What does a rational person mean? Economic man and rational behavior

Greetings, our dear colleagues and readers! Today we offer no less important topic about two in various ways human actions and his two different reactions to changes in environment- these are rationality (J) and irrationality (P).

A rational person evaluates the world around him with his own created thought, his opinion changes - the assessment changes; behavior does not depend on the situation, but on a pre-made plan.

Ir rational person- behaves in such a way that everything depends on the situation. Conditions change - their assessment changes.

The actions of rational ones are consistent and planned, while those of irrational ones are flexible and impulsive.

An irrational person accepts and evaluates the situation, flexibly changes behavior, and spontaneously and impulsively adapts to changing circumstances. It is difficult to make decisions, puts them off, believing that the situation will resolve itself and time will put everything in its place. He doesn’t rush to conclusions: in order to come to something, you need to mature and feel the inner push - “it’s time.” His credo is lability and flexibility. Calmly and easily makes mutual concessions.

Acts according to the situation, impromptu, and does not burden himself with plans. Tends to search for alternatives and diverse approaches and chooses the best one. Copes with sudden and critical situations. Can keep multiple situations under control. On this moment selects the most effective, optimal one, and, if necessary, quickly rebuilds.

Doesn't prepare for things in advance. May procrastinate with things, put them off until last minute. Relies on one's inspiration, ability to improvise, or Lucky case. Trusts feelings. All actions depend on the mood. Distraction during work and switching from one type of activity to another stimulates performance. Doesn't tell stories consistently, gets distracted by associations.

The obligation to strictly adhere to the plan worries him. Emotions are impulsive and difficult to manage. Feelings are the cause of actions. Therefore, he cannot act until he is overcome by some feeling. He eats whenever he wants, and what he currently wants, little by little, just to satisfy his hunger, 4 - 6 times a day.

The stimulus for a fruitful life is everything that can bring new impressions and diversity. Extreme situations inspire. Life style is flexible and unpredictable.

A rational person is conservative, his life style is characterized by planning and regularity.

He subordinates everything to his own specific sequence, puts it “on shelves.” Rational man walking one way, it is difficult to convince another. In every situation he acts according to a scheme and plan. Prepares his plan in advance, thoughtfully and consistently works on it.

Starts a new job only after completing the previous one, otherwise it unsettles him. Adheres to principles, rules, norms. He stands his ground, does not give up his positions, strives to be the master of the situation. Follows formalities, maintains order, punctuality, accuracy, accuracy.

A rational person sticks to a routine at work and at home, gets nervous when distracted, so everything random and unexpected irritates him, and any unplanned shift can cause a violent reaction. The unfamiliar is equivalent to the opposite.

If conditions and circumstances change and it is necessary to rebuild, he tenses up, putting in a lot of effort. Therefore, it often happens that circumstances have already changed, but a person continues to think and act in accordance with previously established plan, which subsequently leads him to a dead end. This can be called a kind of “stuckness”.

Reacts to an emotion with an emotion, to an action with an action, and immediately, without hesitation, on the basis life experience. It seems more stern, decisive, emotions are sharp and cold. A feeling is not the cause of an action, but a consequence: after the right action, the state of health improves, after the wrong action, it worsens.

Therefore, a rational person carefully considers his actions. Takes action when it is necessary to create some kind of state or well-being. He eats rarely, maybe 2 times a day, but he eats a lot until he feels pressure in his throat.

INTRODUCTION

In the 90s, in an attempt to instill market behavior in Russians, they were urged to abandon the use of dacha plots as subsidiary plots. A simple calculation showed that it is not profitable for the urban population to spend time and effort on growing vegetables and fruits with their own hands; it is much more profitable to spend this time on Additional income, and buy everything in the store. Dachnoe subsidiary farm unprofitable from the point of view of pure economic calculation. But this does not stop most Russians.

You can give dozens similar examples as from real life, and from experimental situations. People do not always do things economically meaningful actions as rational egoists.

Of course, the examples given have their own unconditional logic - within a small team it is extremely unprofitable (and psychologically unpleasant) to be a competing egoist; no one will simply do business with you, but country cottage area, unprofitable for 20 years in a row, maybe literally save lives in situations of food shortages and sudden economic crisis. For acceptance similar decisions influence not only cold selfish calculations, but also emotions, cultural and moral attitudes, psychological characteristics thinking. Moreover, if the mechanisms for making the most profitable decision are widely studied, for example, in game theory, and psychological specifics thinking and the role of “irrational” emotional components in this are seriously studied by psychology; the role of cultural and moral attitudes of people in economic actions, despite the evidence, is not the subject of equally serious study to this day.

CHAPTER 1. ECONOMIC MAN AND RATIONAL BEHAVIOR

1.1 Economic man

An amazing but indisputable fact: from the time of Adam Smith to this day, in most economic theories and mathematical models, despite their emergency today complexity, as a subject receiving economic decisions, stands for an extremely primitive “model of man” known as Homo Economicus.

"Economicus" has four main qualities:

1. He operates in a competitive market, which implies minimal interaction with other economic people. "Others" are competitors.

2. Economic man is rational from the point of view of decision-making mechanisms. He is capable of setting a goal, consistently achieving it, and calculating the costs of choosing the means to achieve it.

3. An economic person has complete information about the situation in which he acts.

4. An economic person is selfish, that is, he strives to maximize his benefits.

It is these assumptions that lead to the fact that economic behavior is seen as an area free from everything “human”. It’s as if they are not the same people doing business, playing on the stock exchange, working and making purchases, driven by very diverse motives - here is the desire to be safe, and vanity, and excitement, and the need for love and respect, and envy, and struggle for world peace - and some abstract robots. And the main thing is that in their actions these people are not at all guided by their ideas about what is good and what is bad.

You don't need to have any special knowledge, in order to discern the obvious “attractiveness” of each item. People rarely act selfishly individually. Even the most cruel and cold-blooded person divides people into friends and foes, applying completely different rules. And any action “in the interests of the group” is already different from pure competition of everyone with everyone. Point 2 about the rationality of all actions is refuted by the history of mankind, which is full of fatal miscalculations that cost the lives of millions of people. Even the most experienced military strategists and statesmen They constantly make mistakes both in setting goals and in methods of achieving them. What can we say about ordinary people or average businessmen.

The argument about the completeness of information is generally the most odious. A person almost never has complete information about what is happening around him. That is why the mechanisms of our psyche and thinking do not act like a computer, but are able to work in situations of high uncertainty, using so-called heuristic strategies. Far from always being correct and logical, and not guaranteeing errorlessness, they nevertheless allow a person to draw conclusions, generalize and make predictions where any computer would fail due to insufficient initial data. But if we talk about the situation of awareness in a purely economic situations– whether it’s a stock exchange game or corporate intrigue, the opportunities for access to information for large and ordinary players are simply incomparable, and access to “insider” information is therefore a key resource in these situations.

Maximizing personal gain is also not the only common strategy not only among people, but also in wildlife. Although we are accustomed to using the expression “like in the jungle” as a synonym for the ruthless struggle for survival, scientists have long known many examples when specific animals use altruistic strategies for this very survival of a pack or species. There is no need to even turn to examples among higher animals; just look at any anthill. Geneticists are coming to increasingly interesting conclusions about the nature of the “altruism genes” that are responsible for cooperative strategies in animals.

1.2 Theories of economic behavior

To better understand where the economic science all this modern entertaining mechanics"Instead of a holistic view of man, we need to take a closer look at when the first theories of economic behavior arose. Since the 18th century, ideas of progress and enlightenment began to conquer the minds of Europeans. Against the background of mysticism and superstition, the ideas of the triumph of reason and the materiality of the world, which can be studied to the end with a compass , microscope and test tube, are exciting and promising. Man is complex mechanical device which can only feel and think. The soul is “a term devoid of content, behind which no idea is hidden and which a sound mind can use only to clothe that part of our organism that thinks,” writes the philosopher and physician Julien de La Mettrie, who immortalized the idea of “man-machine” in the eponymous labor of 1748. It is not fashionable to be an idealist; it is fashionable to consider a person as a creature guided by natural instincts, the desire for profit and pleasure and the fear of deprivation and grief.

People are just as rational and selfish in the writings of most theorists economic thought XVIII and XIX centuries. For Adam Smith, autonomous individuals are driven by two natural motif: self-interest and tendency to exchange. According to John Stuart Mill, people are driven by the desire for wealth and at the same time an aversion to work and an unwillingness to put off until tomorrow what can be used today. Jeremy Bentham believed that man was capable of arithmetic operations to obtain maximum happiness and wrote: “Nature has placed man under the power of two sovereign rulers: suffering and joy. They indicate what we should do today, and they determine what we will do tomorrow. As the measure of truth and lies, so are the chains of reason and the consequences rest at their throne." Leon Walras saw man as a utility maximizer based on rational behavior. In the 20th century, on the basis of these ideas, game theory grew - a branch of mathematics that studies optimal strategies in processes where several participants fight to realize their interests.

It should be noted that the understanding of the limitations of the idea of a person in economics as a mechanistic rational subject existed in the past. Even the classic John Mill still recognized the influence national characteristics on economic man and wrote that in countries continental Europe“People are content with smaller monetary gains, not valuing them so much in comparison with their peace and their pleasure.” In the works of a representative of the German historical school economic theory XIX century B. Hildebrandt, man “as a social being is, first of all, a product of civilization and history. His needs, education and attitude towards material values, as well as towards people, never remain the same, but are constantly changing geographically and historically and develop together in all the education of mankind." Thornstein Veblen believed that people in economic actions are not driven by rational calculation, but by the desire to improve social status, not always rational, and depending on the cultural and historical context in which it occurs. Veblen, in a sense, can be considered the founder of current theories of prestige consumption in marketing.

However, supporters of the “anthropocentric economy” have always remained in the minority, and in public consciousness the idea that economics is a field in which main motive people and organizations - maximizing their profits, regardless of what kind of people and organizations they are, what country they are in and what worldviews they share.

1.3 Rational economic behavior

Even if you don’t refute abstract theories, then at least ask them a lot unpleasant questions became possible with the accumulation experimental experience psychology. The mechanisms described in game theory are not always implemented in real life. life situations.

Firstly, rational acceptance solutions are greatly hampered by the device itself human psyche. So, back in the 60s, psychologists discovered evidence of the surprisingly powerful influence of situations on people’s actions, the “fly and elephant” effect, where the fly is the rational motive and reasons for an action or decision, and the elephant is a momentary situation. We are all familiar with this effect. In one of Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes, the great detective explains to Watson why he did not include a lady on the list of suspects, who was obviously very nervous when answering his questions - her nose was simply not powdered. The most insignificant detail, something said at hand, the intonation of the interlocutor, a sudden change in mood can often influence a person’s behavior, outweighing all rational and long-thought-out arguments. When explaining their actions, people also often do not analyze at all, but try to find explanations that will please themselves and those around them, and even when analyzing, they tend to take into account precisely those arguments that confirm their initial position, they believe more probable events whom they themselves met in person.

The volume of accumulated data on such “deviations” from “normality” eventually became impossible to ignore. The fly of unimportant errors has turned into an elephant - unyielding simple explanations real person, and in 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to economist Daniel Kahneman for showing that “human decisions naturally deviate from standard model". Kahneman wrote that "in the decision-making process, subjects ignore the most basic principles and rules underlying the theory rational choice". Instead of calculating their benefits, people simply follow habits and traditions, ignoring probabilistic cranes, choosing reliable birds in their hands, underestimating the possibility of a negative outcome in “usual” situations (“professional mistake”), and are ready to take risks, as a rule, only in order to to avoid trouble, not to gain.

Can you remember famous stories about the reckless behavior of Russian merchants. Everyone knows the stories about lighting a cigarette with hundred-ruble bills that shocked enlightened Europeans. And here is another eloquent example of “irrationality” - the legend about how the Moscow Mental hospital No. 1 named after N. A. Alekseeva (known as “Kanatchikova dacha”). In 1894, funds were raised for construction on the initiative of the mayor of Moscow N.A. Alekseeva. One of the rich merchants told Alekseev: “Bow at my feet in front of everyone, and I will give a million for the hospital.” Alekseev bowed, and the hospital was built. And how many millions are spent today in order to stroke vanity, and not at all to rationally increase capital? It seems that all modern marketing technologies of the consumer society with its image goods and prestigious consumption refute the existence of Homo Economicus. On the contrary, “humanity”, playing on irrational desires and aspirations, has become a key commodity in consumer markets.

1.4 Collective interest

It is curious that even within the framework of the most formal-logical game theory, it is possible to refute the thesis about the rationality of selfish individualism.

One of the most famous games in game theory is the Prisoners' Dilemma. Its essence can be figuratively described as follows: – the police catch two criminals, A and B, for a minor offense. There is reason to believe that these are in fact gang members guilty of more serious crimes, but there is no evidence. If one prisoner testifies against another, and the latter remains silent, then the first is released for helping the investigation, and the second receives the maximum term of imprisonment (10 years). If both are silent, then they are sentenced to minimum term– 6 months. If both testify against each other, they get 2 years. Each prisoner chooses whether to remain silent or testify against the other. However, neither of them knows exactly what the other will do. In this game, if a player cares only about himself, it is always more profitable to betray, but if the players have a common interest, then it is more profitable for them to cooperate.

Successful strategy in this game it was considered “an eye for an eye” (tit-for-tat) - do not betray first, but then always respond to the opponent in the same way, if he betrayed - betray, if he is “friends” - “be friends”. But it turned out that this is beneficial only when everyone plays for himself. IN otherwise More successful is the strategy of cooperation, introduced in 2004 at the 20th anniversary of a repeatable dilemma competition by a team from the University of Southampton in England. It relies on interaction between programs to get the maximum score for one of them. The university entered 60 programs into the championship, which recognized each other by a number of actions in the first 5-10 moves, after which they began to “play giveaway” - one program always cooperated, and the other betrayed, which gave maximum points to the traitor. If the program understood that the opponent was not from Southampton, it would continue to betray him all the time in order to minimize the opponent’s result. The result saw the University of Southampton's programs take the top three places in the competition.

Thus, formal proof was obtained that in the presence of collective interest, an integrated strategy based on both competition and cooperation, as well as the principle of separation between “friends and foes” - that is, cooperation with “friends” and competition with “strangers” - has advantages. , compared to purely competitive strategies.

CONCLUSION

Why do these theories matter to us at all? Does it matter what ideas were shared by the figures of the era of “machine and steam”, and what beautiful constructions mathematicians build when describing abstract competing players? Unfortunately, theorists are guilty of launching “viruses” of supposedly simple ideas into people’s everyday consciousness. You don't have to read Adam Smith to know that "business is business." However, while talking about the fact that only personal good is the path to the common good, adherents of these theories forget that supergoals can only be achieved as a result of cooperation and willingness to work not only for personal gain. You cannot fly into space, study the ocean and search for cures for cancer based only on short-term goals of making a profit. Moreover, this is even harmful, since it can lead in the future to economic shocks and changes in established markets.

Another sad consequence of such ideas is the atomization of society. Because you can only compete rationally and ruthlessly with “strangers,” because even criminals don’t treat “their own” that way. The “economic man” is the more successful the fewer people around him whom he views as people and not as abstract competitors. That’s why clanism and nepotism flourish in our country – albeit in such primitive forms, but still people prefer to be with someone. A small team or group united common interests, is a serious obstacle to the ideas of universal competition, “the war of all against all.”

But the point is not only the limitations of the theories of economic man. The idea of immorality economic activity, taking out of brackets everything except profit and rational calculation, is much more dangerous than it seems at first glance. Hypocrisy, deceit and small betrayals that happen every day in large corporations, because, as you know, they make money here, and do not do charity. "Hackwork" instead of culture. Why are you so poor if you are so smart. Getting used to this reality, it is easy to justify everything with some abstract rules of the market, where there is no room for thinking about what is good and what is bad.

True, history knows at least one example of where you can go along this road. When Hannah Arendt came to Jerusalem in 1961 for the trial of Holocaust chief perpetrator Adolf Eichmann, she was struck by the ordinariness and ordinariness of the man and his arguments, subsequently calling her book about it The Banality of Evil. Unlike theory, in life, indifferent decisions - because “that’s how it’s done”, “it’s just work” and “we’re not like that - life is like that” - lead not only to abstract personal gain, but to very real troubles. And treating other people simply as a means to “win” – the main problem the entire modern economy.

"People can engage in persecution of their own interests without fear that it will cause harm to society, not only because of the restrictions prescribed by law, but also because they themselves are the products of restrictions resulting from morality, religion, customs and education." And this is not a quote from some philosopher - utopian, and the words of the ancestor market economy- Adam Smith. His followers threw out such ideas about moral and well-mannered entrepreneurs from their theories as unnecessary. As Milton Friedman stated briefly and clearly two centuries later, the only debt firms before society – profit maximization. Russians know firsthand how it is not enlightened entrepreneurs, but real “economists” who behave in real life. Moreover, in the market it is not only competing entrepreneurs who fight among themselves in the struggle for consumers’ wallets. Here is a recent example from this series. Workers at a locomotive depot in Moscow got into a fight using traumatic weapons with their potential competitors, who were heading to the depot to get a job for a lower salary. As a result, four people were injured. Competitive fight In his best.

These theories still tell us about their dead mechanical models, although she herself daily practice modern economics proves that the ideas about a person that confused and amazed the imagination of ladies at the balls of the gallant age, to put it mildly, are somewhat outdated. Isn’t it time to follow the advice of the aforementioned La Mettrie: “A sage must dare to express the truth in the interests of a small circle of people who want and know how to think. For for others, who are slaves of their own free will to prejudice, it is as impossible for them to comprehend the truth as it is for frogs to learn to fly”?

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There are many more irrational people than meets the eye. And with many of them you are forced to build communication, because you cannot simply ignore them or leave with a wave of your hand. Here are examples inappropriate behavior people you interact with every day:

a partner who yells at you or refuses to discuss a problem;
a child trying to get his way with a tantrum;
an aging parent who thinks you don't care about them;
a colleague who tries to blame his problems on you.

Mark Goulston, an American psychiatrist and author of popular books on communication, developed a typology of irrational people and identified nine types of irrational behavior. In his opinion, they are united by several common features: irrationals, as a rule, do not have a clear picture of the world; they say and do things that don't make sense; they make decisions not in their own interests. When you try to bring them back to the path of prudence, they become intolerable. Conflicts with the Islamic Republic rational people rarely develop into protracted, chronic showdowns, but can be frequent and exhausting.

Nine Types of Irrational People

Emotional: looking for an outburst of emotions. They allow themselves to scream, slam the door and bring the situation to an unbearable state. It is almost impossible to calm such people down.
Logical: Seems cold, stingy with emotions, treats others condescendingly. Anything that seems illogical to them is ignored, especially the manifestation of another person's emotions.
Emotionally dependent: they want to depend, shift responsibility for their actions and choices to others, pressure on feelings of guilt, show their helplessness and incompetence. Requests for help never stop.
Scared: live in constant fear. The world appears to them as a hostile place where everyone wants to harm them.
Hopeless: Lost hope. They are easy to hurt, offend, and hurt their feelings. Often the negative attitude of such people is contagious.
Martyr: Will never ask for help even if they desperately need it.
Aggressive: dominate, subdue. Capable of threatening, humiliating and insulting a person in order to gain control over him.
Know-it-all: They consider themselves the only expert on any issue. They like to make others look like profane people and deprive them of confidence. They take a “top” position and are capable of humiliating and teasing.
Sociopathic: exhibit paranoid behavior. They try to intimidate and hide their motives. We are sure that everyone wants to look into their souls and use the information against them.

What are conflicts for?

The simplest thing in dealing with irrational people is to avoid conflicts at all costs, because a positive outcome in a win-win scenario is almost impossible. But the simplest is not always the most correct.

The founding father of conflictology, American sociologist and conflictologist Lewis Kosera, was one of the first to express the idea that conflict has a positive function.

Unresolved conflicts damage self-esteem, and sometimes even basic feeling security

“Conflict, like cooperation, has social functions. A certain level conflict is not necessarily dysfunctional, but can be an essential component of both the process of formation of a group and its sustainable existence,” writes Kozera.

Interpersonal conflicts are inevitable. And if they are not formally permitted, they flow into various shapes internal conflict. Unresolved conflicts affect self-esteem, and sometimes even a basic sense of security.

Avoiding conflicts with irrational people is a road to nowhere. Irrationals do not crave conflict on a conscious level. They, just like all other people, want to be sure that they are understood, heard and taken into account, however, “falling” into their irrational beginning, they are often not capable of a mutually beneficial agreement.

How do rationals differ from irrationals?

Goulston argues that there is an irrational element in each of us. However, the brain of an irrational person reacts to conflict somewhat differently than the brain of a rational person. As scientific basis The author uses the triune brain model developed by neuroscientist Paul McClean in the 60s of the 20th century. According to McClean, the human brain is divided into three sections:

upper – neocortex, cerebral cortex, responsible for reason and logic;
middle section - limbic system, is responsible for emotions;
the lower section is the reptilian brain, responsible for basic survival instincts: “fight or flight.”

The difference between the functioning of the rational and irrational brain is that in conflict, stressful situations In an irrational person, the lower and middle sections predominate, while a rational person tries with all his might to stay in the upper brain zone. An irrational person is comfortable and accustomed to being in a defensive position.

For example, when an emotional type screams or slams doors, he feels familiar with this behavior. Unconscious programs of the emotional type encourage him to scream in order to be heard. While the rational has a hard time in this situation. He doesn't see a solution and feels stuck.

How to prevent a negative scenario and stay on the rational side?

First of all, remember that the goal of an irrational person is to bring you into his zone of influence. In the “native walls” of the reptilian and emotional brain, an irrational person navigates like a blind man in the dark. When an irrational person manages to lead you to powerful emotions, such as anger, resentment, guilt, sense of injustice, then the first impulse is to “hit” back. But this is exactly what an irrational person expects from you.

However, one should not demonize irrational people or consider them a source of evil. The force that motivates them to behave irrationally and even destructively is most often a set of subconscious scripts that they received in childhood. Each of us has our own programs. However, if the irrational principle prevails over the rational, conflicts become a problem area in communications.

Three rules for dealing with an irrational person

Practice self-control. The first step will be internal dialogue, where you say to yourself, “I see what’s happening. He/she wants to piss me off.” When you can pause to react to a remark or action of an irrational person, take a few breaths and exhales, you have won your first victory over instinct. This way you regain your ability to think clearly.

Get back to the point. Do not allow to an irrational person take you away from the point. Once the ability to think clearly is mastered, it means you can control the situation with simple but effective questions. Imagine that you are quarreling with emotional type, who shouts at you through tears: “What kind of person are you! You're out of your mind if you're telling me this! Why do I need this! What did I do to deserve such treatment! Such words easily cause frustration, guilt, bewilderment and a desire to repay in kind. If you give in to instinct, your answer will entail a new stream of accusations.

Ask your interlocutor how he sees the situation resolved. The one who asks the question controls the situation

If you are a conflict avoider, you will want to give up and leave it at that, agreeing with what your irrational opponent says. This leaves a heavy aftertaste and does not resolve the conflict. Instead, take control of the situation. Show that you hear your interlocutor: “I can see that you are upset about the current situation. I want to understand what you are trying to tell me." If the person continues to be hysterical and does not want to hear you, stop the conversation by offering to return to him later when he can talk to you calmly.

Take control of the situation. To resolve the conflict and find a way out, one of the opponents must have the opportunity to take the reins into their own hands. In practice, this means that after determining the essence, when you have heard the interlocutor, you can direct him to peaceful course. Ask your interlocutor how he sees the situation resolved. The one who asks the question controls the situation. “As far as I understand, you lacked my attention. What can we do to change the situation? With this question you will return the person to a rational direction and hear what exactly he expects. Perhaps his suggestions do not suit you, and then you can put forward your own. However, this is better than an excuse or an attack.

You may have well-developed intuition; it manifests itself in the fact that at a certain moment there is a feeling of what decision needs to be made. Or perhaps you are more rational. And before you do anything, you weigh everything carefully. There are specific signs of each type, and you can find out what is typical for you.

It cannot be said that a face has exclusively features of one type. This means that every person at certain moments relies on intuition, and, similarly, each of us thinks about our problems and affairs before making a decision.

But there is no denying the fact that some people behave more impulsively than others. They rely more on intuition and hunches, while others are more cautious, thinking things through before making a move.

These ways of behaving and making decisions are often associated with personality type. But it will be interesting to know that relying on intuition, for example, is by no means an irrational characteristic. Experts say that in fact, we make many decisions based on intuition and sensations. But this does not mean that it happens spontaneously. We'll explain why below.

Intuitive Thinking

Guesses, premonitions... We all know how it happens. A sudden feeling arises that tells us which path is better to choose. For example, something tells you that you shouldn’t expect anything good from a certain person and it is better to avoid communicating with her.

We often don't consider such premonitions to be smart because they come from own emotions and feelings, and is not a product of the brain, which would make them logical and reasonable. But this is not true. Premonitions are actually very quick value judgments that are based on our personality traits and previous experiences.

Everything that happens in our lives, we remember and store in memory along with the feelings that accompanied these events. As a result, when we encounter a certain stimulus, a sudden feeling arises that says: “Do this, go this way, choose the person worth the risk, or is it better to give up?” We draw these conclusions based on events and decisions made in the past . They are also related to a person's personality.

The complex mechanism of intuition is reflected in the sudden feelings that the mind generates, and we ourselves do not understand why. There are people who do not ignore them, but act guided by them. They listen, as they say, to their instinct.

But you should be careful. We must remember that relying on intuition is not always the best solution, since such sensations are very fast and it is difficult for us not to make a mistake. So, intuition does not always work. People who belong to a different type are more cautious and, despite their “premonitions,” ignore them and rely more on reason. This type of personality is much more rational.

Rational thinking

Rational thinking relies on conscious information: what exists around us, things we can see and touch, information we can read or compare like.

Rational people make decisions more slowly and carefully. This does not mean that they have worse opportunities, but indicates that they are thoughtful and perhaps uncertain. But sometimes this is good, because before making a decision, such individuals subject them to “quality control”. People of this type are also afraid of making mistakes and always carefully search for the right answer and the best solution.

Therefore, this personality type is cautious, but sometimes we don't have much time to make a decision. In addition, sometimes it is not possible to get all the information we need before deciding something.

For example, you can't know everything about a person to decide whether she's worth falling in love with. This happens independently of the mind, which is why most people actually act intuitively. Emotions always have more power than rational reasoning. People tend to be driven by emotions to a large extent.

In this matter, as in most others, the best thing is to maintain a balance. Don't be in too much of a hurry when making a decision, but neither will you be too careful. the best way out. Uncertainty is often generated through some type of existential suffering. So, it is definitely better to maintain balance on both sides.

Do you agree with this? What do you think about your personality? What type do you consider yourself to be: intuitive or rational?

Rational people (or “schizothyms”) can be distinguished from irrational people (or “cyclothymes”) by their appearance and movements. Rational people are often characterized by leanness (even when they have a decent weight), fixed movements, and a clear “soldier’s” gait. Irrational people are characterized by softness of the face, rounded lines, their movements are smooth, soft (“cat-like”), relaxed, impulsive, especially among irrational extroverts.
The approach of rational people to what is happening is distinguished by thoughtfulness and the presence of a ready-made opinion, in contrast to the improvised reactions of irrational people. Irrational people, before reacting to external influences, internally “sway”, often
reaction is a creative adaptation to the situation. Rational people, according to A. Augustinavichiuta, react to emotions with emotions, to actions with actions, very thoughtfully, reasonably, based on all available experience, and therefore seem more strict and decisive.
An irrational person can act only when he is overcome by some feeling. But a rational person cannot communicate with a person until he has a definite relationship with him, that is, until he has a certain attitude. Irrational communication begins without hesitation, without a preliminary opinion about the interlocutor through direct contacts, during which both people and their qualities are carefully studied. Only after this do feelings appear and relationships are determined. Therefore, the irrational quickly establishes contacts with people, but they do not say anything about his feelings for them.
The actions of rational people are characterized by the fact that they need to prepare for any work, for any action, think through all the details, plan it, not miss anything that could help or hinder the work - unlike irrational people, who can, as they say, “ “break into” the situation, get involved in the work straight away, and simultaneously understand the details. The tendency of rational people to think through their behavior is reflected in the formula “Freedom is a conscious necessity.” But it is more likely to be true only for rational types. For the irrational, freedom is an “unconscious necessity.”
This small example illustrates the relativity of concepts and norms, rules of behavior for various types personality. We very often encounter a situation where the behavior of other personality types is adjusted to the rules or dogmas formulated by one personality type. From the point of view of socionics, this is unacceptable, since it cripples and disfigures both the lives of these people and delays the normal course of development of society.
In a society of rational types, and in general in a team organized by rational people, where every step is predetermined and regulated, an irrational person has a very difficult time. But even a rational person, finding himself in an unpredictable irrational environment, is lost from unexpected, suddenly arising situations. Probably nature, by combining two leading functions in man - rational and irrational - sought to avoid extremes: cruel planning and complete chaos.