Mentality as a Characteristic of Culture

Abstract

Reflecting on modern ideas about the diversity of intelligence, the author of the article refers to the phenomenon of mentality as a relatively holistic set of thoughts, beliefs, and spiritual skills that creates a picture of the world and holds together the unity of a cultural tradition or some community. Mentality is considered as a stable attitude of the inner world of people, which unites them into social and historical communities, and in the socio-psychological and epistemological sense is a set of attitudes and predispositions of an individual to a certain type of thinking and action. The article distinguishes between mentality and public attitudes, mentality and value orientations, mentality and ideology. It is shown that mentality goes back to the unconscious depths of the psyche, and in this sense it is not always articulated by its bearers. Mentality is reconstructed by the author of the article in a research way through comparison with another mentality.