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How do our surroundings affect us? Our environment is our reflection. Any physical body is an energy funnel.

We prepared this article based on a lecture given by Ildar Abitov, candidate of psychological sciences, associate professor at the Institute of Psychology and Education of KFU, as part of the PROScience festival at Kazan Federal University.

For a long time in psychological science There was an opinion that a person has certain psychological characteristics that influence his personality. By identifying them, you can predict how a person will behave in a given situation. For example, if a person has increased aggressiveness, then we can assume that he will behave antisocially. Today, various studies challenge this judgment. We invite you to consider the most famous psychological experiments, changing our understanding of the motives of our actions and our interactions with others.

Hawthorne effect

The first studies of this type began in the 20-30s of the 20th century with an experiment conducted at Hawthorne, as a result of which the so-called Hawthorne effect was identified.

A group of psychologists led by Elton Mayo was faced with the task of finding out what factors influence labor productivity.

It turned out that in addition to various ergonomic characteristics such as the distance from the worker to the machine, the fact of observation also affects productivity: when the weavers were observed at work, their productivity increased, although the workers were warned in advance that they did not need to pay attention to this, because “surveillance” will not affect the bonus in any way, nor will it lead to a reprimand. And yet, despite all the warnings, the female workers worked better.

When this effect began to be studied in more detail, it turned out that there are two explanations for this phenomenon. The first was that the weavers showed sociability, or the need to belong to a group, and the second was that the experiment contributed to the emphasis on informal relationships at work, which, as it turned out, had a positive effect on increasing productivity. The conclusions from this experiment should be taken into account by people working with small social groups, including company managers.

We are all conformists at heart

Another interesting experiment that went down in history social psychology, conducted by American psychologist Solomon Ash. He divided the subjects into groups of 2 to 7 people. Among the participants, only one was a naive subject, unaware of the purpose of the experiment, while the rest were “decoys.”

Solomon Ash showed the group two cards: the first showed one segment, the other showed three segments. He asked the participants to choose from three segments the one that corresponds in length to the segment on the first card. I must say that the segments were very different, so it was impossible to make a mistake.

Ash conducted a series of experiments with each of the “real” subjects. It all started with the whole group answering correctly, but at some point the decoy subjects began to give incorrect answers. At this moment, an amazing thing happened to the real participants: 30% of the people following the group answered all the questions incorrectly. It also turned out that 75% of the subjects gave the wrong answer at least once, following the majority. Their explanations for why they did this were quite different. Most often, participants said they were afraid of making mistakes, believing that they might not know what the group knew.

The subjects also explained their mistakes by saying that they simply did not want to be different from those around them. It is also interesting that the sheer number of participants influenced nonconforming behavior. Where there were only 2 people in the group, the distorted answer of the decoy participant did not solve anything: the real subject coped with the task without difficulty. In groups of three people, approximately the same thing happened.

But where there were more decoy participants, the effect of conformity manifested itself. After this, Ash created such a modification of the experiment, where one of the dummy participants began to confront the group, claiming that those around them were mistaken. In this case, the real participant gave a noncomfortable answer much more often.

Diffusion of responsibility

Before moving on to the third experiment, it is worth turning to historical precedent. In 1964, in one big city a tragic story happened. A young woman, Katherine Genovese, approximately 27-28 years old, was returning from work at three in the morning: she worked as a receptionist in a bar. Genovese arrived in the courtyard of her house, located in a fairly crowded area, and, getting out of the car, saw that a suspicious man was crouched down, watching her.

Katherine ran to a phone booth to call the police, but the man caught up with her and began stabbing her. In response to the girl’s screams, neighbors who had woken up began to look out of their windows. They started shouting: “Leave the girl alone!”, but no one came down to help. The criminal got scared and disappeared, after which Katherine tried to get to the entrance. The lights in the windows went out, the people went to bed, and the man returned and continued to abuse the girl. She started screaming again, people looked out of the windows, and the criminal ran away.

This happened three more times: the man returned and struck again. IN last time Katherine was near her entrance and tried to open the door, but she failed to do so, and she was killed. After the incident, newspaper articles published information that 38 people witnessed the crime, but none of them helped or called the police or an ambulance. Then a wave of discussions swept through the public space in which they tried to find out what was happening to people in big cities that they were becoming so indifferent to the misfortune of their neighbors.

They talked a lot about the special laziness and callousness of city residents. We decided to check this proposition social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latan: They did not believe that people behaved in a special way because they lived in a large city. To find out the reason for this indifference, they conducted several experiments. One was that psychologists recruited college students and told them that they would be researching the life challenges young people face in their first year and how they overcome them.

The subject was seated in a separate room and given a microphone. The experimenters said that there were also students sitting in the neighboring rooms, but they should not see each other. Now each participant had to take turns talking about their difficulties. The first student said that it was not easy for him in New York, his studies were difficult, and, in addition, he periodically suffered from epileptic seizures. Sometimes they are so severe that he can die if no one helps.

After him, the next student spoke, and so it was the subject’s turn, who also told his story. At the end, the word was returned to the first student, and suddenly noise appeared on the air, labored breathing was heard, the student began to ask for help, then only wheezing was heard. The experimenters were interested in how the participants would react in this situation.

In fact, there were no students except one test subject. Everything that happened was recorded, but the participant in the experiment did not know this. The experimenter specifically sat outside, warning in advance that he would not interfere in the process of the experiment, so as not to influence its course, and would listen to the recordings of the participants later. In other words, the student thought that there were other participants sitting around him in several rooms, and an unsuspecting experimenter was in the corridor.

It turned out that only 31% of participants in such studies ran out to tell the experimenter about what happened or to help in some way. Moreover, all participants were healthy, intellectually developed people. This was the result when the subjects thought that there were people in the neighboring rooms and knew about what was happening.

But when the experiment was carried out differently, saying that there were only two participants - in fact, a student and a fictitious patient - already about 80% of the subjects ran to save the dying man themselves and called the experimenter. Why were the results different? The conclusion the researchers reached was that the fewer people there are, the more likely they are to help. This effect has been called "diffusion of responsibility."

Psychologists have also identified another pattern: if the subject does not leave the room within the first 3 minutes, then most likely he will not leave the room to provide help.

Submit!

Another experiment that became a cornerstone for psychology was conducted by Stanley Milgram, who later described it in the book “Obeying Authority.” It took place at Yale University in the early 60s and was directly related to the social situation of that time. The Second World War ended relatively recently World War, historians and humanitarian researchers have made hypotheses about why German soldiers killed a huge number of people.

There were many assumptions, but the most popular was the psychoanalytic idea associated with the name of Freud. He believed that the father figure was especially significant for a child, so scientists suggested that German boys, brought up in strong patriarchal traditions, followed the Fuhrer, since he was the personification of the father figure. Milgram doubted this judgment and decided to refute it.

To do this, he equipped an office as a laboratory and installed a device there that resembled an electric chair. The researcher invited students and people with higher education, promising to pay them $4 for participation.

Milgram said that with the help of an experiment he was going to study the characteristics of memory and the effect of punishment on it. He specially selected healthy men under 45 years of age who matched the age of the German military. The psychologist invited one participant from the group at a time, and he was met in the laboratory by an experimenter in a white coat. The purpose of the experiment was explained to the participant, after which a decoy test subject, an actor named Wallace, appeared.

The experimenter suggested that both of them draw lots, which would decide who would be the student and who would be the teacher. Wallace always pulled out the short one, so he served as a student. The actor was taken to a special room where there was an electric chair, and electrodes were attached to it. Through the partition was the place of the teacher, that is, the real subject. In front of him was an apparatus with switches, from which wires were led to the student’s chair, and the experimenter sat next to him. The subject was first given a test shock of 45 volts to make him think that current would actually flow to the dummy participant.

It was further explained to him that the student would have to repeat certain combinations of words. If he makes a mistake, then you need to apply a discharge that increases each time, starting from 15 volts and ending with 450 volts. At 300 volts there was a “painful shock” mark, and at 450 – three x’s.

The experiment has begun. The first time the student, naturally, answered correctly, then he began to make mistakes, and the teacher shocked him. It is important to note that before the experiment, Milgram conducted a survey among students, practicing psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists, wanting to know how many people would reach the very end of the scale in such an experiment. Everyone answered that it was about 0.5% of everyone, since only psychopaths are capable of completing the job: there may be undiagnosed people with a tendency towards aggression, which will become clear during the experiment.

In fact, 65% of participants made it to the end, and 100% of them reached the 300 volt mark. And this despite the fact that the student actor shouted that he was in great pain, and when there were a few divisions left to the end, he kicked the partition and then fell silent. A very important socio-psychological conclusion follows from this: the issue is not about the father figure or other personal factors - it’s all about submission to authority.

Participants were influenced by the fact that a person in a white coat was nearby. When they wanted to stop, the experimenter did not put pressure on them, but repeated: “please continue” and “you need to continue the experiment.”

Another important point worth noting: when the experimenter paid $4 at the very beginning of the study, he noted that he would never take the money back under any circumstances, so it can be argued that the subjects did not do this out of material interest.

According to Milgram, the findings indicate an interesting phenomenon: “This study showed an extremely strong willingness in normal adults to go who knows how far when following the instructions of an authority.”

That is why, when talking about people’s behavior, it is impossible to explain the motives of actions only by character qualities and innate characteristics: our behavior also depends on each specific situation and social environment, which has been the subject of many interesting studies today.

I once heard the following phrase: “Everything affects everything.” I'm thinking! And then they told me or I read somewhere: “Your environment affects you.” Those. the social circle with which you are constantly in contact has a huge influence on you. Perhaps you didn’t even suspect this or don’t attach any importance to it, but it’s true! The power of influence of our environment on us is HUGE! And this influence does not always help us. From the moment I heard this, I began to observe it in myself. And you know - it really is! I was deeply amazed by this.

Hmm. Where can you find these richest and most successful people around you?

Have you ever thought about how other people shape your life? The influence of those around us is so powerful, so subtle and constant that often we cannot even imagine how much it affects us.

Let's think about this. If you are surrounded by people who are mostly hired workers, then what are your chances of becoming a successful entrepreneur? Or people who completely spend all their income, then you have a chance to become a wasteful person. Or if you are surrounded by people who don't read books, your chances that you won't do it either increase.

But this influence can go even further. If you are surrounded by people who believe that there is nothing wrong with deceiving others a little, then they may also convince you to bend some rules. People are slowly leading you astray true path until one day, 10 years later, you ask yourself: “How did I end up in this position?” And this moment, I think, will not be very joyful for you.

I want to tell you my memories from childhood and youth. Enough for a long time I grew up hanging out in groups where the main activity was to smoke cannabis and drink vodka. And in such an environment, I myself almost became an alcoholic or drug addict. Many thanks to my father, who even in those years discouraged me from doing all this. However, most of my friends at that time ended up drinking themselves to death, becoming drug addicts, etc.

To avoid wasting time in the company of people who are not suitable for you, ask yourself 3 questions:
1. What kind of people do I spend my time with? What kind of people am I among?
2. How do they act towards me? What are they doing for me?
3. Is communication with them useful for me? I like it?

After answering these questions, evaluate the time you spend with each of your acquaintances, is it positive and constructive, or the opposite? If you find it difficult to answer, then think about these questions:
- What did these people advise you to read or listen to?
- Where did they recommend you to visit?
-What did they make you think about?
- How did they influence your conversations, feelings, etc.

There is also one more, I would say, “control” question that will help you: “Do my current acquaintances help me move and grow in the direction that I have chosen, setting a goal for myself?”

Are there people who judge you for your Dream, are there people who want to steal your Dream? It is very easy to allow the influence of others to shape your life.

After you have done such a mini-analysis of your environment, you, dear Reader, will have the following question: “What should I do if there are people in my environment who really do not contribute to my growth and movement towards my goal?”

There may be several recommendations:
First, you can simply break up with them. Although I probably used the word “simple” in vain. Sometimes this is far from easy, especially if it concerns members of your family or close friends. Of course, in some cases it is impossible to do this at all, but try to limit communication with such people to a minimum.

It is easy to remain a mediocre person; all that is required is to spend most of your time doing insignificant things with insignificant people.

Secondly, it may turn out that 90% of it will be necessary to give up communication with your environment. Whom then to communicate with? To do this, you need to expand your communication. Those. meet and spend more time with the right people. Who are these right people? It depends on your goals and objectives. In my opinion, these are people who think about the meaning of life, live every minute with purpose and balance, constantly improve personally and spiritually, etc.

Some may find it difficult to make acquaintances with such people. I'll tell you how I do it.
When I decided to create my own business, I became a partner in Glorion Holding. The holding quite often organizes all sorts of training events. And so, I went to one of these events, called the Leaders Forum. It was in February of this year, in Egypt. There were more than 400 people there, as well as the founders of the Holding and the President. This gave me the opportunity for 10 days to communicate with people who have achieved a lot in this business. I received a boost of motivation, energy, and learning. Thus, all this time I was surrounded by the “right” people for me.
And in fact, thanks to this business, my circle of “right” people is constantly expanding.

Likewise, if you want to improve your health, find those people who have excellent health and who constantly maintain it. Sign up for a fitness club, swimming pool, etc. For example, I just recently started doing yoga. I enrolled in a yoga school and practice there. And in turn, I expand my acquaintances in this area, communicate with people who have been involved for a long time, they give recommendations, give advice, advise.

In the same way, from any other field you can find the “right” people who will best contribute to your growth and advancement.

To conclude today's episode, I want to tell you a story about a little bird. She cried, covering her eyes with her wing. The owl asked her: “Are you crying? Why? Because a big bird pecked you in the eye?”
And the little bird answered her:
“No, I’m not crying because a big bird pecked me in the eye. I'm crying because I let her do this."

It’s easy to let circumstances shape our lives and let others decide for us where we should go. Let others live unworthy, but not you. Let others argue over trifles, but not you. Let others entrust their future into the hands of others, but not you.

Dmitry Miroshnik

7 chosen

It's no secret that the environment influences people's behavior and, as a result, their lives. This is what he talks about folk wisdom. For example, the proverb: "Tell me who your friend is, and I'll tell you who you are." Or "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree"(after all, an apple tree is not only a parent tree, but also a kind of community of apples). But let's not delve into folklore. Better yet, let’s think about how to avoid negative influence from the environment.

Although we know very well that the social circle greatly influences all its participants, many tend to forget about this in their own lives. As a result, we simply do not think about how we are influenced by those with whom we communicate.

And the impact can be very significant. Let's say, if all your friends smoke, it will cost you a lot of effort not to pick up this habit. And if they play sports, run in the morning and prefer active recreation, to one degree or another they will definitely involve you in this activity. If the company often discusses interesting books, you'll have to read them to keep the conversation going. And if they only talk about "House 2", then... you understand. If your friends constantly scold their husbands, sooner or later you will have to say something similar, at least out of solidarity. And our words inevitably remain in our heads and influence our own thoughts.

Man is a social creature, and we subconsciously try to fit in with our environment because we are afraid of becoming outcasts. If you realize this, you can try to figure out which circle of friends you should reach out to and who, on the contrary, you should avoid.

Self-esteem

Self-esteem has a huge impact on our lives. High (but adequate) always helps to achieve your goals. Understated, on the contrary, makes you sit still, expecting only failures from life. Therefore, it is very important to exclude people from your life who lower your self-esteem. These so-called friends are constantly making fun and allegedly mocking people in a friendly way. In this simple way they try to raise their own self-esteem at the expense of others.

Sometimes, however, it is not so obvious. People don’t offend you personally, they just often say that your ideas are unrealistic and you won’t be able to achieve your goal. They feel like they are protecting you from failure and disappointment. In fact, they are protecting themselves. After all, if you achieve something worthwhile, they will have no excuse for their own inaction. So they “protect” you from unnecessary success.

Other people's goals

Often the people around us influence our goals and values, replacing them with their own. For example, it is difficult to achieve serious professional growth in a company where the unofficial motto of employees is: “Wherever you work, as long as you don’t work.” It is difficult to get a lot of new experiences when traveling with friends who prefer not to leave the hotel premises.

Think carefully about what you want and how these goals are transformed under the influence of others, and in the end try to exclude such influence. This does not mean that you can only communicate with people who agree with you on everything. Just try not to clash with friends in areas where your views differ radically.

Strength of will

Great efforts are required to achieve great goals. It’s not easy for us anyway. And those around us sometimes act as tempting demons, undermining our willpower. “Well, sit with us a little longer! Just think, the exam is tomorrow. You’ll learn everything in the morning.” “Well, eat some cake! Why do you need this diet, you’re already skinny!” Such temptations do not help us reach our goal at all. No, of course, we are responsible for all our decisions and actions ourselves. But without friends-tempters it would be much easier for us to cope with temptations.

This does not mean that you should immediately break off communication with such people. To begin with, you can try to explain that their persistent proposals are very disturbing to you. If it doesn’t help, reduce communication during those periods that require the greatest willpower from you.

Who should you communicate with? First of all, with people whose lives you like. If you want to become a true professional in your field, communicate with established professionals. If you want to travel more, communicate with travelers. If you dream of your own business, look at the experience of businessmen. The more the people around you achieve, the better. The success of others inspires us to our own exploits.

There are many examples of how people from the very bottom achieved success, became rich, influential and famous. Unfortunately, this is rather an exception to the rule.

You can’t argue with the facts: the environment has a very, very strong influence on our lives.

And now we will look at this using specific examples.

Let's look at a simple example that can be extended to any situation. So let's say to live a happy sober life. Sound decision! But this is where the people who surround him come to the fore.

It turns out that throughout our lives we form our own social circle. First we shape our environment, and then it shapes us.

Judge for yourself: the more important “cultural recreation” with alcohol played in our lives, the more likely it is that there will always be other drinkers around us. And now a person who has quit drinking faces a problem: those around him do not support him.? They continue to live their old lives, which includes alcoholic “entertainment.” Even worse, former drinking buddies most often actively do not accept the choice of the newly minted teetotaler, and therefore try with all their might to return him to the swamp from which he finally decided to get out.?

Have you noticed how drinkers try to impose their lifestyle on others? At any party or event the picture is the same: “Here, have a drink with us! Why aren't you a man? Why, don’t you respect me???” Funny and sad at the same time. It's sad because many people go with the flow and therefore succumb to the influence of society. They make a rather convenient excuse for themselves: well, everyone does it, why shouldn’t I live the same way?

Therefore, a person’s determination, his inner core, always comes first. The stronger the determination, the less susceptible to the influence of society a person is. In this world, most paths lead to nowhere, so you need a clear understanding of the reasons to choose your path and firmly walk along it, despite the rejection of your choice by the people around you. Moreover, as we will see from the following example, such people will either change or simply not stay in your life for long, giving way to those who support and understand you.

Here's another example. A person's environment is dominated by people with standard stereotypical thinking. And so we choose our own path, perhaps slightly different from what everyone is used to. Oh, what begins then...

The worst part is that usually these people sincerely wish us well. But, as often happens, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. They may not believe in us, they may consider us eccentrics. And this will continue until we are recognized. In the meantime, we will wallow in mistrust and misunderstanding.

Therefore, it is vital to surround ourselves with people who are on the same path as us. They will help, they will help no matter what. When we find such people, everything changes. It’s as if we are charged from them, and they from us. Support means a lot.

Yes, you can achieve everything on your own. But still, man is a social being. We cannot live without communication. And it’s much better when this communication is somehow useful, motivating, and developing. Find like-minded people and you will be surprised how quickly and effectively you will begin to move towards your goal.

No one talks about getting rid of people who don't measure up to us. The truth of life is that sooner or later one of two things will happen:

or you will become like them
or they will become like you

The good news is that when we change, we change others. If others are unwilling to change, they leave us. Of course, there are situations when people do not change and yet remain. For example, these are our relatives. And that's normal: there are people whom we love for who they are.? But in all other cases, the environment will either change to suit us or simply quietly disappear from our lives. It may be sad, but rest assured, it will happen sooner or later.

Therefore, friends, it is very important to create an environment that will support, motivate, energize and move us forward.

Be happy!