Mentality Innovation Center

What is mentality?

Mentality is a complex system of beliefs, values, principles, views, rules, and other things of this kind fixed in a particular form of reasoning, unconscious decisions, and feelings, as well as in perception and interpretation of reality. The term "mentality" can be applied to an individual, group, nation, ethnos, or even epoch. Individual mentality is a person's way of thinking, feeling, and acting. However, “way of thinking” does not mean WHAT a person thinks, feels, or does; it means HOW the thoughts, feelings, or actions occur in the person's consciousness. Therefore, «the way» is not the content of thoughts, feelings, or actions but the mode of them.

Mentality, being basically a life-organizing program, predetermines a possible set of a person’s thoughts and actions in any possible life situation, even long before the actual situation occurs. A person's mentality is mostly formed in the person's childhood and youth by natural and cultural surroundings, upbringing, education, perception, and individual psychical processes, mostly without the person's control. After maturation, the person's mentality remains stable throughout the rest of life, even if it becomes obsolete over time, causes conflicts with changing reality, and troubles the person and the people around them. Nevertheless, mentality is able to change under certain circumstances at any age and can be revised by the person with the help of useful for this matter techniques.

What is mentology?

Mentology is the theory and practice of researching and changing mentality. Using the combination of the tools of philosophy, rhetoric, pedagogy, and other techniques, as well as some unique approaches, mentology provides the opportunity to work with the field of human existence, individual and collective, that no other discipline currently deals with specifically.

Here are the nine theses that constitute the approach that mentology holds:

The mental contents of thinking include beliefs, values, principles, views, rules, and other thoughts of this kind that are mental bases.
Mental bases are an important factor that determines people's desires, decisions, and actions.
Emotions, feelings, experiences, impressions, and other psycho-emotional contents are secondary in relation to thoughts and are projections of the mental bases.
Mental bases have a high degree of typicality for people, which is easily confirmed by frequency analysis.
Exceptions to the typical mental bases of any majority are just as typical within any identified minority and are subject to general rules.
In a typical situation, typical people think and act in a typical way (with little variation) based on typical mental bases.
Analysis in mentology makes it possible, with high probability, to identify a personal set of typical mental bases for any person.
Information about a person’s biographical events and conditions is not required to obtain data about their mental bases. This data can be taken from any material.
Mentology allows one to discover, present, and change limiting and problematic mental bases, obtaining more effective ones.

What do we do?

We practice mentology to research, study, and educate people in the realm of their mentality: their beliefs, values, principles, views, rules, and other thoughts of this sort that are mental bases. At our events and individual sessions, we help people see their controlling and limiting mental bases, understand their consequences, and decide whether to keep or change them. Exercising mentology, we also help people better understand others: individuals, groups, communities, and whole ethnos or nations. By doing all this, we strive to remove people's mental barriers to understanding themselves and others to improve collaboration and make people's lives more fulfilling. Here are some areas where we can help:

WHERE WE CAN HELP

Cross-cultural Communications

Cross-cultural communication often encounters challenges due to the diversity of mentalities across different nations. We can offer valuable insights into understanding and navigating these differences. By going deeper into the core beliefs and values that shape mentalities, we can help individuals and groups understand and recognize the actual perspectives of others. By doing that, we strive to establish harmonious interactions and meaningful connections between representatives of various cultures.

In a country where many national groups coexist, we see exaptational value in enhancing collaboration and cohesion among people with different cultural backgrounds. For immigrants adapting to life in the United States, we offer support in understanding the difference between their mentality and American mentality and ways to address the differences. This allows immigrants to take advantage of new opportunities, facilitating a smoother cultural transition and enhancing a sense of community and belonging to their adopted homeland.

As native Russian speakers, former Russian residents, and immigrants, we have the highest competence in understanding Russian (ex-Soviet Union) mentality, recognizing differences between Russian and American mentalities, and bridging these differences. For the mentalities of other nations our expertise is limited, but we still can apply the mental approach and get valuable insites.

Group Collaboration

The diversity of mentalities extends beyond national boundaries and encompasses various groups like professional groups, political groups, generational strata, subcultures and movements, etc. Understanding and addressing these differences is important for effective communication and collaboration across different groups. Mentology provides a framework for understanding and navigating the diverse mentalities of multiple groups. Using mentology, we are happy to contribute to bridging differences, fostering mutual respect, and cultivating meaningful connections between different groups and individuals from different groups.

Personal Development and Changes

As a theory and practice of working with beliefs and values, mentology is also an effective instrument for analyzing personal mentality. Using techniques of mentology, we can offer help with understanding the person's actual values and beliefs, which the person uses for reasoning their decisions and making choices, conflicts between values, conflicts between beliefs and experience of the person, as well as beliefs and values which prevent desired personal changes or are necessary to promote desired personal development.

Also, the mental approach can be used to help with conditions of existential crisis, facing the "absurdity of life" conditions, constant sadness, procrastination, laziness, addictions, suffering from breakdown or divorce, and many other unpleasant conditions in which a person still remains conscious.

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Understanding People

Nobody can tell what goes on in another person's mind. But by gaining a sense of another person's beliefs, values, and other elements that constitute their mentality, it's possible to understand what is really important to them and how to collaborate effectively with them. This understanding will be helpful in:

personal and family relationships, especially when something is already going on imperfect;
relationships with kids, in upbringing and education; to close the generational gap; for parents or teachers;
organizations and companies with employees, customers, partners, etc.; for managers, frontline responders, owners, etc.;
mediation and resolving conflicts in any context;
negotiations.

And we can help with all of this and more.

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MORE ABOUT US

We work in close cooperation with the Association of Mental Approach, which is the international center of competence in the field of mentology, and with Alexey Murashov, who is the author of the original concept of mentology, to enhance the theory and practice of mentology and increase the value we provide to the local communities and individuals.

Mentality Innovation Center is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. We are supported by individual donors, grants, sponsorships, and revenue from our programs.

If you are interested in supporting us or collaborating with us, please get in touch with us:

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