GOAL SETTING AND DECISION-MAKING AS REGULATORY MECHANISMS OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOR OF PERSON IN SITUATIONS UNCERTAINTY

Abstract

The paper presents a theoretical analysis of person’s regulatory mechanisms in situations of uncertainty. The main attention is paid to the behavior of a person in situations of uncertainty.  Situations of uncertainty are defined as situations in which there is absent or insufficient relevant information to make a choice among the available alternative solutions. Emphasis is given to situations with objective and subjective uncertainty. Objective uncertainty is a reality that is independent of human's cognitive activity and that increases as the World becomes more complicated. Subjective uncertainty is the limited, incomplete and inaccurate knowledge of a person about the World and the environment. A goal is a basic component of the psychological structure of social behavior. Goal setting allows the subject to create an image of the future that directly determines and regulates the relevant acts of behavior and activity. Goal setting is an external mechanism of activity and behavior implementation. The decision-making process is defined as a special type of goal setting that results from the interaction of observation and thinking and is one of the main regulatory mechanisms of social behavior. Decision-making processes should be modeled and studied not in a ready-made, given form, but indirectly - by recreating a more general and holistic regulatory circuit, in which these processes should be included by the researcher as one of the necessary means of regulating activity. In everyday life, it is the subject's activity that plays a “criticaly important” role. In real life, the subject has to determine situations of uncertainty from the general “flow” of his/her own activity.