Abilities as explanatory concept in modern psychology

Abstract

The article is devoted to the discussion of the problem of abilities that are relevant for psychological science. The abilities we consider are in the context of modern theoretical and methodological problems of domestic psychology: the conceptual space of psychology, the definition of the subject and method, and the organization of psychological research. It has been debated for some time (beginning in the 1960s) in Russian psychology, the important methodological significance of abilities in explaining numerous aspects of a person's mental life. During which time, a holistic psychological theory of abilities in domestic psychology was not created. The purpose of this article is a theoretical substantiation of the role and place of concepts of abilities in the construction of modern psychological research. The study used the communicative methodology of psychology, allowing us to better consider the process of psychological research as a transformation of the initial abstraction by the researchers in the direction of choosing: the main idea of the study, the base category and modeling representation. Research methods: are the analysis of the role and place of concept of abilities in the design of modern psychological research from material of empirical and experimental data published in leading peer-reviewed journals of 2010 to 2022. As a result, it was found that domestic psychologists use the concept of ability actively in different ways; this defined the main idea of the study. We used, both subjective (from self-awareness), and objective (from behavior), and complex variants of the correlation of the subject and method of studying abilities. This allows us to assert that the concept of ability has an important methodological significance in terms of constructing modern empirical and experimental research. In addition, it showed that the concept of ability performs an important explanatory function in solving the problems of differentiating subjects according to individual psychological characteristics, as well as in explaining the success of performing different types and types of activities.