And accordingly, the owner of many different statuses. The entire set of human statuses is called status set. The status that the person himself or those around him consider to be the main one is called main status. This is usually professional or family status or status in the group where the person has achieved the greatest success.

Statuses are divided into prescribed(obtained by birth) and achieved(which are purchased purposefully). The freer a society, the less important the prescribed statuses become and the more important the achieved ones.

A person can have different statuses. For example, his status set could be as follows: man, unmarried, candidate of technical sciences, computer programming specialist, Russian, city dweller, Orthodox, etc. A number of statuses (Russian, man) were received by him from birth - these are prescribed statuses. He acquired a number of other statuses (candidate of sciences, programmer) after putting some effort into it - these are achieved statuses. Let's assume that this person identifies himself primarily as a programmer; therefore, programmer is his main status.

Social prestige of a person

The concept of status is usually associated with the concept of prestige.

Social prestige - this is a public assessment of the significance of the position that a person occupies in.

The higher the prestige of a person’s social position, the higher his social status is assessed. For example, the professions of economist or lawyer are considered prestigious; education received in a good educational institution; high post; specific place of residence (capital, city center). If they talk about the high importance not of a social position, but of a specific person and his personal qualities, in this case they mean not prestige, but authority.

Social role

Social status is a characteristic of a person’s inclusion in the social structure. IN real life a person's status is manifested through the roles he plays.

Social role represents a set of requirements that society places on individuals occupying a specific social position.

In other words, if someone occupies a certain position in society, they will be expected to behave accordingly.

A priest is expected to behave in accordance with high moral standards, while a rock star is expected to act scandalously. If a priest begins to behave scandalously, and a rock star begins to read sermons, this will cause bewilderment, dissatisfaction and even condemnation of the public.

In order to feel comfortable in society, we must expect people to fulfill their roles and act within the rules prescribed by society: a university teacher will teach us scientific theories, not; the doctor will think about our health, not his earnings. If we did not expect others to fulfill their roles, we would be unable to trust anyone and our lives would be filled with hostility and suspicion.

Thus, if social status is a person’s position in the social structure of society with certain rights and responsibilities, then a social role is the functions performed by a person in accordance with his status: the behavior that is expected from the holder of this status.

Even with the same social status, the nature of the roles performed can vary significantly. This is due to the fact that the performance of roles is personal, and the roles themselves can have different versions of performance. For example m with r. the owner of such a social status as the father of the family can treat the child in a demanding and strict manner (play his role in an authoritarian manner), can build relationships in the spirit of cooperation and partnership (democratic style of behavior) or can let events take their course, giving the child a wide degree of freedom (permissive style). In exactly the same way, different theater actors will play the same role in completely different ways.

Throughout life, a person's position in the social structure may change. As a rule, these changes are associated with the transition of a person from one social group to another: from unskilled workers to specialists, from rural residents to city dwellers, etc.

Features of social status

Status - it is a social position that includes a profession of this type, economic situation, political preferences, demographic characteristics. For example, the status of citizen I.I. Ivanov is defined as follows: “salesman” is a profession, “a wage worker receiving an average income” is an economic trait, “member of the LDPR” is a political characteristic, “a man aged 25” is a demographic quality.

Each status, as an element of the social division of labor, contains a set of rights and obligations. Rights mean what a person can freely afford or allow in relation to other people. Responsibilities prescribe the status holder with some necessary actions: in relation to others, at his workplace, etc. Responsibilities are strictly defined, recorded in rules, instructions, regulations, or enshrined in custom. Responsibilities limit behavior to certain limits and make it predictable. For example, the status of a slave in the ancient world implied only duties and did not contain any rights. In a totalitarian society, rights and responsibilities are asymmetrical: the ruler and senior officials have maximum rights and minimum responsibilities; Ordinary citizens have many responsibilities and few rights. In our country during Soviet times, many rights were proclaimed in the constitution, but not all of them could be realized. In a democratic society, rights and responsibilities are more symmetrical. We can say that the level social development society depends on how the rights and responsibilities of citizens are related and respected.

It is important that the individual’s duties presuppose his responsibility for their high-quality fulfillment. Thus, a tailor is obliged to sew a suit on time and with high quality; if this is not done, he must be punished somehow - pay a penalty or be fired. The organization is obliged under the contract to supply products to the customer, otherwise it incurs losses in the form of fines and penalties. Even in Ancient Assyria there was such a procedure (fixed in the laws of Hammurabi): if an architect built a building that subsequently collapsed and crushed the owner, the architect was deprived of his life. This is one of the early and primitive forms of manifestation of responsibility. Nowadays, the forms of manifestation of responsibility are quite diverse and are determined by the culture of society and the level of social development. In modern society, rights, freedoms and responsibilities are determined by social norms, laws, and traditions of society.

Thus, status- the individual’s position in, which is connected with other positions through a system of rights, duties and responsibilities.

Since each person participates in many groups and organizations, he can have many statuses. For example, the mentioned citizen Ivanov is a man, a middle-aged man, a resident of Penza, a salesman, a member of the LDPR, an Orthodox Christian, a Russian, a voter, a football player, a regular visitor to a beer bar, a husband, a father, an uncle, etc. In this set of statuses that any person has, one is the main, key one. The main status is the most characteristic for a given individual and is usually associated with his main place of work or occupation: “salesman”, “entrepreneur”, “researcher”, “bank director”, “worker at an industrial enterprise”, “housewife”, etc. P. The main thing is the status that determines the financial situation, and therefore the lifestyle, the circle of acquaintances, and the manner of behavior.

Specified(natural, prescribed) status determined by gender, nationality, race, i.e. characteristics given biologically, inherited by a person against his will and consciousness. Advances in modern medicine make some statuses changeable. Thus, the concept of biological sex, socially acquired, appeared. With the help of surgical operations, a man who has played with dolls since childhood, dressed like a girl, thought and felt like a girl, can become a woman. He finds his true gender, to which he was psychologically predisposed, but did not receive it at birth. Which gender—male or female—should be considered natural in this case? There is no clear answer. Sociologists also find it difficult to determine what nationality a person whose parents are of different nationalities belongs to. Often, when moving to another country as children, emigrants forget old customs and their native language and are practically no different from the native inhabitants of their new homeland. In this case, biological nationality is replaced by socially acquired nationality.

New Status is a status that a person receives under certain conditions. Thus, the eldest son of an English lord after his death inherits this status. The kinship system has a whole set of acquired statuses. If innate statuses express consanguinity (“son”, “daughter”, “sister”, “brother”, “nephew”, “uncle”, “grandmother”, “grandfather”, “aunt”, “cousin”), then non-consanguineous ones relatives have acquired status. So, having married, a person can receive all his wife’s relatives as relatives. “Mother-in-law,” “father-in-law,” “sister-in-law,” “brother-in-law” are acquired statuses.

Achieved status - socially acquired by a person through his own efforts, desire, luck. Thus, a person acquires the status of a manager through education and perseverance. The more democratic a society is, the more statuses are achieved in the society.

Different statuses have their own insignia (symbols). In particular, the uniform of the military sets them apart from the mass of the civilian population; In addition, each military rank has its own differences: a private, a major, a general have different badges, shoulder straps, and headdresses.

Status image, or image, is a set of ideas about how a person should behave in accordance with his status. To correspond to a status image, a person must “not allow himself too much,” in other words, look the way others expect of him. For example, the president cannot oversleep a meeting with the leader of another country, university professors cannot sleep drunk in the entrance, as this does not correspond to their status image. There are situations when a person undeservedly tries to be “on an equal footing” with a person who has a different rank status, which leads to the manifestation of familiarity (amicoshonism), i.e. unceremonious, cheeky attitude.

Differences between people due to ascribed status are noticeable to varying degrees. Usually, each person, as well as a group of people, strives to occupy a more advantageous social position. Under certain circumstances, a flower seller can become the deputy prime minister of the country, a millionaire. Others do not succeed because their assigned status (gender, age, nationality) interferes.

At the same time, some social strata are trying to improve their status by uniting in movements (women's movements, organizations such as the “union of entrepreneurs”, etc.) and lobbying their interests everywhere. However, there are factors that hinder the attempts of individual groups to change their status. These include ethnic tensions, attempts by other groups to maintain the status quo, lack of strong leaders, etc.

Thus, under social status in sociology, we understand the position that a person (or social group) occupies in society. Since each person is a member of different ones, he is the owner of many statuses (i.e., the bearer of a certain status set). Each of the available statuses is associated with a set of rights that determine what the status holder can afford, and responsibilities that prescribe the performance of specific actions. In general, status can be defined as the position of an individual in the social structure of society, connected with other positions through a system of rights, duties and responsibilities.

The concept of “status” came to sociology from jurisprudence, where it means the legal status of a legal entity. A detailed sociological justification for this category was given in the works of famous American sociologists Ralph Lipton(1893-1953), Robert King Mer niche (1910-2003), etc.

In the broadest sense, social status is the position of an individual in society, which implies certain rights and responsibilities. Since an individual is included in a variety of systems of social connections and relationships, where he occupies corresponding positions, he has not one, but several statuses. These statuses vary depending on gender, age, nationality, origin, marital status, education, profession, position, nature of the work performed, party and trade union affiliation, religiosity, etc. The totality of all these statuses of an individual is called a “status set”. In the status set, the main status is identified, which determines a person’s position in society as a whole. This is the most characteristic status for a given individual, with which other people identify him/her. Most often, this status is associated with a professional type of activity, occupation, position at the main place of work. In any case, the main status determines the style and lifestyle, circle of acquaintances, behavior, etc. Varieties of social status are prescribed and achieved statuses. Prescribed (ascribed, ascribed, ascriptive) is the status that an individual receives from birth, regardless of his will and desire. This status is determined by gender, nationality, ethnic origin, place of birth, kinship system, etc. This type also includes statuses associated with titles transmitted by inheritance (prince, count, baron, etc.). Achieved (achieved) is called status acquired through the individual's own efforts. It is determined by education, profession, qualifications, position, etc. This status presupposes freedom of choice, the activity of the individual, and his ability to make independent decisions. In some cases it is difficult to determine the type of status. Then they talk about a mixed status, combining the features of the prescribed and achieved (the status of a pensioner, disabled person, unemployed, etc.). The well-known convention of this division of statuses should be avenged, since at present a person has the opportunity to change his gender and race with the help of medicine. Therefore, when characterizing a prescribed, often innate status, strictly speaking, what is meant is biological sex and race, as opposed to socially acquired ones. The ratio of prescribed and achieved statuses in the social structure of society, the degree of their distribution can serve as an important indicator of democracy and civilization of a given society. Historical experience shows that in traditional pre-industrial society prescribed statuses prevailed, which determined the overall picture of social life. In modern society, on the contrary, achieved statuses dominate, stimulating social activity personality, the development of its spiritual freedom and independence.

It is customary to distinguish from social status personal status, which reflects the position occupied by an individual in a small group depending on how he is assessed by his personal qualities. Social and personal status do not always coincide: a person can occupy an important place in the socio-political hierarchy and at the same time be an outsider on the sports field. Conversely, a person, without being a leader, can be an informal leader in a company of friends or in a sports team.

There is a certain hierarchy of statuses, the place in which is called status rank. There are high, medium and low status ranks. Hierarchy can occur between status groups (intergroup hierarchy) and between the statuses of individuals within the same group (intragroup hierarchy). Contradictions in intergroup and intragroup hierarchies are manifested in a divergence of statuses, which arises under two circumstances:

• - when an individual has a high status rank in one group and a low one in another;
• - when the rights and obligations of one status are incompatible with the rights and obligations of another (for example, the status of a people's deputy is incompatible with the status of a minister).

When characterizing any social status, the following components are distinguished.

• 1. Status rights and obligations: the former determine what the bearer of a given status can do, the latter - what he must do.
• 2. Status range: established framework within which status rights and obligations are exercised.
• 3. Status symbols: external insignia that make it possible to distinguish between bearers of different statuses (military personnel wear a uniform; each estate and class has its own style of clothing and its own attributes).
• 4. status image, or image: a set of ideas about how an individual should look and behave in accordance with his status.
• 5. Status identification: determining the degree of compliance of an individual with his status.

Thus, statuses determine the content and nature of social relations. They act as structural elements of the social organization of society, ensuring social connections between subjects of social relations. Society not only forms social statuses, but also creates mechanisms for their reproduction, regulating the distribution of individuals into certain social positions. The relationship between different statuses in the social structure is an essential characteristic of society, its social and political organization.

The concept of social status is closely related to the concept of social role, which is its function, its dynamic side, i.e. expected behavior of an individual depending on his position in society.

Formal and informal groups

Depending on the presence or absence of official socio-legal status, social groups are divided into formal (official) and informal.

Formal groups are associations of people that are built on the basis of official documents: charters, service instructions, regulations, etc. Members of a formal group are aimed at performing some type of activity and are in a hierarchical subordination (for example, a production team, a sports team , military unit, etc.). The formality of groups is manifested not only in the presence of a more or less rigid hierarchy, it usually also manifests itself in a clear specialization of members performing their special functions. A formal group is rational, that is, it is based on the principle of expediency, conscious movement towards a known goal. It is fundamentally impersonal, that is, it is designed for abstract individuals, between whom no relationships are provided, except for official ones, taking place according to a certain program.

Informal groups arise and function spontaneously, based on common interests, goals and values, and personal sympathies. Relations within such a group are largely determined by the individual characteristics of its members. A spontaneously emerging informal group (for example, a yard group of children, a friendly company, etc.) does not have any special documents regulating its functioning. As a rule, the behavior of members of such a group is regulated by special unwritten rules. The consolidation of an informal group is carried out mainly through the authority of its leader. A formal group can have two leaders, both formal and informal. An informal group has only an informal leader, who stands out due to his personal characteristics, ability to organize and direct its activities, and influence its members.

The division of groups into formal and informal is, to a certain extent, conditional. In any formal group, informal relationships arise between its members, and such a group breaks up into several informal groups. In some cases, formal and informal relations strengthen and support each other, while in other cases, on the contrary, they contradict each other and undermine overall unity.

Social role and social status of a person

Every person living in society is included in various social groups (family, school class, friendly company, etc.). In each of these groups he occupies a certain position, and certain actions are expected of him. The same person must behave differently in different situations. In one case he behaves like a father, in another - like a friend, in a third - like an employee, in a fourth - like a buyer, etc., that is, he acts in different roles. A person, being in a society, is a reflection of the entire set of relations of a given society. Therefore, a person has not one, but a whole set of social roles that he plays in society. The main social roles include the roles of citizen, family member, worker, owner, consumer, etc.

There are many different definitions of the concept “social role”. According to the definition of the famous Russian sociologist I. S. Kon, “a social role is what is expected in a given society from every person occupying a certain place in the social system.” Social roles are usually viewed in two aspects: role expectation and role performance. Our roles are determined primarily by what others expect of us. If someone does not play a certain role according to our expectation, then he comes into conflict with society. For example, parents must take care of their children, a policeman must suppress violations of public order. If they don't do this, they cause our indignation. In the normative structure of a social role, 4 elements are usually distinguished: 1) a description of the type of behavior corresponding to this role; 2) requirements associated with this behavior; 3) assessment of the performance of the prescribed role; 4) sanction -- social consequences one or another action within the framework of the requirements of the social system. Social sanctions can be moral, legal, political, etc. in nature. The meaning of social sanctions is to encourage a person to a certain type of behavior. They are one of the most important elements of social regulation.

Social status is the position of a person in society, which he occupies in accordance with gender, age, profession, origin, family ties, marital status, level of income, education, etc. Varieties of social status are ascribed and achieved status. Ascribed is a status into which a person is born (innate status), but which is later necessarily recognized as such by society or a group. This includes gender and race. In the strict sense, ascribed is any status acquired against one's own free will and over which the individual has no control. The achieved or acquired status depends on the profession, education, and place of work. This status is acquired as a result of a person’s choice, his personal efforts and is under his control. These are the statuses of a student, professor, manager, member of a political party, etc.

It is necessary to distinguish between social and personal statuses. If social status is associated with the position a person occupies in society as a representative of a large social group, then personal status is the position of a person in a small social group, depending on how he is assessed and perceived by members of this group (acquaintances, relatives) in accordance with his personal qualities. To be a leader, the soul of a company or an expert means to occupy a certain place in the structure of interpersonal relationships, to have a certain personal status.

One person has many statuses because he participates in many groups and organizations. The set of all statuses occupied by one person is called a status set. In a status set, there must be a main status. This is the most characteristic status for a given person, with which other people identify him or with which he identifies himself. Most often this is a status associated with the main place of work (engineer, professor, lawyer, etc.). In modern society, a person has the opportunity to change his status by getting an education, showing business and scientific activity.

Since social status reflects the level of assessment of a person’s position in society, this concept is closely related to the concepts of “prestige” and “authority”. Prestige is a special category used to indicate the social importance of positions held by various groups or individuals in society. Prestigious in society can be professions, residential areas and streets, individual houses, resorts, car brands, shops, educational establishments, clothes from famous fashion designers, other consumer goods. Signs characterizing prestige do not always adequately reflect a person’s position in certain groups of society. For example, a situation may arise when a person has a prestigious profession, but it does not allow him to provide himself and his family with a decent standard of living, or, conversely, non-prestigious professions and occupations allow a person to receive high incomes or any benefits, thereby providing him with the most access to prestigious consumer goods. The concept of “authority” has a different meaning. It means recognition by a group or society as a whole of the personal and business qualities of members of the group or society. Authority usually reflects the degree of influence an individual has in a group or society. This is a personal characteristic that always relates to a very specific person and is not always associated with prestige. Thus, in politics or social activities, an academician, an engineer, or a worker can become authoritative.

The concept of social status is very close to the concept of social role. The difference between them lies mainly in the context in which they are used. If the concept of “social role” is applied mainly to how a person behaves, that is, to his behavior, then the concept of “social status” relates mainly to the social system. The social role is a more detailed unit of analysis, since behavior within a given interaction depends not only on the context of this interaction, but also on the status that a person has in a given society.

Complication of the social structure of society

Decline in the social status of intellectual work

Power, education and prestige. These are the stratification criteria.

Historically, four main types of social stratification are known:

slavery, castes, estates and classes(K. Marx proposed property ownership and income level as a criterion for dividing society into classes; according to the class approach, each specific historical period has its own main classes: “slaves and slave owners”; “feudal lords and dependent peasants”; “bourgeoisie and proletariat”) .

Today there are many options for the stratification division of society.

In the stratification structure of modern Russian society, there are four main layers.

1) UPPER (6% of the employed population) – elite groups occupying key positions in the system

management, economic, law enforcement agencies. This is the most

educated layer (politicians, bankers, entrepreneurs,

prominent figures of science and culture...)

The income level of this layer is 17 or more times higher than the income

bottom layer.

2) MEDIUM (16% of the employed population) - small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, managers of small

enterprises, farmers, the most skilled workers

Almost 60% are employed in the non-state sector. Level

education is significantly higher than the national average.

3) BASIC (66%) - persons employed primarily in the public sector

economy (workers, a significant part of the intelligentsia,

military personnel, the bulk of the peasantry).

Only 25% have higher education.

The previously low standard of living is declining.

4) BOTTOM (10%) - persons with the least professional and

labor potential (cleaners, elevator operators, watchmen,

auxiliary workers...)

Two thirds of this layer are women. Extremely characteristic

low standard of living.

MAIN TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES OF THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNITY

- social polarization (large gap between rich and poor).

-erosion of the intelligentsia (leaving the sphere of mental work or “brain drain”)

There is social inequality between strata that cannot be overcome. The main way to ease social tension is the ability to move from one stratum to another.

Social status-the position of a person in society that he occupies in accordance with age, gender, profession, origin, etc.

Types of statuses:

Statuses acquired or not acquired as a result of free choice:

-prescribed(given to a person from birth - gender, age, race, nationality, origin)

-acquired(achieved; a person acquires them in the process of life -

profession, Family status, job title..)

-mixed(have signs of what is prescribed and achieved, but not achieved according to

person's desire: disabled person, refugee, unemployed)

Statuses determined by the influence on an individual’s life:

-basic(defines the main thing in a person’s life, the most characteristic for the person with whom he

identified by other people or himself; most often this status is associated with the main

place of work: engineer, professor, lawyer).

-non-core(affects details of behavior).

In primitive society there were few statuses: leader, man, woman, husband, wife, hunter...

In modern society, there are about 40,000 professional statuses alone, family-marriage-

about 200 relatives (daughter-in-law, cousin...)

One person has many statuses because he participates in many groups and organizations. The totality of all statuses occupied by one person is called status set.

Since social status reflects the level of assessment of a person’s position in society, this concept is closely related to the concepts of “prestige” and “authority”.

Prestige– society's assessment of the significance of certain human positions.

From a person occupying a certain social position, others expect appropriate behavior. For example, the status of a teacher presupposes a specific set of actions (conducting lessons, checking notebooks, meeting with students’ parents), a certain manner of behavior, and a fairly strict style of dress. Completely different behavior is expected from, for example, a pop star. Thus, when assessing the role behavior of an individual, we correlate it with a certain typical idea of ​​how a person of a given social position should act, behave, and dress.

Social role – a behavior model focused on this status.

Role set- a set of roles performed by a person.

Role conflict – a situation in which individuals face conflicting demands from two or more roles(for example, professional growth requires significant personal effort to master a specialty and time investment. For a woman, this becomes especially difficult due to the fact that she has to fulfill the role of a mother and wife, which, in turn, involve a wide range of responsibilities.

Criteria for social status

Social status is determined by numerous indicators that are determined by the type of sociocultural system. In modern societies, such criteria as the prestige of the profession, income level, duration and quality of education, the amount of power and the size of property are especially important.

To determine the social status of an individual, the following directions are used:

• The socio-economic direction of studying status is reflected in the life styles of people.
• The sociometric aspect of social status involves ranking social groups and strata of society based on a number of criteria, which usually include occupation and source of income, origin, education, and type of housing.
• The role aspect of status is manifested in the fact that status generalizes many social roles. A role is a stable pattern of behavior, including a person's actions, thoughts and feelings.
• Distance aspect of status. A person’s social status is expressed in the form of social distance between participants in communication.
• The normative (evaluative) aspect of status is revealed in terms of privileges, prestige and respect. Prestige is a basic symbol of social status.

Prestige is, on the one hand, a subjective assessment and experience of one’s status by an individual, and on the other hand, it is a social value that structures society.

Levels of status functioning in society

There are three levels of status functioning in society. The first level of subconscious-stereotypical functioning of social status.

This level includes, first of all, those standards that are formed spontaneously and which people do not fix in their consciousness. This also includes social requirements that people fulfill in their usual way. Within this level, those subconscious stereotypes that are formed in small social groups in the process of joint activity function. The main property of this level of functioning is that people who interact realize their status essentially automatically; in the process of socialization, these standards are transmitted to the individual in the form of models, that is, ready-made forms of behavior.

The second level of functioning of social status is associated with verbal forms, which are designated in social structures in the form of a certain set of regulations. In order to subordinate the individual will to the social will, social demands and their social sanction are necessary. Indirect social connections also require the verbalization of norms that perform the function of social orientation, because on their basis the individual builds programs of his behavior as a subject of social status. It is for these reasons that normative behavior and the regulatory process are updated.

The third level of status functioning is associated with institutional factors. We are talking about the nature of social relations regulated by social status. Institutional statuses regulate only formal relations, therefore two dimensions arise as problematic in this context. The first dimension is values, which are identified with social, economic and political institutions in society.

In this dimension, those social structures that operate on the basis of a legitimate system of statuses and have a high level of trust in society are updated, which is reflected in its stability. The second dimension is the level of trust-distrust that exists among individuals as subjects of social status. This level represents the effectiveness of existing social structures and their stability.

Note 1

Levels of inter-status distrust reflect problems and conflicts both between and within social groups or organizations. In general, the level of institutional and interpersonal trust in the social hierarchy often reflects the level of conformist or individualistic behavior encouraged by society.

The influence of authority, prestige and position on social status

Authority, like prestige, is defined as the influence of an individual on other people, determined by social status, position, ability to make decisions, that is, it correlates with the idea of ​​a certain power.

In addition, prestige or authority can mean the extent to which other people recognize any advantages of an individual, not necessarily related to her position or power. In this case, the bearer of authority is the subject of a value-based rather than a functional relationship. A person is influenced by authority because for him it is an exponent of significant value qualities. Hence, social status is also a moral and ethical problem of communication between people in the form of social relations.

Definition 1

“Position” is a socio-psychological concept of structural-personal formation, which, on the one hand, reflects the attitude of the individual in the system of socio-psychological communication, and on the other, is a reflection of interpersonal relationships in the internal structure of the individual. This is a certain direction of a person’s activity, based on his selective, conscious attitude towards people in his immediate circle of friends, society, and himself.

Fixed in the practice of social behavior, the individual’s position turns into communicative (the most general and primary, as an attitude towards others) and reflexive (as a reflection of the attitude towards oneself) character traits. It is the latter that complete the character structure, ensuring its integrity. At this level, the position of the individual is closely related to the deeper layers of the psyche, attitudes, value orientations, the mental state of the individual, assessments and self-esteem.

A property of the individual’s position as a selective activity in a system of relationships is the inherent desire of a person to win for himself the right to a certain line of behavior, which is the driving force of his social and mental development. One way or another, a person’s position is determined by the system of her views on social existence, her role and status in it.