3.3. Psychological Implications of Techno-Economic Progress - Consumer Psychology

The main trend of relations between people and things is their greater ( transient ) transience. High-speed economy replaces stability. Disposable consumer culture replaces the traditional: it is often cheaper to buy new, change than to preserve, wash, clean, restore. New technologies, fashion lead to the rapid obsolescence of any product (material, intellectual).

The transience of relations with things goes into the sphere of relationships between people. Due to the increase in contacts, the number of people passing through our lives amid travel, variety of services, etc. the transience and fragmentation of relations between people is becoming increasingly apparent. A temporary relationship helps reduce responsibility.

Another trend is associated with excess diversity in the world of things and services. There are more than they want and need, and the person becomes a victim of super-choice. An over-choice is a position whereby the advantages of diversity and individualization are crossed out by the complexity of the decision-making process by the buyer ²² . The economic factors that support the trend of super-selection are: 1) reducing the cost of the types of goods provided as technology becomes more complex (adding options to product output is a more advanced and cheap technology than maintaining uniformity or creating a completely new product); 2) the purchasing power of consumers who have enough money to waste it on their specialized needs.

The psychological consequences of a fleeting economy and over-choice are permanent feelings of impermanence, speed, turmoil. The stress of decision-making also accumulates, since too high a degree of uncertainty, redundancy of change causes overload of the body and mind.

The most important strategic tools for protection against an excess of uncertainty are, firstly, the development of volitional qualities and, above all, dedication, perseverance and independence, ensuring freedom of choice of the individual. Independence allows you to slow down and restrain your desires, regulate opposition to external influences and requirements.

Secondly, the choice of a model of a lifestyle or lifestyle is the most important strategy in the struggle against ever-increasing re-election loads. Within the framework of the life style adopted by the individual, the set of alternatives, in particular consumer ones, is narrowed, the choices become relatively simple.

In addition to strategic, there are tactical methods and techniques of detuning from the stress of decision-making. The following inadequate adaptations to the restimulation by the choice of technique are distinguished:

1) open denial, blocking unwanted reality;

2) specialization, manifested in the narrowing of interests, for example, only to professional or domestic, with internal closeness to changes in the social, political and economic spheres;

3) atavism as a return to the usual and successful before, but not working now adaptive techniques, accompanied by a regression of the social outlook (from anarchism to despotism in different variants of social and political life);

4) narrowing choices through over- simplification in the fight against overload (for example, drugs, cruelty and terrorism, also astrology and mysticism).

The following adequate tactics can be used as part of constructive adaptation strategies:

1) the development of new principles for planning your life, its pace;

2) discouragement (reduction of the excessive flow of information at the sensual, speech-thinking and decision-making levels in certain periods of life and activity);

3) the use of leisure as a mechanism to increase or decrease stimulation depending on the current ability to change, regulation of the flow of decision-making during the period of re-stimulation with decisions, some of them are passed on to experts and any trusted individuals or institutions;

4) the implementation of long-term relationships with different elements of the physical and social environments, the formation of subjective "zones of stability" in a fast-flowing world (habits and things serving them stabilize the material environment, family, and regular friends - the social one).

Thus, it is necessary not to suppress changes, but to manage them. Even just the awareness, tracking, reflection of productive and unproductive tactics of choice, decision-making in everyday life gives a person a sense of confidence in the ability to manage change. For example, the cognitive sphere familiar to many productive tactics of choice contains techniques such as highlighting and correlating the pros and cons of alternatives, accessing available additional information, in particular, the advice of other people (in an advisory capacity), but with the final independent weighing "and" against ". In the affective sphere, it is important to be prepared for the tension and risk experience that accompanies the choice (delaying or refusing to make a decision has a negative psychological effect). In the effective part of the tactics, it is unproductive to return to the rejected alternatives halfway: throwing, returning, doubting, regrets take a lot of time and effort, the memory of negative emotions enhances the subsequent indecision. Therefore, it is better to replace the unsuccessful formula “It was necessary” with “I have already made a decision”, especially if it is common for a person to regret for a long time about failures and failures. But if a person is accustomed to returning to rejected alternatives, in order to analyze them, to relieve anxiety because of the distrust of his intuition or, on the contrary, his abilities to calculate probabilities, it is better to dwell on the positives of the decision and the negatives of the rejected.