V.A. Vannikov, the main psychological function of the will is to strengthen motivation and improve, on this basis, the conscious regulation of actions. The real mechanism for generating an additional incentive to action is a conscious change in the meaning of the action by the person performing it. The meaning of an action is usually associated with a struggle of motives and changes with certain, deliberate mental efforts.

The need for volitional action arises when an obstacle appears in the path of motivated activity. An act of will is associated with overcoming it. First, however, it is necessary to understand and comprehend the essence of the problem that has arisen.

Volitional action is always associated with the consciousness of the purpose of the activity, its significance, and the subordination of the actions performed to this purpose. Sometimes there is a need to give a special meaning to a goal, and in this case the participation of the will in the regulation of activity comes down to finding the appropriate meaning, the increased value of this activity. Otherwise, it is necessary to find additional incentives to carry out, to complete an already started activity, and then the volitional meaning-forming function is associated with the process of performing the activity. In the third case, the goal may be to teach something, and actions associated with learning acquire a volitional character.

The energy and source of volitional actions is always, in one way or another, connected with the actual needs of a person. Relying on them, a person gives conscious meaning to his voluntary actions. In this regard, volitional actions are no less determined than any others, only they are associated with consciousness, hard work of thinking and overcoming difficulties.

Volitional regulation can be included in activity at any of the stages of its implementation: initiation of activity, choice of means and methods of its implementation, adherence to the intended plan or deviation from it, control of execution. The peculiarity of the inclusion of volitional regulation at the initial moment of activity is that a person, consciously abandoning some drives, motives and goals, prefers others and implements them contrary to momentary, immediate impulses. Will in choosing an action is manifested in the fact that, having consciously abandoned the usual way of solving a problem, the individual chooses another, sometimes more difficult, and tries not to deviate from it. Finally, volitional regulation of control over the execution of an action consists in the fact that a person consciously forces himself to carefully check the correctness of the actions performed when there is almost no strength and desire left to do this. Particular difficulties in terms of volitional regulation are presented for a person by such activities where problems of volitional control arise throughout the entire path of the activity, from the very beginning to the end.

A typical case of the inclusion of will in the management of activity is a situation associated with the struggle of difficultly compatible motives, each of which requires the performance of different actions at the same moment in time. Then the consciousness and thinking of a person, being included in the volitional regulation of his behavior, look for additional incentives in order to make one of the drives stronger, to give it greater meaning in the current situation. Psychologically, this means an active search for connections between the goal and the activity being carried out with the highest spiritual values ​​of a person, consciously giving them much greater significance than they had at the beginning.

The following characteristic features of will can be distinguished:

Endurance and perseverance of will, which are characterized by the fact that energetic activity covers long periods of a person’s life striving to achieve a goal.

Fundamental consistency and constancy of will, as opposed to fickleness and inconsistency. The fundamental consistency is that all a person’s actions flow from a single guiding principle of his life, to which a person subordinates everything incidental and secondary

Criticality of the will, contrasting its easy suggestibility and tendency to act rashly. This feature lies in deep thoughtfulness and self-critical assessment of all one’s actions. Such a person can be persuaded to change his line of behavior only through well-founded argumentation.

Decisiveness, which consists in the absence of unnecessary hesitation in the conflict of motives, in quickly making decisions and boldly implementing them.

Will is characterized by the ability to subordinate one’s personal, individual aspirations to the will of the collective, the will of the class to which the person belongs.