Rationality and irrationality of behavior. The problem of irrationality and rationality in the aspect of studying the economy and managing social systems Irrational has two meanings

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Rational knowledge proceeds in two main forms: reason and reason. Reasoning cognition operates with concepts, but does not delve into their nature and content. Reason operates within a given scheme, template. Reasoning activity does not have its own goal, but fulfills a predetermined goal. Reasonable knowledge presupposes the operation of concepts and the investigation of their own nature. Unlike reason, rational activity is purposeful. Reason and reason are two necessary moments of rational knowledge. Thinking must be both rational and rational, since the transition from one system of knowledge to another is carried out through the mind, which generates new ideas that go beyond the boundaries of existing knowledge. But the activity of the mind is relative, because, breaking the old system of knowledge, the mind itself creates the foundations for the emergence of a new system and its logic, the development of which is further determined by the mind. The problem of the rational in cognition and the problem of clarifying the meaning and role of reason in relation to being, purpose, social and historical development was transformed into the definition of the meanings of rationality. Rationality here acts as a certain cultural value, realized in certain norms of human behavior. The most widespread idea of ​​rationality, which reduces it to scientificity (the ideal of rationality is scientific activity). It is the process of scientific cognition as based on the unity of the sensual and the rational, relying on the evidence and confirmation of the results of cognition, striving to establish absolute truth, that turns out to be consistent with the standards of rationality. Irrationalism in a broad sense is usually called those f. teachings that limit or deny the decisive role of the mind in cognition, highlighting other types of human abilities - instinct, intuition, direct contemplation, insight, imagination, feelings, etc.

Irrational- this is a philosophical concept that expresses what is not subject to reason, not amenable to rational comprehension, incommensurable with the capabilities of the mind. Within the framework of classical rationalism, the idea of ​​a special ability of intellectual activity, called intellectual intuition, is emerging. Thanks to intellectual intuition, thinking, bypassing experience, directly comprehends the essence of things. The problem of correlation of knowledge and faith, rational and irrational, in a narrower sense - science and religion has a long history. In the reflections of philosophers of various trends and scientists of the late twentieth century, one can increasingly come across arguments that scientific thought needs faith, like the right hand needs the left hand, and the inability to work with both hands should not be considered a special advantage. This is justified by the fact that in principle different structures of a human being are involved in scientific and religious knowledge. In science man acts as a "pure mind"; conscience, faith, love, decency - all this is "help" in the work of the mind of a scientist. But in the religious-spiritual life, the mind is the working force of the heart. O. Comte argued that knowledge and faith do not interfere with each other, and neither of them can replace or destroy the other, since in the "depth" knowledge and faith form a unity. At present, there is growing interest in the problem of the irrational, that is, what lies beyond the reach of the mind and is inaccessible to comprehension with the help of known rational (scientific) means, and the conviction is strengthened that the presence of irrational layers in the human spirit generates the depth from which new meanings, ideas, creations appear. The mutual transition of the rational and the irrational is one of the fundamental foundations of the process of cognition. Rational (thinking) is interconnected not only with the sensual, but also with other - non-rational - forms of cognition.

Cognitive activity of a person is possible due to the fact that he has specialized mechanisms for reflecting reality, which are commonly called human cognitive abilities. They arose both as a result of biological (concrete sensory ability) and as a result of social (abstract mental ability, intuition) human evolution. Let's briefly describe them:

1. Concrete sensory knowledge. Based on sensory-sensitive reflection, inherent in the animal world, but specifically developed in the process of human practice. The range of human sense organs is specially adapted for orientation and activity in the macrocosm, therefore the micro- and mega-worlds remain inaccessible to direct sensory cognition. Man has three forms of sensory reflection: sensations, perceptions and ideas. Feel- the form of reflection corresponding to the individual properties of objects. Sensations can be components of perception, as well as independent. Perceptions- the form of reflection corresponding to the system of properties of the object. Sensation and perception arise from direct interaction with the object.

The analysis of sensations allows us to distinguish two groups of perceived qualities of objects, which Locke called primary and secondary. Actually subject qualities are the effect of internal interactions. dispositional- the effect of external interactions of a given thing with other things (color, taste). Both those and other qualities are objective.

Sensations carry information about the properties of objects, both their own and dispositional. They inform about the substratum of objects, their qualities and, to a certain extent, their structure. The structure of an object is most fully reflected in the complex of sensations, i.e. in perception. Feelings and perceptions can be conveyed through the concept of "image". Sensation will act as a non-pictorial image, and perception as a pictorial one, i.e. capable of depicting the subject as a whole. At the same time, it should be taken into account that the "image" is characterized not by the coincidence with the object, but only by its correspondence to the object. An image is not a mirror copy, but it is not a sign either. This is what is consistent with the thing and corresponds to it. However, sensations and perceptions are always tied to a specific situation, a specific object. This limits the human experience to the personal and situational. The task of expanding the scope of sensory experience is performed by such a form of sensory reflection as representation, which makes it possible to combine images and their elements outside of direct action with the represented objects. Performance- this is a sensually visual image of objects and phenomena of reality, stored and reproduced in the mind without a direct impact of the objects themselves on the senses.

Sensory cognition and its forms are the starting point in moving towards the essence of the object, in mastering the object in practice, as well as a way to regulate the objective activity of a person.

2. Rational knowledge(abstract thinking) arises in the process of labor and communicative activity of a person, in one complex with language and thinking. There are three forms of abstract mental reflection: concept, judgment and conclusion. concept- the result of a generalization of objects of a certain class and a mental selection of this class itself according to a certain set of features common to objects of this class. Judgment- this is a form of thought in which, through the connection of concepts, something is affirmed or denied about something. (Reflection of connections between objects and phenomena of reality or between their properties and features). inference- reasoning, during which a new judgment is logically deduced.

Distinctive features of abstract thinking in comparison with sensory reflection:

1) The ability to reflect the general in objects. With sensitive reflection in individual objects, general and single signs are not differentiated; they are not separated, merged into a single homogeneous image.

2) The ability to reflect the essential in objects. As a result of sensitive reflection, the essential is not distinguished from the non-essential.

3) The ability to design on the basis of knowledge of the essence of objects of concepts-ideas to be objectified.

4) Indirect cognition of reality - both through sensitive reflection, and with the help of reasoning, inference and the use of instruments.

But at the same time, rational and sensory cognition cannot be thought of as eliminated stages of one process. In reality, they interpenetrate each other. On the one hand, the realization of the sensory-sensitive ability of a person is accomplished through abstract thinking. On the other hand, the realization of the abstract-mental ability of a person is carried out by referring to the results of the sensory reflection of objects, which are also used (in the form of image-models, image-symbols) as a means of achieving and expressing the results of rational cognition.

Rational knowledge uses two main procedures for operating with its content, expressed in the form of concepts, judgments and inferences - explanation and understanding. The explanation procedure is the transition from more general knowledge to more specific and empirical. The main types of explanation are structural, functional and causal. Understanding as a procedure deals with meanings and meanings and involves a number of sub-procedures: 1) interpretation - the initial attribution of meaning and meaning to information; 2) reinterpretation - clarification and change of meaning and meaning; 3) convergence - the unification of previously disparate meanings and meanings; 4) divergence - the separation of a previously single meaning into separate sub-meanings; 5) conversion - a qualitative modification of the meaning and meaning, their radical transformation. Understanding thus. is the implementation of many procedures and operations that provide multiple transformation of information in the transition from ignorance to knowledge.

3. Intuition. The term intuition is ambiguous and difficult to separate from the phenomena of the sphere of the unconscious and subconscious or instincts. Intuition cannot be reduced to its sensory-sensitive variety, which manifested itself, for example, in the axiomatic method of Euclidean geometry. An example of sensory-sensitive intuition is the proposition “parallel lines do not intersect”. In epistemology, it is customary to talk about intellectual intuition that allows you to penetrate into the essence of things. The very idea of ​​intuition has a religious-mystical origin. Initially, it was understood as a form of direct knowledge of God. In the deistic and pantheistic rationalism of modern times, intuition was considered the highest form of knowledge, operating directly with the essence of things and ultimate categories. In postclassical philosophy, on the basis of a new, irrational interpretation of intuition, a special epistemological position has developed - intuitionism, most often religiously colored. Modern epistemology also cannot neglect the analysis of intellectual intuition, since the fact of the existence of this specific cognitive ability of a person is confirmed by the experience of not only artistic and philosophical, but natural scientific creativity (Einstein, Tesla, Kekule, Botkin, Dixon).

The following main features of the act of intellectual intuition can be distinguished: the immediacy of comprehension of truth at the essential level of objects, the unexpectedness of solving a problem, the unconsciousness of the ways and means of solving it. The general definition of intuition sounds s.o.: intuition is the ability to comprehend the truth through its direct discretion without substantiation with the help of evidence. The intuitive ability was formed as a result of the need to make decisions with incomplete information about events, and the ability to intuitively know can be regarded as a probabilistic response to the probabilistic conditions of the environment. The probabilistic nature of intuition means for a person both the possibility of obtaining true knowledge and the danger of having erroneous, untrue knowledge.

Intuition is formed under the influence of a number of factors; thorough professional training of a person and deep knowledge of the problem; folding the search situation, the state of problem; actions of the subject of the search dominant based on continuous attempts to solve the problem; having a "hint".

Intellectual intuition is heterogeneous and can be classified s.o.:

1) Standardized or intuition-reduction. With her direct comprehension of the essence of k.-l. phenomena occur, albeit within the framework of a probabilistic mechanism, but on the basis of a certain matrix. An example is the rapid establishment of a correct diagnosis based on external symptoms without resorting to other methods.

2) Heuristic or creative. As a result of heuristic intuition, fundamentally new sensory and conceptual epistemological images are formed, i.e. fundamentally new knowledge. There are two subspecies of it: a) eidetic intuition arises as an abrupt transition from concepts to sensual images that carry new content in comparison with these concepts; b) conceptual- an abrupt transition from sensory images to concepts that do not directly generalize these images (Einstein: "combinatorial game" with figurative elements of thinking).

Based on this, we can define creative intuition. Creative intuition is a specific cognitive process that consists in the interaction of sensory images and abstract concepts and leads to the creation of fundamentally new images and concepts, the content of which is not derived by a simple synthesis of previous perceptions or by only logical operation of existing concepts.

Economists are starting to move away from the assumption of rational human behavior, accepting us for who we really are: contradictory, insecure, and a little crazy.

The question of how familiar economists are with the concept of "humanity" may seem frivolous to most men of science, but it arises in the minds of many uninitiated people who are first acquainted with the calculations of economic theory. Indeed, in the traditional view of economists, a person is more like a robot from a science fiction movie: he is completely subordinate to logic, completely focused on achieving the goal, and free from destabilizing influences of feelings or irrational behavior. Although in real life there really are people of this warehouse, we should not forget that in the behavior of most of us there is much more uncertainty and a tendency to make mistakes.

Now, finally, economists themselves are gradually beginning to realize this fact, and in the ivory towers, in which the mysteries of economic theory are happening, the human spirit is slowly beginning to be felt.

Among the youngest and most ambitious economists, it is even becoming fashionable to use examples from psychology and even biology to explain things like drug addiction, New York taxi driver behavior, and other behaviors that seem completely illogical. This trend was started by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who wondered back in 1996 about the "illogical prosperity" of the US stock market (then, after some confusion, investors ignored him).

Many rationalist economists remain true to their beliefs and approach issues discussed by apostate colleagues in the growing school of behavioral economics in a purely logical manner. The irony of the situation is that while economists are fighting against heretics in their ranks, their own methods are increasingly being used by social sciences such as law and political science.

The golden age of rational economics began in 1940. The great economists of yesteryear, such as Adam Smith, Irving Fisher, and John Maynard Keynes, took into account illogical behavior and other aspects of psychology in their theories, but in the post-war years, all this was swept away in side of the new wave of rationalists. The success of rational economics went hand in hand with the introduction of mathematical methods into economics, which turned out to be much easier to apply if people's behavior was considered strictly logical.

It was believed that several forms of rational behavior could be distinguished, the simplest of which was defined as "narrow rationality". This theory assumed that in their activities a person seeks to maximize "happiness" for himself, or, as the 19th century philosopher Stuart Mill said, "utility." In other words, given his own choice, a person should prefer the option, the "usefulness" of which is higher for him. In addition, he must be consistent in his preferences: so, if he prefers apples to oranges, and oranges to pears, then, accordingly, he should like apples more than pears. There is also a more general interpretation of rational behavior, which, in particular, implies that a person's expectations are based on his objective logical analysis of all the information available to him. Until now, the meaning and content of these definitions cause debate in philosophical circles.

In the late 1970s, economic rationalism was not just an orthodox theory, it had a real impact on the outside world. Thus, in a number of countries, especially in Great Britain and the United States, macroeconomic policy has fallen into the hands of supporters of the "reasonable expectations" theory. According to them, people form their expectations not according to their own limited experience, but based on all the information available to them, including an accurate assessment of public policy. Thus, if the government claims that it is taking all necessary measures to combat inflation, then people should transform their expectations in accordance with this information.

In a similar way, Wall Street investment firms have been affected by the so-called "efficient market hypothesis", according to which the price of financial assets, such as stocks and bonds, has a rationale and depends on the available information. Even if there are a large number of stupid investors in the market, they will not be able to resist smart investors whose more successful activities will force them to leave the market. As a result, the assumption that an investor could earn a higher return than the market average caused the proponents of this theory to laugh. How things have changed since then! Many of these same economists have gone into investment management today, and judging by their success in this field, they should have paid more attention to developing their early theories that it was very difficult to "make" the market.

The 1980s saw the failure of macroeconomic theories based on reasonable expectations (although this may also be due to the fact that people reasonably refused to believe government promises). What finally destroyed the reputation of many apologists for these theories was the stock market crash of 1987, which happened without any new causes or information. This was the beginning of the fact that theories that took into account irrational behavior began to be slowly allowed into the bright temple of economics. Today, this has resulted in the emergence of a growing school of economists who, using the latest achievements of experimental psychology, are conducting a massive attack on the very idea of ​​​​rational behavior, both for an individual and for an entire community.

Even the briefest enumeration of their conclusions is capable of causing a swoon in any supporter of a rational economy. Thus, it turns out that people are overly influenced by the fear of regret, and often pass by the opportunity to gain a benefit only because there is a small probability of failure. Moreover, people are characterized by the so-called cognitive dissonance, which means a clear discrepancy between the surrounding world and the idea of ​​​​it and manifests itself if this idea has grown and cherished over time. And one more thing: people are often influenced by third-party opinions, which manifests itself even if they know for sure that the source of the opinion is incompetent in this matter. In addition, people suffer from the desire to maintain the status quo at all costs. Often the desire to maintain the status quo leads them to spend more money than they would have to go through to achieve this position from scratch. Rational expectations theory suggests that a person makes specific decisions depending on the analysis of the general state of affairs. Psychologists have found that in fact the human mind divides the surrounding reality into certain general categories, often guided by the superficial signs of objects and phenomena, while the analysis of individual categories does not take into account others.

Obviously, such an irrational phenomenon as "omniscience" is often manifested in people's behavior. Ask the person a question, and then ask them to rate the credibility of their answer. Most likely, this estimate will be overestimated. This may be due to the so-called "representation heuristic": the tendency of the human mind to treat surrounding phenomena as members of a class already known to it. This gives a person the feeling that the phenomenon is familiar to him, and the confidence that he has correctly identified its essence. Thus, for example, people "see" a certain structure in the data stream, although in fact it is not there. The "availability heuristic," a related psychological phenomenon, causes people to focus their attention on a single fact or event without taking into account the big picture, because that particular event seemed more obvious to them, or it was more clearly imprinted in their memory.

Another wonderful feature of the human psyche, the "magic of the imagination," makes people prescribe consequences to their own actions with which they have nothing to do, and, accordingly, imply that they have more power to influence the state of affairs than is actually the case. For example, an investor who buys a stock that suddenly goes up is likely to blame it on their professionalism rather than pure luck. In the future, this may also result in a "quasi-magic of the imagination" when the investor begins to behave as if he believes that his own thoughts can influence events, even if he himself knows that this is impossible.

In addition, most people, according to psychologists, suffer from "false hindsight": when something happens, they overestimate the likelihood that they themselves could have predicted this event in advance. The so-called "false memory" borders on this phenomenon: people begin to convince themselves that they predicted this event, although in reality this did not happen.

And, finally, it is unlikely that anyone will disagree with the fact that human behavior is often ruled by emotions, and by no means reason. This is clearly shown by the psychological experiment known as the "ultimatum game". During the experiment, one of the participants was given a certain amount of money, for example $ 10, part of which he had to offer the second participant. He, in turn, could either take the money or refuse. In the first case, he received this money, and the first participant took the rest; in the second, they both received nothing. The experiment showed that in the event that the proposed amount was small (less than 20% of the total), then it was usually rejected, although from the point of view of the second participant it is beneficial to agree with any proposed amount, even with one cent. However, in this case, punishing the first participant who offered an insultingly small amount of money gave people more satisfaction than their own benefit.

The greatest influence on economic thought has been the so-called "prospect theory" developed by Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University and Amos Tversky of Stanford University. This theory brings together the results of a number of psychological studies, and differs significantly from the theory of rational expectations, while it uses the methods of mathematical modeling used by the latter. Prospect theory is based on the results of hundreds of experiments in which people were asked to choose between two options. The results of the studies of Kahneman and Tversky say that a person avoids losses, i.e. his feelings from losses and gains are asymmetrical: the degree of satisfaction of a person from the acquisition of, for example, $ 100 is much lower than the degree of frustration from the loss of the same amount. However, the desire to avoid losses is not related to the desire to avoid risk. In real life, avoiding losses, people risk much less than if they acted strictly rationally and sought to maximize utility for themselves. Prospect theory also says that people misjudge probabilities: they underestimate the likelihood of events that are most likely to happen, overestimate less likely events, and dismiss events that are unlikely but still exist. People also view the decisions they make on their own without taking into account the whole context.

Real life confirms prospect theory in many ways, as Colin Camerer, an economist at the California Institute of Technology, writes about. So, studying the work of taxi drivers in New York, he noticed that most of them set a daily production rate for themselves, finishing work when this rate is met. Thus, on busy days, they usually work a few hours less than when they have few passengers. From a rational-behavioral perspective, they should do the opposite, work more on the days when their average hourly earnings increase due to an influx of customers, and curtail work when their average hourly earnings decrease due to downtime. Prospect theory helps to explain this irrational behavior: when a driver fails to achieve his own goal, he perceives it as a defeat, and he puts all his strength and time into avoiding it. On the contrary, the feeling of victory that arises from the fulfillment of the norm deprives him of an additional incentive to continue working that day.

Horse racing people prefer dark horses to favorites much more often than they should from a rational point of view. Prospect theory attributes this to a miscalculation of probabilities: people underestimate the likelihood of a favorite winning and overestimate the possibility that an unknown nag will finish first. It is also noted that players usually start betting on unknown horses towards the end of the day. By this time, many of these people have already lost some of their money, settled in the pockets of bookmakers, and a successful dark horse run for them can turn a failed day into a triumph. From the point of view of logic, this makes no sense: the last race is no different from the first. However, people tend to turn off their internal meter at the end of the day, as they don't want to leave the racetrack on a losing streak.

Perhaps the most famous example of how prospect theory works is the so-called stock return problem. In the United States, for many years, stocks have provided investors with substantially more returns than bonds than would be expected from differences in the riskiness of these securities alone. Orthodox economists explained this fact by the fact that investors show less than expected risk appetite. In terms of prospect theory, this is explained by the desire of investors to avoid losses in any given year. Since losses at the end of the year are more characteristic of stocks than bonds, investors are ready to invest money only in those of them, whose high yield would allow them to compensate for the risk of losses in the event that the year turns out to be unsuccessful.

Proponents of a rational approach to economic theory responded by proving the rational roots of irrational human behavior. Gary Becker of the University of Chicago was voicing these ideas long before behavioral economics questioned classical dogmas. In his Nobel Prize-winning work, he describes aspects of human life from an economic point of view, such as education and family, suicide and drug addiction. In the future, he also created "rational" models for the formation of emotions and religious beliefs. Rationalists such as Becker accuse behavioral economists of using any suitable psychological theory in order to find an explanation for the problem under study, replacing this with a consistent scientific approach. In turn, Kamerer, mentioned above, says the same thing about the rationalists. Thus, they explain the desire of horse racers to bet on unknown horses by the fact that these people have a stronger risk appetite than usual, while saying the opposite in the case of the problem of stock returns. Although such explanations have the right to exist, it is obvious that they do not take into account the whole picture.

In fact, the conflict between the supporters of rational and behavioral psychology is now largely over. Traditionalists can no longer afford to simply ignore the significance of feelings and experiences in terms of their effect on human behavior, just as behavioralists no longer consider human behavior to be wholly irrational. Instead, most of them evaluate people's behavior as "quasi-rational", that is, they assume that a person tries to behave rationally, but again and again fails in this field.

Robert Shiller, the Yale economist who is rumored to have pushed Greenspan's "illogical prosperity" pronouncement, is currently working on a book on the psychology of the stock market. According to him, although the achievements of behavioral psychology should be taken into account, this should not mean a complete abandonment of traditional economic theory. Psychologist Kahneman, who was at the origins of the study of the irrational in economics, also says that it is too early to completely abandon the model of rational behavior. According to him, no more than one irrationality factor can be introduced into the model at a time. Otherwise, the processing of the results of the study may not be possible.

Nevertheless, most likely, the future development of economic theory will go at the intersection with other sciences, from psychology to biology. Andrew Lo, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hopes that advances in the sciences will uncover genetic predispositions for risk-taking, determine how emotions, tastes and expectations are formed, and gain a deeper understanding of learning processes. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Richard Thaler was, in fact, the pioneer in introducing psychological methods into the world of finance. He is now a professor at the University of Chicago, a stronghold of rational economics. He believes that in the future, economists will take into account as many behavioral aspects in their models as they will observe in the real life around them, if only because it would be simply irrational to do otherwise.

Human actions in economic life are regulated not only by rational calculation. Individual actions are performed under the influence of feelings, personal values ​​and other formations of the psyche. An external observer sometimes perceives and evaluates individual actions of another person as illogical or irrational.
The founders of the economy noted that in economic life there are factors that encourage irrational actions. So, A. Smith tried to substantiate the law of the exchange of products of labor between various producers, producer and consumer, seller and buyer. In the theory of labor value, he proposed to consider the cost of time for the manufacture of goods as the equivalent of cost (price). However, he recognized that in any product, along with the share of objectively spent time and other material costs, there is also the subjective value of the product for the manufacturer (seller) and for the consumer (buyer). Smith, considering the activity of an entrepreneur who acts solely for his own benefit, emphasized that the entrepreneur unwittingly creates beneficial effects for other people.
It turned out that there are a number of phenomena of "irrationality" of a person in the economic sphere of life. The rigidity of the physical laws of material reality and the inflexibility of the laws of logic, which are used in the economy, in social systems, change their effect and become dependent on the laws of the functioning of the human psyche. So, it is known that concessions are made to relatives in the system of lending and sales.
The phenomenon of irrationality, using the example of human behavior as a consumer, was described by T. Skitovski, an American economist of Hungarian origin. He emphasized that "reasonable benefit", rational expenditure of the budget to the consumer is dictated by experts, authorities, all those who act as heralds of "social rationality". At the same time, people act according to the call of individual preferences. The irrationality of human nature lies in the indulgence of weaknesses, the conflict between instinct and pleasure, in the lack of skills of rational behavior, which requires time to master the algorithms of actions and strong-willed efforts.
It is human nature to experience the illusion of "results and costs" in activities due to an imbalance in subjective and objective assessments. S. V. Malakhov wrote that the costs always objectively exceed the result, but psychologically it is natural for a person to exaggerate the merits of the chosen alternative and belittle the attractiveness of the rejected one. Otherwise, the “bird in hand”, which creates the effect of satisfaction and thus positive emotions, reduces the significance of negative (hidden) outcomes for the subject and increases the significance of positive ones. The same effect creates the illusion of profitability, when mental energy costs are not taken into account, subjectively leveled.
The phenomena of human economic irrationality were empirically investigated, described, experimentally, statistically and by modeling methods proved by Nobel laureates in economics in 2000-2002. . D. McFadden and J. Hackman, studying how social programs and consumer choices affect the economy and output, came to the conclusion that social and personal factors affect the rationality of producers, which is “shifted” due to choice errors and heterogeneity of preferences consumers. It turned out that the choice of the consumer, taking into account his individual traits, character traits and tastes, is a priority for determining the volume of production and labor force in the labor market. They substantiated the need for a differentiated calculation of social needs for individual branches of production, the efficiency of which, as a result, increases by 50%.
In developing the theory of non-competitive markets, J. Akerlof, M. Spence and D. Stiglitz substantiated the proposition that information is a commodity, an object of purchase and sale in accordance with value. The rent of this commodity, according to the law of monopoly price, increases due to the phenomenon of information asymmetry in social market relations. But this direct profitable monopoly creates destructive effects, increases uncertainty, destabilizes the economy, encourages people in conditions of scarcity or distortion of information to make irrational decisions.
As D. Kahneman showed, people use the comparison method in business and purchases, and not justified calculations in the algorithms of probabilistic models. In the behavior of people pursuing goals in the economic sphere, typical mistakes appear when making decisions in that they tend to repeat strategies in which they have not succeeded. It seems to them that the cause of failure was a minor mistake or an unfortunate set of circumstances.
When making decisions, intuition becomes a strong factor. Life situations often require making decisions quickly, so it is not always possible to understand the reasons why this or that decision was made. A person is also not always able to clearly understand desires, as a result of which the realized goal is often disappointing. Excessive self-confidence in professional infallibility and overestimation of one's own ability to correctly understand the situation influence the deviation from rational behavior in the financial markets. The "economic" behavior of people is largely explained by the phenomena of risk, stereotypes and premiums.
Thus, the laws that govern human behavior in the practice of economic life are largely corrected by the laws of the human psyche.
The problem that marked the beginning of economic psychology as a science was the irrationality of "economic" man.
Modern economists have continued to develop the ideas of A. Smith and other classical economists (W. S. Jevons, England, 1835-1882; L. Walras, Switzerland, 1834-1910; C. Menger, Austria, 1840-1921), in which the essential the place is given to the subjective psychological characteristics of a person who makes decisions and acts in the economic sphere.
In the history of establishing one of the basic laws of economics - the law of supply and demand - a significant contribution was made by philosophers and psychologists. The formulation of the law of supply and demand (the quantity of goods and its cost (value, price) are inversely related), as well as all subsequent refinements of the law, were preceded by the postulates of philosophy and open laws in the psychology of human sensory systems. A visual illustration of the law can be found on the Internet or at.
The goods and needs of consumers have been taken as the leading factors in explaining what prices and resource values ​​are formed from. William Jevons, Leon Walras, Carl Menger in the theory of marginal utility explained that the utility of a good (a property of things that make it possible to satisfy a need) is determined by the last available unit of a particular thing (W. Jevons). The value of a good is determined by the rarity of a thing (L. Walras). Goods have ordinal ranks. Thus, gold in the desert, compared with water for a thirsty traveler, will have a boon of a lower order. Things acquire the property of being “good” through psychological value for a person (K. Menger) or benefit.
There is no direct relationship between labor costs, social conditions and commodity prices.
The theory of marginal utility was being developed at the time when the Bouguer-Weber-Fechner law was discovered in psychology. In general, its content is as follows: the strength of the reaction to the stimulus decreases with each subsequent repetition of it for a certain time and then becomes unchanged, constant. The subjective sensation from the increase in the strength of the stimulus of the same modality grows more slowly than the intensity of the stimulus.
The minimum increase in illumination IΔ necessary to cause a barely perceptible difference in sensation is a variable value, dependent on the magnitude of the initial illumination I, but their ratio IΔ/I-value is relatively constant. This was established in 1760 by the French physicist R. Bouguer through experiments.
The ratio of the incremental intensity of the stimulus to the initial strength of the stimulus IΔ/I, or the "distinctive step", as it began to be called, is a constant value, was confirmed in 1834 by the German physiologist E. Weber, and his statement became the general principle of the activity of sensory systems.
Later, in 1860, G. Fechner defined the concepts of absolute and difference sensitivity and threshold. The relative difference, or differential, threshold is the minimum increase in IΔ in relation to the initial intensity of the stimulus, which causes a barely noticeable increase or decrease in the sensation of IΔ / I in a person.
The final law was formulated by G. Fechner and called it "Weber's law". According to this law, the relation IΔ/I = const takes place. G. Fechner derived the law of sensations: S = K log IΔ/Io, where S is a subjectively experienced sensation from a stimulus of one or another intensity; I is the intensity of the stimulus. The law says that the magnitude of sensations is proportional to the logarithm of the magnitude of irritation.
The Burger-Weber-Fechner law and the psychological theory of pleasure and pain of the philosopher Jeremiah Bentham were applied to economics by William Jevons. He deduced the "equation of exchange": goods A/B = intensity A/B = utility of the last need of unit A/B. In other words, with a stable commodity stock, the value balance of two quantities of commodities will be equal to the inverse ratio of their marginal utilities. In a state of equilibrium, the increments of consumed goods are equal to the ratios of the intensity of needs satisfied last, by the last unit of the good or the last degree of utility of each good.
There are three main theses in Jevons' theory:
. the value of a commodity is determined by its usefulness;
. prices are determined not by production costs, but by demand;
. costs indirectly affect supply and indirectly commodity prices.
Jevons was very interested in the pattern of human impatience, which is that people prefer to satisfy needs in the present, rather than the future. This pattern has now been introduced into one of the laws of economic psychology.
Value to the producer is explained by the presumed usefulness of the final product or commodity (Friedrich von Wieser, 1851-1926). At the same time, the costs of the producer are directly related, but the benefits that are available in excess do not represent values. Costs express the value of commodities as implied, that is, imputed to the means of production or endowed by consumer utilities.
Thus, when deriving one of the basic laws of economics, the marginal value, usefulness of a product and the impact on the price of a product, first of all, demand, economists relied on the patterns that human sensory systems obey, that is, human psychology.
The psychological factor also underlies the law of John Hicks, a professor at Oxford University. Hicks' law states that consumer behavior is focused on obtaining the highest effect, maximum utility, and the consumer chooses the goods he needs, focusing on the subjective order of preference. Goods are interchangeable. Formally, it is possible to calculate and build a graph of the dependence of the amount of consumed goods on the amount of income. Types of goods, modalities may not be taken into account.
The psychological factor - the motives of individual actions - was also considered important by the American economist John Bates Clark (1847-1938). Clark considered motives as generalized actions of a reasonably acting individual. When calculating the factors of production, primarily labor costs, Clark considered the marginal output per unit of product. Wage per hour of labor is equal to the income from the hourly marginal product, other costs remaining unchanged. By manipulating the interest on the factors invested in the product, they increase capital.
The problem of working with a person's motivation to increase the company's capital became more acute in the 20th century. Its study began with the well-known Hawthorne experiments conducted by psychologists at Harvard University under the direction of Professor Mayo in Hawthorne, Illinois, at the Western Electric Company.
Capital expresses the relationship between human intelligence and material goods, Veblen Thorsten (1857-1929) believed. The ideas of spirituality and morality in the economy, formations of a clearly non-material nature, difficult to calculate in monetary terms and in terms of selfish benefit, were emphasized by N. K. Mikhailovsky, P. Sorokin, A. V. Chayanov, M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky, P. V. Struve.
In macroeconomics, the psychological factor is also taken into account. Thus, the law of J. Keynes states that the share of consumption increases with the growth of income, but slowly. Consumption also depends on the habits, traditions, psychological inclinations of people. The higher the income, the more their saved, not spent part grows. Therefore, such economic measures as very important for the reproduction of the economy, such as savings, investments, taxes, etc., need to be studied taking into account psychological realities.
Corporate (group), not individual management of the economy reveals ambiguous, not necessarily “profitable” behavior of the participants in the labor process when sharing profits. I. Zadorozhnyuk and S. Malakhov present the results of an interesting experiment.
The company fixed the income of participants in the activity of 10% with a stable profit. When the profit increased, the level of claims for a share of their income among the participants did not change linearly. At some stage, one person considers his share to be sufficient and is not going to “strain” to increase it. Some worker wants to increase the share of his income more and more. If he used to put up with his percentage, then at some point of inflection he does not want to receive a small share. Such a worker is psychologically guided by the following logic. The firm over time has a large income that comes from my efforts. This means that the share of the profits assigned to us or me must be greater than what was originally fixed.
Formally, it looks like this. The first worker after the saturation point is inclined to estimate his profit not at 10, but at 8%, the other - at 12%. In terms of incentive impact, these estimates need to be adjusted for the true contribution of each. This is where the tree of possibilities comes into play. An employee claims 12%, but does 8%, and vice versa - claims 8%, but does 12% or more.
Thus, equity participation is capable of disintegrating the team and ruining it. Due to disagreement with the size of their “piece of income”, entrepreneurial structures fall apart, or this may serve as a reason for a person to leave the company. The methods of economic science do not solve such a problem. Perhaps mutual agreement is carried out "in spirit", with the coincidence of opinions, values ​​​​with an agreement, or is solved by the problem of psychological compatibility.
This experiment illustrates the ideas of the sociologist and economist M. Weber that entrepreneurial activity is motivated by both moral norms and social values.
Thus, human society, solving its problems of coordination in consumption, production, reproduction, exchange and distribution of vital resources, not only gave rise to the division of labor, different industries and professions, but also created systems of study and research in each of them. The deepening of knowledge about the system of "smart" servicing of one's needs and dealing with limited resources stimulated the development of both economics, and economic psychology, and the psychology of the economic person itself.

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