The difference between the mental activity of animals and the human psyche. The relationship and difference between the psyche of animals and humans

In history comparative research papers a separate, huge layer is devoted to the study of differences in the psyche of humans and animals.

The tendency of research work is such that with each new block of study it becomes clear that more and more common things are found between man and animal.

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Who first called man a "social animal"?

Who defined man as a "social animal"?

Still in the works Aristotle, an ancient philosopher, whose works are still re-read by people of different nations, ages, level of education.

The ancient Greek thinker in his monograph "Politics" wrote that "man is a social (in another version of the translation - political) animal."

But this saying gained popularity after many centuries. In 1721, "Persian Letters" were published Charles Montesquieu, in the 87th letter the French master of the word successfully and appropriately quoted Aristotle.

Sometimes people use the expression "social animal" in the form of an ancient Greek combination of words roon politikon.

And the meaning of these words is that a person is capable of becoming a person only in society, in the midst of his own kind. Outside of society, he takes on the features of an animal.

And this fundamental thought many anthropological studies.

Instincts in humans

To put it simply, the human brain is divided into two functional parts.

One is responsible for thinking, and this is about 90%: for it to work, you need a lot of energy, and all the actions of this part of the brain take a relatively long time.

The remaining 10% of the brain is reptilian brain(conventional name). It is he who is responsible for the base desires of a person, for instincts.

The reptilian brain works faster, but its structure is primitive, it is responsible, for the most part, for the simplest instincts and just for survival.

Reptilian-instinctive thinking, as you might guess, requires less energy. This part of the brain is constantly trying to drown out the conscious part, which is responsible for the logic and harmony of behavior.

Consider some animal instincts remaining in a person, you can use simple examples:

• desire for self-preservation... The animal has such an instinct, and it is pronounced. A person also possesses it - he begins to be treated when he falls ill, avoids those places and situations that threaten him with death;
• parental instinct. Most animals take care of their offspring, like humans;
• herd instinct. It is human nature to follow the crowd, and not against it;
• food instinct. Both man and animal get food when they feel hungry.

Animal instincts must be subordinated to reason.

Only evolution towards the development of reason and self-control led to the emergence of altruists, highly moral people, humanists.

Such features move society progress, civilization in general.

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The origins of the formation of lower forms of behavior and the development of higher mental functions

Psyche- this is a general concept, as many subjective constants that are studied by psychological science are called.

Living beings, in the course of their evolutionary improvement, received an organ that assumed responsibility for managing important processes.

This organ is the nervous system. It is the optimization of the structure and tasks of the nervous system that has become the basic source of mental development.

The body acquires newest properties and organs in the course of changes that occur in the genotype: adaptation to the environment, survival through mutations have become more useful in terms of life support.

The development of higher mental functions, any mental education based on the use of signs, is stagewise.

At the first (i.e. primitive stage) the operation proceeds as it developed at still primitive stages of behavior.

The second stage is called stage of naive psychology, and at the third stage, a person applies the sign in an external way. In the next stage, the external operation goes inward.

Sign systems are one of the most important inventions of mankind. The second signaling system (that is, speech) has become a powerful tool for self-government, for its own regulation.

Comparative analysis

Man is an animal of the order of mammals. But it evolved: a person has significant differences, despite the similarity of physiology and.

So, a person is distinguished from an animal:

It is worth noting the constancy of the growth of needs. Everyone can see that human needs are constantly growing. This is not just a feature, but a significant difference between a person and an animal.

Animals need protection from the cold, food and all those that do not change for centuries, their psyche is not tuned to the development of needs.

But human desire for better living conditions led to great geographical discoveries, to the achievements of Newton and Einstein, to the highest level of medicine, to electricity, the emergence of the Internet, etc.

But the same needs lead to World Wars.

Of course, many will remember tribes, which seem to have been preserved in antiquity. They lead the same lifestyle as their ancient ancestors, do not intend to develop, etc.

Scientists have many opinions on this matter: if you read the book "Totem and Taboo" by Z. Freud, you can understand some of the laws of the development of mankind and, in particular, man.

Perhaps such tribes are needed to balance the historical process, at least there are such theories.

But the following is also curious: some African tribes resemble Potemkin villages. They perfectly create a performance in front of tourists, while they themselves have mobile phones, know how to drive a car, etc.

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How is human activity different from the behavior of animals?

Human activity is conscious, i.e. she purposeful... A person clearly understands the goal, assesses the ways to achieve it, plans, perceives risks.

Differences in human activity:

The activity of animals was given to them initially, it is determined by the genotype, it develops according to the physiology of the maturation of the organism.

Expression of emotion

In 1872 Charles Darwin wrote the work "Expression of emotions in humans and animals."

And this publication was a revolution in understanding the similarities of the mental and biological.

Darwin isolated three principles explaining gestures and expressions that are involuntarily used by humans and animals:

• the principle of useful associated habits;
• principle of antithesis;
• the principle of actions, explained by the structure of the National Assembly, they are initially independent of the will.

The first difference between human emotions and animal emotions lies in the fact that the emotions of the latter depend only on his biological needs. Human emotions are dependent on and.

The next difference: a person has a mind, he gives control to emotions, evaluates them, hides, simulates. Another difference- it is natural for a person to learn, which is why his emotions also change.

In the end, it is worth saying that higher moral feelings are inherent in humans, but animals do not.

But there are also similarities: both man and animal are capable of experiencing interest, joy, aggression, disgust, etc.

Comparing humans and animals is a deep, fundamental topic.

Pavlov, Ukhtomsky, Bekhterev, continued the works of their predecessors and discovered new laws of psychology and physiology.

But far from all the secrets of the universe, including the theories of an anthropological sense, man has found the key of understanding. The more interesting the further - evolution cannot be stopped.

Types of structure of the psyche, or how a person differs from an animal:

In the psyche of humans and animals, you can see some similarities. For example, the ability to experience various emotions is common. Nevertheless, man is inherent in that which remains inaccessible even for the highest, most developed animals. What is the advantage of people, and how does the human psyche differ from the psyche of an animal? Let's try to find the answer to these questions.

General concept of the psyche

The term "psyche" denotes a special aspect that is present in the life of such highly organized creatures as animals and humans. This aspect consists in the ability to interact with the surrounding reality and reflect it in our states.

Among the processes and phenomena associated with the psyche are called: perception, sensations, intentions, emotions, dreams, etc. The psyche takes on its highest form in the form of consciousness. Only man of all living beings has consciousness.

Comparison

Cognitive ability

Both people and animals perceive what is happening and remember information. But a person has a special perception - objective and meaningful. There is a debate about the imagery of perception in higher animals. Memory only in humans can be arbitrary and mediated.

For animals, cognition of reality only provides adaptation to the surrounding conditions. And those of them who have adapted better survive. A person knows how to see existing patterns and compare facts. Thanks to this, he can predict events and even influence their course. In addition, people have the ability to self-knowledge, which allows them to control themselves and engage in self-education and self-improvement.

Features of thinking

Creatures of both kinds possess at least elementary practical thinking. But the difference between the human psyche and the animal psyche lies in the fact that only people think about and plan the upcoming affairs, outline goals and draw the intended result in their heads. An animal, on the other hand, can create something striking in its correctness (for example, a honeycomb), but there is no talk of presenting the result here.

An animal, performing any actions, is not able to go beyond the existing situation. It thinks concretely, relying on what it sees and feels at the moment. A person, being in a certain situation, can break away from it in his mind, calculate the steps and consequences. In other words, he is endowed with the ability to think abstractly. In addition to this, human thinking is capable of assuming a verbal-logical form, while neither logical operations nor understanding of words are available to animals.

Emotions and feelings

It is inherent in both humans and animals to experience emotions. And they can appear in a similar way. But man is the only being who also has feelings. This is expressed in the ability of people to empathize, regret something, rejoice for another, enjoy the sunset, etc. If emotions are given by nature, then moral feelings are brought up precisely in social conditions.

Language

People communicate using speech. This tool facilitates the transfer of social experiences that have a very long history. Thanks to speech, a person has the opportunity to receive information about phenomena that he has never encountered personally. Animals emit voice signals. Such signals can only be associated with phenomena limited by the present situation, or emotions experienced at the moment.

Development conditions

It is possible to see what is the difference between the human psyche and the psyche of an animal, and by analyzing what is required for its formation in each case. So, the mechanisms of development of the psyche of animals do not go beyond the biological framework, and in human society any individual will manifest itself only as an animal. A person becomes a person and his psyche develops only among other people, when communicating with them, assimilating the experience of all mankind. In this case, the socio-historical factor is decisive.

The answer to the question of how the human psyche differs from the psyche of animals is both complex and simple. It may seem simple because the differences between human psychology and behavior from the psychology and behavior of animals are quite obvious. This issue is difficult when it is carefully studied because we still do not fully know the psychological characteristics of animals, and zoopsychologists, studying the psychology and behavior of animals nowadays, discover in them all new forms of psyche and behavior, including such that bring them closer to a person. A rather contradictory picture is emerging: on the one hand, thanks to the development of culture and technology, man is increasingly moving away from animals, on the other hand, the latest discoveries in the field of zoopsychology make the difference between man and animals less and less. For example, now almost no one doubts that animals have a humanlike intellect (even at the end of the 19th century, only the most daring scientists could have suggested this, and even then without solid evidence). The recognition of the existence of language and many prototypes of human culture in animals has become just as obvious.

Nevertheless, we still have the opportunity, on the basis of reliably established facts, to directly compare the psychology and behavior of humans and animals, to draw quite definite conclusions about the common and the different that exist between them. The common thing for humans and animals is the existence of sensations, elementary forms of perception and an innate anatomical and physiological apparatus that provides the primary processing of stimuli entering the brain through the sense organs. True, there are differences in the characteristics of certain types of sensations between people and animals. Thus, human visual sensations are much more varied than that of most animals. Human beings are able to distinguish colors, which means that their eyes are more sensitive to electromagnetic waves of various lengths within the visible range than the eyes of most animals.

At the same time, studies have shown that many animals are superior to humans in sensations such as smells and sounds. The ear of some animals, such as dogs, is more sensitive to faint sounds than the human ear. Some of the animals, for example dolphins and bats, are able to perceive ultrasounds, but humans do not. Most animals are more sensitive to a variety of odors than humans. In addition, there are animals that respond better to the processes taking place underground and in the air than people, are able to anticipate an earthquake, a volcanic eruption, the onset of a thunderstorm. This is not given to a person by nature if he perceives the world around him only with the help of his senses. However, with the help of the devices he invented, man is able to do all this much better than all animals put together.

Based on the above examples, it is impossible to unequivocally assert that a person surpasses all animals in terms of the set of sensations he has and the subtlety of distinguishing between various physical, chemical and other stimuli. Many of his natural senses are not as well developed as those of some animals. Therefore, if we bear in mind what is given to a person by nature, then, most likely, we can only talk about species sensory differences. They, in particular, are manifested in the fact that certain species of living beings are better than others, adapted to live in conditions that nature has determined for them, and, therefore, are able to respond more subtly to stimuli associated with these conditions than creatures living in another natural environment.

However, since a person is the most highly developed creature, capable of adapting to life in any environment, then the sensory (associated with the work of the senses) deficiencies that he has by nature is compensated by the use of a variety of highly sensitive devices and other means that a person invented himself. These devices and tools significantly increase the general sensitivity of people to a variety of sensory influences. If, for example, a person fails to perceive any kind of energy with the help of natural senses, for example, radiation, then he can successfully do this with the help of appropriate physical devices. If a person is not able to visually perceive cosmic rays or radio waves, then highly sensitive physical devices successfully do this for him. Therefore, the sensory capabilities of a person, armed with devices and machines invented by him, far exceed the sensory capabilities of all animals without exception.

We observe a similar picture when comparing the perception of humans and animals. Although perception exists not only in humans, but also in animals, human perception, especially visual perception, is much more developed than that of animals. This is due to the fact that the perception of people in phylogeny and ontogeny develops. Man has learned to perceive many things differently than animals do. As a result of his mastering of sign systems and tools, his perception acquired new qualities that the perception of animals does not possess. For example, qualities such as integrity, constancy and categoricality are possessed only by human perception. In addition, humans are much more accurate than animals, able to perceive and evaluate the spatial characteristics of various objects, including the size, shape, depth and location of objects in space. The same applies to the perception of movements: using the acquired life experience and various devices, a person has learned to perceive and evaluate them much more accurately than animals are able to do.

Humans and animals certainly have attention. However, animals have only immediate and involuntary attention, while humans have voluntary and mediated attention, i.e. attention, which is a higher mental function, according to L.S. Vygotsky. Animals pay attention only to objects that are biologically significant for them, while a person distinguishes from the world around him and pays attention also to socially significant objects, phenomena and events associated with his culture. A person has many means of regulating attention, which he successfully uses, for example, font, color, light, sound and other methods of highlighting what needs to be paid special attention when dealing with certain objects.

Animals, like humans, have a memory. However, human memory is not comparable to that of animals. First, human memory is much more productive than animal memory. Secondly, humans have such types of memory that animals do not. Thirdly, man has invented and uses for memorizing, preserving and reproducing information numerous tools, techniques and means that animals do not have. Fourthly, a person is able to memorize an almost unlimited amount of information and save it for as long as necessary. By contrast, animal memory is limited in many ways. The speed of human memory is higher than the speed of animal memory. A person is able to preserve the information he has memorized for a much longer period than animals, he is able to transfer his experience, imprinted in his memory, from generation to generation. It is not given to animals. Even the natural memory of man surpasses the natural memory of animals. A trained and educated person has an arbitrary, logical and mediated memory, which are much more powerful than the types of memory available in animals. Animals use only their innate memory, which is involuntary, mechanical and immediate. People have at their disposal thousands of natural and artificial languages ​​for recording information, they have hundreds of ways of storing information, from records on objects, paper and ending with modern forms of technical recording and storage of information. People have numerous capacious, practically unlimited storage of accumulated information located outside the human brain, including books, libraries, various electronic memory devices, including the Internet.

Human thinking is fundamentally different from animal thinking. In animals, at best, one can find only signs of the simplest, primitive type of thinking - visual-action thinking, or the so-called "manual" intelligence (the ability to solve problems using practical actions with objects in a visually perceived situation). This is a mindset that young children also have.

In an adult, thinking is naturally more developed than in a child. In addition to the visual-effective, he also has visual and verbal-logical thinking, theoretical and creative thinking. Moreover, the data obtained in the course of research indicate that beyond an early age (up to three years), even a child practically ceases to use only visual thinking, turns to the use of visual thinking. The thinking of a three-year-old child is already far superior to that of the most developed adult animal, since a child of this age can speak and has learned to do a lot with his hands. In addition, adults in their activities use the highest form of thinking - verbal-logical, the signs of which have not yet been found in animals.

The following can be said about the language and speech of man and animals. Animals have their own rather developed and complex language with which they can communicate with each other. But this language, by its purpose, resembles the primitive ability of people to exchange information with each other using gestures, facial expressions and pantomime, or communicate at the level of signs or sounds that do not express anything except the actual internal state of the living being itself. The possibilities of such a language are very limited in comparison with the language and speech of people. In humans, their characteristic language and speech are used in addition to expressing internal states in the following functions, in which they are almost never used by animals: for memorizing information, for storing it and transmitting it to other generations of people, for internal control of thinking processes, to improve the work of other cognitive processes, including perception, attention, memory and imagination, for self-regulation of mental processes, states and behavior.

Obviously, animals do not have any individual properties in common with a person concerning his personal characteristics, except for those associated with temperament or with elementary sensory and motor abilities. A person, as mentioned earlier, can only be a person, and the content of this concept includes ideas about many individual characteristics of people, such as, for example, will, character, feelings, higher needs, attitudes towards someone or something. As for animals, from those close to the listed or resembling their properties, only some biological emotions associated with the satisfaction of organic needs can be found in them.

At the same time, returning to the psychological and behavioral characteristics of a person, it should be recognized that, despite the presence of many properties that distinguish him from animals, he still appears to be a complex, biosocial being. It is accordingly subject to both biological and social laws, both the laws of nature and those laws by which human society lives. However, the influence of biological and social laws on the psychology and behavior of humans and animals does not seem to be the same. The impact of society on the psyche and human behavior is much more significant and noticeable than the impact of nature, while in animals the opposite is true. In general, any comparison of humans with animals, if it concerns their psychological capabilities and activities, is in favor of humans, not animals. Therefore, any attempts to put humans and animals on the same stage of evolution and to identify them psychologically seem to be completely untenable.

Consciousness is the highest level of development of the psyche, which is inherent only in humans. The prehistory of the development of human consciousness is a complex and lengthy process of the evolutionary development of the psyche of animals. However, the activity and psyche of even the most highly organized animals are qualitatively different from human activity and human consciousness I.V. Dubrovina, E.E. Danilova, A.M. Prikhozhan. Psychology. M .: Academy. -2003. - S. 144.

The human psyche differs from the psyche of animals in the following parameters.

First, the activity of animals does not go beyond the natural conditions of their life, that is, the activity of animals is instinctively biological. This activity can be carried out only in relation to the objects of vital, biological needs or to the properties and things associated with their satisfaction. Because of this, the possibilities of psychic reflection of the surrounding reality in animals are strictly limited by the range of biological needs.

Secondly, the language of animals is fundamentally different from the language of humans. The language of animals is a complex system of signals with the help of which they can transmit information to each other about biologically significant events. Its significant difference from the human language is that there is no semantic function in the language of animals - the elements of the language of animals do not denote external objects, their properties and relationships, since they are associated with a specific situation and serve specific biological purposes.

Another difference of the language of animals, as a result of which it is a closed system with a limited number of signals, is its genetic fixation. Human language is an open system, it is constantly developing and enriching. Each animal from birth knows the language of its species, but a person masters his language throughout his life.

Thirdly, animals exist according to biological laws. Many of them unite into communities in which rather complex forms of interaction between individuals develop. A characteristic feature of animal communities is the hierarchy of their members. Individuals of higher ranks have more "authority", they are obeyed, they are imitated, etc. In some communities there is a clear distribution of functions, for example, in a bee colony, specific duties are performed by the queen, worker bees and drones. However, all forms of group behavior of animals are subordinated exclusively to biological goals and laws, they were fixed by natural selection, during which only those forms were recorded that ensured the solution of basic biological problems: nutrition, self-preservation and reproduction. Man, both in individual and social life, has emerged from the power of biological laws and from a certain point in his development began to obey social laws.

Fourthly, animals use tools, even make and improve them, but no matter how highly organized animals are, they are not able to make tools from another tool. The manufacture of a tool with the help of another object represented the separation of action from a biological motive and thus the emergence of a new type of activity - labor, which implied further division of labor. None of the above is characteristic of animals. Animals use tools only for biological purposes and in specific situations, but never come into relationship with each other about the use of these tools.

Thus, animals lack the consolidation, accumulation and transfer of the experience of generations in a material, cultural form.

It was collective labor that made the origin of human consciousness possible. All labor involves the use and manufacture of tools, as well as the division of labor. Different members of the team begin to perform different operations, while some operations immediately lead to a biologically useful result, while others do not give such a result, that is, they are biologically meaningless. There is a separation of the object of activity and its motive, the unifying factor in this case is the joint activity and the relations between people developing in it. Thus, social ties and patterns form the basis of human activity.

The emergence of labor activity radically changed the attitude of man to the environment: man began to influence nature and transform it. Thanks to work, a person changed not only the world around him, but also himself. The development of labor activity led to the development of the brain, organs of human activity and sensory organs. In turn, the development of the brain and sense organs influenced the improvement of labor. In the process of labor activity, the function of the hand was consolidated and developed, which acquired greater mobility and dexterity. The hand became not only an organ of grasping, but also an organ of active cognition.

The second, along with labor activity, factor in the development of consciousness is speech, which arose in the process of joint performance of labor actions. The first words, obviously, performed indicating and organizing functions, but then, attaching itself to a whole class of similar actions and objects, the word began to highlight their common stable properties, the results of cognition began to be recorded in the word. The increasing complexity of the forms of labor led to the complication of the language, and the development of the language contributed to a better understanding of people in the process of joint activities and made it possible to transfer experience from one person to another, from one generation to another.

Thus, consciousness is social in origin. The emergence of consciousness occurs under conditions of active influence on nature with the help of tools, that is, consciousness is a form of actively cognizing reflection.

And finally, human consciousness is not something frozen and unchanging, it is transformed in close dependence on the way and living conditions. The history of the psyche is a reflection of the history of life itself and obeys its general laws.

Comparison of the psyche of animals and humans

Initially, we will focus on the similarities between the psyche of humans and animals, while pointing out how humans are still different from higher mammals.

The first difference is the motivation for any activity of animals and humans. In the first case, it is directly on a biological basis. In other words, the activity of an animal is permissible only in relation to an object, a vital biological need, all the time remaining within the limits of their instinctive, biological relationship to nature. This is a general law of nature. In this regard, the possibilities of psychic reflection of the surrounding reality by animals are also fundamentally limited, since they cover only the sides and properties of objects associated with the satisfaction of their biological needs. Therefore, animals that are antagonistic to humans do not have a stable objectively objective reflection of reality. Thus, for an animal, any object of the surrounding reality is always inseparable from its subconscious need.

Everything that is in the psychology and behavior of an animal is acquired by it in one of two acceptable ways: it is inherited or assimilated in the process of learning. But at the same time, it is essential that in addition to inherited and acquired experience, a person also has a deliberately regulated process of formation associated with training and education.

Both humans and higher animals have common innate abilities to perceive the world in the form of images, to memorize information. In addition, all the central types of sensations: sight, touch, hearing, smell, skin sensitivity, taste, etc., are present from birth in humans and animals. But again, man demonstrates his advantage: perception and memory differ from similar functions in animals.

First, in humans, in comparison with animals, the corresponding cognitive processes have special qualities: perception - "meaningfulness, constancy, objectivity", and memory - "arbitrariness." Secondly, the memory of an animal is significantly limited in comparison with that of a person. They can be used throughout their life exclusively by the information that they acquire on their own. In man, the situation is different. We can say without fear that his memory practically has no boundaries. In addition, thanks to the invention of "sign systems", people can record information, store it, transmit it from generation to generation through objects of material and spiritual culture.

No less important differences are found in the thinking of humans and animals. Both of the above types of living beings, almost from birth, have at their disposal the possible ability to find the answer to primitive practical problems "in a visual-effective plan." nevertheless, already at the next 2 stages of the formation of intelligence - in visual-figurative and verbal-logical thinking - striking differences are found between them.

Only higher animals, probably, can operate with images, and this is still a controversial issue among scientists. A person shows this ability after 2 and 3 years. If we talk about verbal-logical thinking, then animals do not even have any signs of this type of intelligence, since neither the meaning nor the logic of words (concepts) is available to them.

In higher mammals, mainly in monkeys in humans, due to the high level of brain formation, wound-absent abilities arise that allow finding a solution to the problem without preliminary trial manipulations.

Obviously, the most advanced monkeys in the process of evolution and, undoubtedly, humans were able to form this ability to establish a connection between various components of the situation and eventually come to the correct solution by reasoning, without resorting to experimental actions performed at random.

Inferences are used in a wide variety of situations of everyday existence, whether it is about moving from place to place, about completing a task, or about receiving and comprehending information coming from the environment in which the individual lives.

Thus, at the higher stages of evolution, especially complex types of behavior with a complex structure begin to form, including:

tentatively research activities leading to the formation of a scheme for solving the problem;

the formation of plastically changeable programs of behavior aimed at achieving the goal;

comparison of the performed actions with the original intent. Its self-controlling nature is shown to be characteristic of such a structure of complex activity: if the activity leads to the desired result, it ends, if not, the appropriate signals enter the animal's brain and the efforts to find a solution to the task set begin again.

Systematic studies of the intellectual behavior of higher animals were founded by the well-known psychologist W. Keller from Germany. To study this form of behavior, W. Keller placed monkeys in difficult conditions, when direct achievement of the goal was impossible.

The monkey had to either use the roundabout way to get the bait, or use for its purpose special tools prepared for earlier. So, in particular, the monkey was attached to a cage of a sufficiently large size, near which the bait was laid at such a distance that the monkey could not reach it in the usual way. She could only get it by going around the door through the door located in the back wall of the cage.

The research carried out by Keller made it possible to observe the following picture. At first, the monkey tried in vain to get the bait directly: it reached for it or jumped. After that, she abandoned her fruitless efforts, and a period followed when the monkey sat motionless and barely "pondered" the situation, which was accompanied by proper eye movements, to such an extent until it reached the correct solution of problems. Specifically, the solution to the problem moved from the period of direct trials to the period preceding the attempt to observe, and the movement of the monkey was made only by the implementation of the previously formed “plan for the solution”.

It is very difficult to explain how an animal comes to an intellectual solution to a problem, and this process is interpreted by all kinds of researchers this way and that. Some believe it is possible to reduce these forms of monkey behavior to human intelligence and analyze them as a manifestation of creative enlightenment. Austrian psychologist K. Wühler believes that the use of tools by monkeys should be considered as a result of the transfer of long-past experience ("monkeys living in trees had to attract fruits to themselves by the branches"). According to current researchers, the basis of intellectual behavior is the reconstruction of complex relationships between separate things. Animals are able to understand the relationship between objects and anticipate the result under given conditions. I.P. Pavlov, our native biologist, called the intellectual behavior of monkeys "manual thinking."

So, the intellectual behavior, which is characteristic of higher mammals and reaches a particularly high development in great apes, is the upper limit of the development of the psyche, behind which the history of the formation of the psyche is tied for completely other things, a new type, characteristic only of man - the history of the development of human consciousness ... The prehistory of human consciousness is, as we have traced, a long and complex process of development of the psyche of animals. If we take a holistic view of this path, then its main stages and the laws governing it are clearly defined. The development of the psyche of animals is associated with the process of their biological evolution and is subject to the general laws of this process. Each new stage of mental development is basically caused by the transition to new external conditions for the existence of animals and a new step in the complication of their physical organization.

More difficult is the question of comparing the manifestation of emotions in animals and humans. The difficulty in solving it lies in the fact that the primary emotions that exist in humans and animals are innate. Both types of living beings, apparently, feel them in the same way, behave monotonously in the corresponding emotiogenic situations. Higher animals and humans have much in common in external ways of expressing emotions. In them, you can observe something similar to the mood of a person, his affects and stresses.

Here's one rather comical example. Demonstration of a grin is the most widespread instinctive program in vertebrates. Its purpose is to prevent, when meeting with someone, that you are armed and ready to stand up for yourself. Primates use it for contacts very widely. The person, in turn, bares his teeth with strong fear or anger. It is unpleasant to be the addressee of such a demonstration and does not want to at all.

At the same time, man has higher moral feelings that animals do not have. They, in contrast to "trivial" emotions, are brought up and changed under the influence of social conditions.

Scientists have spent a lot of time and effort to understand the issue of the unity and difference in the motivation of the behavior of humans and animals. Both, no doubt, have many common, purely organic needs, and in this respect it is difficult to find even slightly noticeable motivational differences between animals and humans.

There are also a number of needs in relation to which the question of the fundamental differences between humans and animals seems to be unambiguously and definitely unsolvable, i.e. controversial. These are the needs for communication (contacts with their own kind and other living beings), aggressiveness, predominance (the motive of power), altruism. Their elementary features can be noted in animals, and it is not finally known until now whether they are inherited or acquired by humans as a result of socialization.

Man also has specific social needs, close analogs of which cannot be found in any of the animals. These are spiritual needs, needs with a moral and value basis, creative needs, the need for self-improvement, aesthetic and a number of other needs.

Biosocial development of the human of the future

So, in the process of anthropogenesis, a new human genotype was formed. Thanks to this, man has become an autonomous being. Animals are unconscious, they are guided by instincts ...

The origin and evolution of the psyche

Zoopsychology of animals

Communication channel Animals Human Tactile Tactile information dominates in invertebrates. For example, in termite colonies there are blind worker termites with a developed tactile communication channel ...

Intellectual abilities, self-awareness, communication and socialization of the individual

Self-consciousness - the consciousness of the subject of himself in contrast to the other - other subjects and the world in general; it is a person's awareness of his social status and his vital needs, thoughts, feelings, motives, instincts, experiences ...

General concept of psychology

The psyche is a property of highly organized living matter, which consists in the active reflection by the subject of the objective world, in the construction by the subject of a picture of this world that is inalienable from him and regulation on this basis of behavior and activity ...

The concept of the psyche and its evolution

In Russian psychology, the opinion has long been established that the behavior of animals is inherently instinctive behavior. Instincts are also associated with those forms of behavior that are acquired by a particular animal in the course of its life ...

The origin and development of human consciousness

In phylogeny, the psyche has gone from the level of the simplest irritability to consciousness. The stages of this path are as follows: Taxis. This is an elementary form of irritability observed even in plants (tropism). It aims to find a supportive environment ...

Psychology and pedagogy

Reflex theory formulates three main tendencies in the development of the psyche of living organisms: 1) complication of the form of behavior (form of motor activity); 2) improving the ability for individual learning; 3) complication of forms ...

Development of the psyche and consciousness

In the process of development of the psyche, several stages are distinguished. The stage of the elementary sensory psyche is simple unconditioned reflexes. The lowest level: animals are characterized by the appearance of elementary forms of movement, weak plasticity of behavior ...

Development of the psyche of humans and animals

The history of comparative research has given many examples of what is found in the psyche of humans and animals. The tendency to construct the facts obtained from these studies is as follows ...

Comparison of the psyche of animals and humans

The history of comparative research has provided many examples of what is found in the psyche of humans and animals. The tendency to construct the facts obtained from these studies is as follows ...

b Comparative studies of anthropogenetically significant features of the psyche at different evolutionary levels (features of the psyche of animals, which are considered as prerequisites for the emergence of the human psyche) ...

Comparative characteristics of the transformation of offspring care in phylogeny

Comparative studies of human and higher animal ontogenesis have a long history. The features of a child's development at the pre-verbal stage of ontogenesis are in many respects comparable to those in higher mammals ...

Physiological foundations of human psyche and health

The psyche is the property of the brain to perceive and evaluate the surrounding world, to recreate on the basis of this the internal subjective image of the world and the image of oneself in it (worldview), to determine, based on this ...

Man and his psyche

The human psyche is a qualitatively higher level than the psyche of animals (Homo sapiens - Homo sapiens). Consciousness, human mind developed in the process of labor activity ...