Psychological approach to forecasting macrosocial processes: the five-factor model of social development
Main Article Content
Abstract
Relevance. Forecasting development of large communities in both classical and modern science is carried out mainly on the basis of theoretically constructed models of social development and involves the identification of global patterns and factors of the historical process. The disadvantage of such models from a practical point of view is that they are not designed to predict peculiarities of the development of a society in limited periods of time.
Therefore, the purpose of this article was to develop a prognostic model that would determine nature of the development of a particular society in the short and medium term.
Methodology. The initial theoretical and methodological basis of the study was the position that a subject of social development is a person as a member of society, and it is the contents of his mental life determines a direction of this development.
Results. Based on this position, theoretical analysis has identified five factors that can determine the vector of development of a particular society. These are, first, ideas of the desired state of society, which are inherent in the members of this society; second, their locus of control in the political sphere; third, their level of political competence; fourth, their level of resource provision necessary to achieve the desired state of society; and, fifthly, sizes of social groups that share certain idea about the desired state of society. To make predictions in the space of subjective models of society for each such group, the vector is built, the direction of which is given by the desired state of society, and the value is given by the average locus of control, average political competence and level of resources inherent in this group. The sum of the obtained vectors allows determining the general vector of society development.
Conclusions and prospects. The forecast constructed in this way allows describing general trends and scenarios of development of a certain society. In this case, the relevance of the forecast is limited to the medium term, which is due to the condition of constancy of the values obtained for all five factors of the forecast model. Operationalization of this model is a prospect for further work.
Downloads
Article Details
References
Huber, B. J., & Bell, W. (1971). Sociology and the emergent study of the future. The American Sociologist, 6, 287-295.
Rotter, J. B. (1954). Social learning and clinical psychology. NY: Prentice-Hall.
Toffler, E. (2004). Tret'ya volna [Third wave]. M.: AST.
Zhovtianska, V. V. (2020). Psykholohiya reprezentatsiy diysnosti [The psychology of reality representations]. К .: Talkom.
Zhovtianska, V. V. (2021). Psykholohichni zasady modelyuvannya yak metodychnoho napryamu sotsialʹnoyi prohnostyky [Psychological principles of modeling as a methodological direction of social prognosis]. Naukovi studiyi iz sotsialʹnoyi ta politychnoyi psykholohiyi [Scientific Studies in Social and Political Psychology], 48 (51).