Individual style of activity or characteristics of temperament? Currently, people's interest in practical psychology has increased sharply. A person is interested in getting to know himself and other people, identifying temperament, character, personality direction, attitude to activity and life, expected emotional behavior in tense situations and interpersonal relationships. Psychological knowledge helps to reveal a person’s internal reserves, helps to understand one’s complex problems and find a way out of current situations without significant neuropsychic stress. This justifies the relevance of the topic we are considering, “individual style of activity or characteristics of temperament.” Each of us has often noticed that people with approximately equally developed attention, memory, similar imagination and thinking behave differently in life. These differences in social behavior cannot be fully explained based only on ideas about human cognitive processes. Knowledge of other aspects of the human psyche is necessary, allowing not only a deeper understanding of his actions, but also a satisfactory explanation of the individual differences in social behavior between people. To do this, you need to know the abilities, temperament, character, interests and needs, feelings, relationships of a person. The concept of temperament in modern psychology. Temperament is a set of properties that characterize the dynamic features of the course of mental processes and human behavior, their strength, speed, occurrence, cessation and change . There are four types of temperament: sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic. The word temperament itself can be translated as “the proper ratio of parts.” Hippocrates believed that the type of temperament is determined by the predominance of one of the fluids in the body. If blood predominates in the body, then the person will be mobile, that is, have a sanguine temperament, yellow bile will make the person impulsive and hot - choleric, black bile - sad and fearful, that is, melancholic, and the predominance of lymph will give the person calm and slowness, making him phlegmatic. The statement about the direct dependence of temperament on the fluid in our body looks naive from a modern scientific point of view, but the ancient Greeks very accurately noticed the characteristic types of people by their reactions to what was happening around them. The properties of temperament can only be classified conditionally among the actual personal qualities of a person; they rather correspond to individual characteristics, since they are mainly biologically determined and innate. However, temperament has a significant impact on the formation of a person’s character and behavior, sometimes determines his actions, his individuality, so it is impossible to completely separate temperament from personality. It acts as a connecting link between the body, personality and cognitive processes. Culture, training, and upbringing undoubtedly leave a certain imprint on the external manifestations of a person’s temperament. As a result of this, in observations from outside the dynamic features of human social behavior, we are not dealing with the so-called pure temperament, but with something else, designated as an individual style of activity. The concept of an individual style of activity. An individual style of activity can be defined in different ways: both relatively independently, and in its comparison with human temperament. An individual style of activity can be considered as the result of adaptation of the innate properties of the nervous system and the characteristics of the human body to the conditions of the work performed. This device should ensure the achievement of the best results in activities at the lowest cost. What we, observing a person, perceive as signs of his temperament (various movements, reactions, forms of behavior) is often a reflection of the individualstyle of activity, the features of which may coincide or diverge from temperament. The core of individual activity determines the complex of properties of the nervous system that a person has. Features of the style of individual activity are: 1. Acquired through experience and having a compensatory nature in relation to the shortcomings of the individual properties of the human nervous system.2. Contributing to the maximum use of a person’s inclinations and abilities, including the beneficial properties of the nervous system. An individual style of activity is manifested in all the features of the actions performed by a person, while temperament is only in their dynamic features. The individual style of activity represents mainly external forms of behavior. At the same time, the internal processes occurring in a person may not correspond to his externally observed behavior. There may be significant discrepancies in the dynamics of internal activity and external manifestations. This is not characteristic of temperament: both external and internal types of activity that characterize temperament are identical in their dynamic manifestations. At the same time, temperament and individual style of human activity are closely related to each other. Their connection is manifested in the following: the individual style of a person’s activity, in its dynamic features, usually corresponds to his temperament. But such correspondence is not always observed. For example, being a phlegmatic person, a person may be forced to engage in activities, the implementation of which requires him to demonstrate the dynamic characteristics characteristic of a sanguine person. It also happens the other way around: a sanguine person, while doing something, is forced to behave like a phlegmatic person. In these two cases, a person, while performing the corresponding work, will feel tense and uncomfortable and, most likely, will quickly get tired and make a considerable number of mistakes in his work. If a person’s temperament and individual style of activity correspond to each other, then the person feels quite comfortable at work, receives satisfaction from it and demonstrates increased performance. Factors influencing the formation of an individual style of activity. What factors influence the formation and development of an individual style of activity? There are several such factors. At a time when a person’s individual style of activity is just beginning to form, it is formed under the influence of the types of activities in which the child is engaged, as well as under the influence of the child’s observation of adults and imitation of them. Trying to be like the adults who are significant to him, the child simply imitates them, without thinking or caring at all that his individual style of activity corresponds to the characteristics of his own temperament. And only over time, with the accumulation of life experience, through trial and error, the child comes to the conclusion that the dynamic features of his individual style of activity begin to correspond to the characteristics of his temperament. This usually happens already during school years. In adults, the individual style of activity develops under the influence of their professional load, in particular, successes and failures in this activity. Those features of the individual style of activity that lead a person to success in work are reflected and consolidated; those features that give rise to failures, on the contrary, are eliminated over time. The individual style of a person’s activity usually becomes optimal, corresponding to the characteristics of temperament, already in adulthood, when a person accumulates quite a lot of life experience and is faced with the task of maximally optimizing his activity, achieving the best results in it with minimal expenditure of energy, effort and time. Thus , temperament is the innate properties of a person, which determine the characteristics of the dynamics of his mental activity. They are characterized by the speed of occurrence, stability and strength of flow..