The problem of explaining the prerequisites for the economic behavior of people is that their actions act only as translators of their thoughts, and in order to correctly understand this “translation”, it is necessary to master both the “language” of actions and the “language” of thoughts. To do this, you need to find out: are there some general laws of human thinking that predetermine his economic choice, and if so, what are they? The answer to this question largely depends on the light in which we perceive a person in the process of his economic activity. The “economic man” appears before us in the form of an independent, competent, selfish, rationally thinking being who seeks to maximize profit by choosing economic alternatives on the basis of a preliminary calculation of benefits and costs.
The laws of economic behavior of such a subject, arising from the principles of evaluation and choice of alternatives implemented by him, were set forth by the economist Oskar Morgenstern and the mathematician John von Neumann. They put forward a number of axioms of economic choice, among which is the axiom of permanence, which states: “If you
And if you prefer B, and if you prefer C, then you should A prefer C.” For example, if you prefer watching tv to reading newspapers when you want to know the news, and you prefer newspapers to listening to the radio, then you should prefer a TV to a radio receiver when you want to get information about the latest events. Economists explained the cases of inconsistency of specific elections with this axiom by the impermanence and imperfection of people who tend to make mistakes. Not satisfied with such explanations, economic psychologists have put forward the thesis that people are constantly impermanent, but deviate from constancy in a systematic way that can be measured and studied. For example, when assessing the probabilities of occurrence of various events, the following systematic errors of the individual’s thinking are common:
the effect of representativeness (the reliability of small samples is overestimated); the effect of visibility (overestimation of the probability of bright, memorable events); the effect of egocentrism (the use of mainly one’s own experience); the effect of conservatism; Irwin effect (overestimates the probability of a desirable event and underestimates the probability of an undesirable one); the anchor effect (the influence of the reference point with which it is compared); edge effect (the possibility of probable events is underestimated and the unlikely ones is overestimated); the Monte Carlo effect (when estimating the probabilities of two consecutive independent events, people tend to establish a connection between them); Stoner effect (positive shift in risk in group decisions relative to individual decisions).
Such shifts in assessments are significant subjective factors that affect the economic thinking of a person and, accordingly, his economic behavior. Economic sociologists, trying to expand the explanatory possibilities of the concept of economic behavior, seek to identify objective factors affecting a person’s assessments that underlie his economic choice. In other words, to determine how the specifics of economic activity in a particular sphere of application of labor forces affect the economic thinking of a person and how this is reflected in his economic behavior.
The English philosopher and economist Adam Smith (1723 – 1790), analyzing the main ways of making money (in fact, various types of economic behavior), identified five main conditions that “compensate for small monetary earnings in some occupations and balance large earnings in others”: 1) the pleasantness or unpleasantness of specific occupations; 2) the amount of costs (financial, mental, physical) necessary for their development; 3) the constancy or impermanence of occupations; (4) the degree of trust placed in the persons who deal with them; 5) the probability or improbability of success in them. These conditions determine the balance of real or imagined benefits and costs on which the individual’s economic choice is based. The alternatives chosen in each of the five conditions for making money based on people’s inclinations and preferences determine their economic behavior. Depending on the choice made and, accordingly, the model of economic behavior being implemented, an appropriate way of thinking is formed. For example, a person who has invested significant effort and money in training expects to receive a significant income from his economic (professional) activities, which would compensate for his costs and, in addition, bring profit.
Thus, the context of economic activity affects subjective assessments of its results and, depending on these assessments, a person either reproduces or changes the type of his economic behavior. Based on the materials of the republican sociological research conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus in 2001, we will analyze how respondents assess their financial situation and what is their economic behavior depending on the form of employment. The initial premise of this analysis is that economic assessment, as a subjective reflection of objective reality, is formed on the basis of refraction of the characteristics of the object being evaluated (property status, socio-economic situation) through the economic thinking of the individual, which is formed in the process of his economic activity. The features of the latter are largely determined by the form of employment in which the individual realizes his mental and physical potential of the employee. The author’s sociological studies have shown that one of the significant differentiating features that determine the specifics of the form of employment is the type of ownership of the collective economic entity in the structure of which the employee is involved. The above considerations determined the content of the hypothesis that respondents tend to assess their financial situation differently depending on the form of ownership in which they are employed.
The immediate empirical basis was the data on
Minsk is the region where enterprises of different forms of ownership come into contact most intensively, interacting with each other. The array of respondents was divided into three fairly filled groups: those employed in state-owned enterprises (252 people); employed at enterprises of non-state ownership – JSC, CJSC, PE, etc. (139 people); not working at the time of the survey (159 people). As a result of the analysis, it was revealed that representatives of the selected groups really assess their own property status and the financial situation of their family in different ways. Those employed in a non-state form of ownership tend to belong to a higher property group than those working in state-owned enterprises and those who do not work (Fig. 9.1). It should be noted that none of the respondents identified with a “rich person”. Apparently, the complete absence of such an assessment, first of all, is due to the survivability in the mass consciousness of post-Soviet society of the “Koreyko stereotype”, which orients a person not to advertise his real property status.
When answering the question regarding the financial situation of the family, respondents are somewhat more free in their assessments (Fig. 9.2). Obviously, it is psychologically easier to define as a “very good” financial situation of the family as a whole than to open your own high property status. The calculation of average grades by group shows that respondents engaged in non-state ownership tend to see the financial situation of their family in a more positive light than representatives of other groups. The average score for the group of employees in state-owned enterprises was 2.45 (on a five-point scale); employees of non-state enterprises – 2.75; not working – 2.53. Note that for the third group, an average rating was obtained that exceeds the assessment of representatives of the first group. Such a result, on the one hand, indicates that the lack of contribution of respondents to the family budget is compensated by the contribution of other family members, and on the other hand, it is an indirect indicator of the development of informal (shadow) types of economic behavior. Being involved in the informal sphere of employment, the respondent to the question “Your main place of work?”, as a rule, answers “Currently not working”. The real answer to this question is ” I don’t currently work in formal employment.”
Thus, respondents engaged in a non-state form of ownership tend to assess both their own property status and the socio-economic situation of their family more highly than representatives of other selected groups. The subjective prerequisite for such an assessment is a more active economic thinking inherent in employees of non-state enterprises. Such a way of thinking is characteristic of representatives of this group because, on the one hand, the non-state form of ownership, as a sphere of application of labor efforts, attracts workers whose thinking is initially distinguished by creativity, variability and rationalism, and on the other hand, the structure and content of labor relations of the non-state sphere stimulate the development of these qualities in the economic thinking of workers employed in this sphere. The consequence of an active way of thinking is an appropriate – active strategy of economic behavior (Fig. 9.3).
In the process of implementing the formed strategies of economic behavior, respondents create an objective prerequisite for their assessments – the income received as a result of their labor activity. Analysis of the table of conjugation of the form of employment of respondents with estimates of the average income per member of their family shows the following: the amount of income depends on the form of ownership in which the respondent is employed, and in line with our analysis – on the nature of the economic strategy implemented by him. It is indicative of the fact that only 2.0% of those employed in the state form of ownership and 3.1% of those not working overcame the average income per family member of 140 thousand rubles, while among the representatives of the group of people employed in the non-state form of ownership there were 10.8%. Income from 71 to 140 thousand rubles. noted 28.0% of respondents employed in non-state ownership, 24.6% – employed in state enterprises and 8.8% not working. Thus, the analysis confirms the conclusions of economists that “the non-state sector has higher growth rates than the public sector, higher wages and incomes, profitability of production” (Plotnitsky M.I., 1998).
So, the formulated hypothesis is confirmed, namely: the respondents’ assessment of their own property status and the material situation of their family to a significant extent depends on their form of employment. Moreover, respondents engaged in a non-state form of ownership are prone to more positive assessments than those working in state-owned enterprises and non-working respondents. Thus, the relationship between economic thinking and economic behavior is two-way. On the one hand, the subjective characteristics of economic thinking (orientation to: the process of “thinking” itself; to communication and related experiences; to a specific “case”) determine the choice by a person of the sphere of economic activity that he considers most acceptable for the implementation of an individual type of economic behavior (direct connection). On the other hand, being more or less consciously included in a specific sphere of economic activity, a person, in order not to be a “black sheep”, tends to reproduce typical for this sphere models of economic behavior, which affects the formation of an appropriate way of his economic thinking (feedback).