Second, the growth of defensive reactions when making decisions. People to a smaller degree than usual begin to go along with the arguments not of dispassionate contemplation, but emotional impulses, the impulses of the unconscious.
Third, as a rise in contradictions between the conscious and unconscious, which makes people’s behavior illogical and complicates managing them by means that usually provide a good effect in a relaxed atmosphere. In this way it is a stressful situation – it is not clear what specific people’s reactions will be. Hence, beyond the framework of a given crisis, the assessment of the measures taken from today’s point of view may radically depart from that offered by participants of the given process.
Fourth, managing people typically requires emotional intervention, psychotherapeutic methods on the government scale. In this regard, the management decisions and behavior of Franklin Roosevelt during the crisis do not seem illogical at all. He would have needed to manage hysterical people with appropriate methods.
Roosevelt found himself in a situation in which exiting the crisis would have been without the support of the soundly thinking elite. This is a fact that Franklin Roosevelt himself acknowledges, speaking directly to the nation and blaming the Washington advisers for their incompetence. But this his adversaries would also admit in describing the atmosphere that had formed in government institutions and Roosevelt’s retinue. Could anything really have been done with the hysterical elite? And Roosevelt did about as much as he could. He prevented the bloodshed that had previously accompanied the shift of the third-generation elite. But he could not stop the elite from making sometimes unthinking decisions. Thus, the destruction of food products at a time when people were hungry was clearly an illogical step, aimed at average Americans, while protecting the interests of merchant princes and the banks that gave them credit. And Roosevelt talks about this frankly.
The elite did everything the way the third-generation elite had done for centuries before this. It did not change its psychotype, it did not increase production efficiency, but rather increased the degree to which it exploited its subjects. And the elite made a decision to eliminate food products. This decision came to fruition not during Roosevelt’s rise to power, but under Herbert Hoover. Roosevelt could not do anything about this. But he did the main thing – he did not allow bloodshed and created the conditions for a new elite to transition to power gradually. Ultimately, here the war “helped”. Authority at the beginning of the crisis of 1929-1933 was with the elite, the Federal Reserve, the bankers and the wholesale merchants. This power remained with them after the crisis, but more realistic people came into power. And some knew how to become more moderate after what had happened. A certain part of the elite was able to change its psychotype. In the period after World War II, the U.S. was already being managed by the first-generation elite.
Thus, the events of 1929-1939 can function as a source of our knowledge about the behavior of people during a crisis. Roosevelt’s decisions at that moment had not only an economic nature, but also a psychological and even psychiatric character. The crisis itself, the Depression, if we rely upon objective indicators, continued in the U.S. from 1929 through 1939.
In the history of humanity, psychoeconomic crises have arisen and been subdued spontaneously, due to exogenous factors, and this has always been related to stress factors.
Currently there are necessary scientific prerequisites for a more conscious role of regulators in surmounting psychoeconomic crises. The psychotypes of the elite, of the economically and politically active population change cyclically. The psychotypes in the elite and the economically and politically active population that have changed introduce not only other character traits into the system of socioeconomic relationships, they also introduce another system of motivation, value, other needs, another culture. Precisely those behavioral motives that have changed direct the activity of the main participants of the socioeconomic process, the main subjects of economic activity, to attain other values than they would have previously. In a period when the values of the hysteroid type dominate in society, they direct their efforts toward self-affirmation through ownership of new, large and prestigious homes, flashy cars, and trendy things… They savor their prestigious position, the availability of private airplanes, yachts, expensive watches, tennis courts etc. The list is endless. And here’s the important thing. Ownership of stock, playing the market, and bank accounts in unlimited quantities – the more accounts, the more prestigious – now end up on this endless list of the actualized needs of the hysteroids and post-postresonators. Other people somehow pale into insignificance relative to these values. This is a peculiarity of people with hysteroid traits, their need to display their Ego is more pronounced, the “by myself” metaprogram is more manifest. These values combine with less marked organizational capabilities. The need to control an endless list of objects of prestige, but more importantly, the symbols of prestige, owning shares of large companies that are completely unscrupulous about emotionally changing their costs – so that there is plenty to talk about in the ritziest salons – all this forms an endless need for money. And as always in history, this psychotype and all its imitators begin not to gain this money through hard administrative work, but by taking a cut from everyone who will consent. “Clipping” is easier for those who are toward the bottom of the ladder of prestige, of their professional or social position. It is precisely these whose profits are reduced during a period when the post-postresonators are dominant. Social separation grows in the society. And even if the government and regulators, seeing a pre-revolutionary situation, find the means to keep the people from losing their shirts, the money accumulates again by various means, sometimes subtly and shiftily, in the circulation of the values that are dominating in the society. Therefore the degree of social stratification in the society cyclically changes with the rotation of the psychotypes in the elite.
The laws of economics in a society where values of the hysteroid type reign supreme become different from what they were decades ago. The economic laws discovered at some point of social development metamorphose, transform along with the change in people.
There is reason to believe that knowing why psychoeconomic crises arise can improve the possibility of managing this process to a greater degree than before. In our set of measures for overcoming a crisis we should include those about the change of psychotypes of the economically active population and elite.
Summary of the Chapter
The economic and historical development of mankind is not only an accumulation of material assets, but also a change in people’s culture. One of the most important moments of these changes is the change in the system of dynamic stereotypes, the psychotypes of a population, in the economically active population, the elites. These changes are regular, and related to the degree of psychological and social compatibility of the different psychotypes in the course of life of several generations. The most unfavorable outcome, post-postresonators in the elite and the economically active population, leads to psychoeconomic crises of special depth. The majority of the world’s countries are now living through this crisis.
References
Reich, Robert B. Aftershock: The Economy of the Future. Moscow, Career Press. 2012, p.193.
Konyukhov, N.I., Arkhipova, O.N., Konyukhova, E.N. Pyschoeconomics. 2nd edition. Мoscow, 2012. 540p.
Chapter 3. Globalization as a process of synchronizing the psychoeconomic changes in the world
It is important to evaluate the measures any country takes to optimize economic and social development against the processes on which the effectiveness of those measures depends. This above all means understanding the place of a given country in the international division of labor and the effect of globalization on the country’s development.
Globalization is a fact of life in the modern world, and involves the synchronization of many economic, social, psychological, technological and other factors. This introduces qualitative changes in the development of the contemporary world, including psychoeconomic events.
3.1 Synchronization of psychoeconomic phenomena in the contemporary world and its reflection in economic indicators
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