Interview with the author of mentology Alexey Murashov by Nadezhda Dreval

Overview:  Alexey Murashov is the creator of mentology, author of a number of papers on mentology, and director of the 'Consulting and Education Agency’ which uses the mentology framework to assist organizations.  The subject of this interview is influencing, predicting people's behavior, and organizing thoughts using the mentology framework. The Mentology method is currently known and used in a variety of geographic locations, including Tomsk, Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, Barnaul, and Moscow. More than a hundred enterprises today apply the mentology approach to solve their business problems.  Over the course of the 13 years of mentology’s existence (translator note: interview conducted in 2013), Alexey has trained more than a hundred mentologists in this framework.

Dreval:  Is it true that mentology can solve problems in several areas of a person's life simultaneously?

Murashov:  Let's start with the fact that mentology is not a cure-all. It doesn't do the work of self-examination for a person but does help them better perform this self-examination and save them time doing it, at the very least. Using mentology, one can uncover the emotional and mental roots of personal and/or social problems, and by examining them, target and correct their root causes, not just alter the consequences of these problems. As for the method's areas of applicability, yes, it is indeed universally applicable, including to anyone who desires to improve themselves.  Everyone can benefit from mentology.

Dreval:  What makes mentology novel and different from other methods?

Murashov:  Mentology operates under the premise that at the core of any human action are what we have termed 'mindsets.' These are basic, sometimes subconscious beliefs or ideas that are the basis for the decisions that a person makes during their lives.  There are about thirty distinct root mindsets in total, but each person has only three or four main ones that influence the majority of their behavior. An example of a mindset might be; 'everyone is looking for love,' 'everything must be fair,' 'one must be strong,' or 'all people are equal’.  These are examples of mindsets that may form the basis of the way a person views their life experiences and determines their actions and responses to different situations.

These core mindsets were systematically uncovered and documented by mentology as it developed.  Mentology analyzed the mindsets of more than a thousand people and saw how people are surprisingly and strikingly similar in their values, bases, and motives of behavior across multiple regions and across cultures. The differences between people seem to lie only in which four out of the thirty existing mindsets form the core base of each individual’s personality. These core beliefs, once identified, can be tracked, focused on, targeted, and used to work through unwanted manifest behaviors in someone’s life.

Dreval:  Is mentology just about identifying mindsets?  Is it that simple?

Murashov:  Identifying core mindsets is important, but it is also important how the mindsets that motivate a person interact with each other, and how each core mindset influences the other existing mindsets. For example, a person with the mindset 'everyone wants happiness' and 'one must act correctly' will behave differently from a person whose second mindset is 'the world is unjust.'  Mentology identifies core mindsets along with analyzing the various core mindset combinations in each individual. An experienced mentologist can identify core mindsets in a half an hour interview. This results in the production of a ‘mentality map’, a kind of summary 'program code' for each person, by which the person operates during their life reactions and decision making. Interestingly, as an aside, this map is small enough to always fit on a regular notebook page size, which does not belie its importance in a person’s life.

Dreval:  Okay. You have a person's mentality map. What do you do with it?  What is the next step?

Murashov:  The mentality map is presented to the individual for their review.  Most of the time, this quickly enables a deeply personal examination of the person’s life.  It also enables as well, among other things, the person to ’tie up loose ends’ in their lives.  This means it makes them aware of any contradictions and/or inconsistencies in their thought process.  It also allows them to understand themselves better, to look at how these mindsets may contribute to the behavior they don’t like, to examine past behavior, and to predict their future behavior in a given situation unless the current mindsets are revised or replaced. Allowing people to understand their triggers and their current life circumstances along with an objective view as to how they got there is alone a huge benefit. It is typically enough to bring this dissonance into a person’s awareness and give them the choice as to their future course of action.

At an organizational level, an employer may need to find out if an employee is loyal or if they might be susceptible to taking bribes or leaking proprietary information. An employer may also be interested in predicting how much longer a key employee may stay with the company. Helping an employer to understand the employee better so decisions such as if they can promote the employee, and how well they may cope with the promotion can also be beneficial.  There are hundreds of questions that the data provided by mentology can answer. Yet, the most helpful use of the mentology map, by far, is for the individual person who creates their own personal mentality map. This allows them the objectivity necessary to set goals and to rid themselves of any contradictions that may complicate their life.

Dreval:  How does someone start this process?

Murashov:  Mentology’s process begins with an interview using a set of individually customized questions that are asked of the person by a trained mentologist. Nothing is assumed at the start of the interview; in other words, the questions are open ended with no right or wrong answer. After the first several questions, the course of the interview is determined by the responses elicited by the interviewer from the interviewee. Unlike psychologists, mentologists are never interested in a person's specific biography, childhood, or personal experiences unless these are incidentally brought up by the person as an answer to one of the questions. Privacy is respected.  What the questions seek to uncover are core ideas that determine the person’s view of how the world works, not details of any past occurrences in an individual’s life.  Since these ideas are truly CORE, they will come out in almost every conversation in the guise of opinions and viewpoints while engaged in discussions about daily life. The only memories or personal information elicited are contained in stories/answers that illuminate the historical thinking that has resulted from a person’s worldview.  This worldview is, of course, based on examples that the person chooses to share. Through this sharing, an individual can be helped to identify the source of their problems without specifically voicing sometimes painful experiences to the mentologist.

Dreval:  Can you give an example of a specific mindset that can affect someone’s behavior?

Murashov:  An example is the mindset 'everything must be fair.' This can create problems in many areas of life.

Dreval:  That seems like such a good mindset.  What problems can possibly come from that?

Murashov:  The main danger with the mindset 'everything must be fair’ is its discrepancy with real life.  Life is NOT fair, it has never been fair and never will be. In addition, different people have different definitions of what is fair. For some, it is fair when the stronger or more powerful gets more because they can take it. For others, it is fair that the weaker get more because they need it. This means the weak can't compete with the strong, while the strong will get what they want anyway.  Strangely, this seemingly good mindset is at the root of a host of unwelcome manifestations, including theft in enterprises. When a person sees that someone else works less but gets more, for example, they may feel justified in stealing time from the enterprise.  The theft can take the form of an employee doing personal tasks during work hours.  They may even steal office equipment or money. They may take kickbacks, or at least, if their position doesn’t allow kickbacks, take home equipment such as a stapler and folders. This way, they may compensate themselves for perceived 'injustice.' The presence of other mindsets would, of course, mitigate the manifestation of this behavior, and not everyone with this mindset steals.

The original publication of this article was made in Russian on the Association of Mental Approach (Mentology) website in 2013.

Translated from Russian by Andrey Kazantsev in 2024.

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