Psychoeconomics: globalization, markets, crisis. Николай Игнатьевич Конюхов
hometown, etc. The facilities built can and must be secured for the best of those who participated in the construction works. It is just those people who administer property, especially that created by their own labor, who are most active in social, sociopsychological and military affairs. History attests to this. Having a large number of people in the society’s structure who are situated at levels that are lower than their sociopsychological features, their strength of personality, and their aptitudes, is potentially explosive.
But the number of such people grows cumulatively, gradually, unnoticeably. At first the explosive nature of such a situation may simply not be seen. But then the measures performed by the government to maintain order start to falter. It seems like only yesterday they were effective, but today they lead to contrary, negative results. The number of emotionally negatively inclined people in the society has crossed the critical line and these protests begin to be seen tangibly.
In a period when resonators are dominant, such protest moods are diffused, and people’s energy is directed toward self-affirmation in business. In a period of transfer of leadership to postresonators, these moods begin to accumulate little by little, cumulatively, unnoticeably. In a period of transfer of social initiative to post-postresonators, the accumulation of social emotions begins to coincide with their active external manifestation – with strikes, walkouts or armed uprisings.
When the rate of GNP growth is declining, in periods of downward mobility of not only the large number of unemployed, but also strong, capable and distinguished individuals who are able to unite in protest, it is no longer possible to restrain the society within accepted social boundaries and norms without targeted work with such people.
In this regard, the experience of the Middle Ages is instructive. Why? At that time, competition between specific individuals had not yet led to a natural attainment of balance between the social and social-psychological structures of the society, as this began to happen in capitalist society at the moment of its origin. But today the competition between individual people no longer allows the strong and capable to occupy higher places in the social structure. Still such competition remains and will remain for a long time, if not forever, an important factor in the struggle between individual corporations, groups of people, social strata, and between indivduals where it is effective and can differentiate them according to their abilities.
The causes for the decline in the role and significance of competition between individuals given their economic and social mobility in a period of globalization are multifactorial. Some of them are:
– The financial sector was “victorious” over the manufacturing sector. Profit margins in the financial sphere are much higher than in the manufacturing arena. It is almost impossible to find an area of production where it is possible to take out a loan for development with hope of returning it. However strong, smart or active the individual is, the probability of setting up successful new manufacturing in the current environment is minimal. One may try to speculate in the financial markets. But when they fall, even this possibility dies.
– For organizing new, more effective production, more and more financial resources are needed. The volume and level of minimal capital for starting one’s own business become even greater when there is an increase in the economic disparity between people. Therefore, with each year it becomes more difficult to start a business.
– The middle class is being ruined, and this was the traditional source of managers, leaders, and effective owners of big business. But only the strong, capable and smart are able to compete successfully with each other for the country.
– In a period of crisis and high unemployment, it is increasingly difficult for individuals to look forward to success in providing for their families. Businesses, especially small and medium-sized ones, are disappearing faster than they are being created. Unemployment has become chronic. And this means the quality of population and of workers will fall, and this quality is critical for creating a modern business “from scratch”.
– Given the high cost of a quality education, far from everyone will be able to acquire one.
These factors limit the ability of people from families with low incomes to compete against those with higher incomes, but they do not always temper their desire to elevate their status. Hence the discrepancy between social and sociopsychological structure becomes more and more pronounced.
Given the above, it is critical to understand the cyclical nature of the process by which the conflict between the social and sociopsychological structures of the society is exacerbated, and the remedy from this situation when there are no natural mechanisms for solving them. We even find examples of these measures in the pre-capitalism past of Europe. In the Middle Ages law formally limited the power of the strong and capable people without property, but in reality they could achieve whatever they wished. And they banded together for this cyclically. Today, law theoretically provides the opportunity to reach any heights in the socioeconomic structure of the society, but in actuality, this can be done by the very few, although millions wish to do so. And the cyclical nature of the growth of these wishes in the large mass of people is not annulled by contemporary mass media and other factors of the contemporary world order. Both in the Middle Ages and now, bringing the social and sociopsychological structures of the society into concordance by means of conflict-free means and measures was or became impossible. And the proneness to conflict is currently increasing. Because of globalization this is happening frequently in different countries with amazing synchronicity. For now this sociopsychological synchronicity is happening without the political unification of the “masses”. But this process will start very soon.
Therefore under globalization there will be synchronization of protests of the “masses” in those countries where economic crises have occurred, but this is a rather large group of countries. The world is integrated, everything is being synchronized. And we are witnesses of this process. These processes are related to the cyclical nature of the change in basic psychotypes of the population, the elite.
Confirmation of this idea is also possible through analyzing the results of IQ measurements in the representatives of different countries.
3.3 Synchronous and asynchronous alteration of the psycho-type of population of the world by the example of IQ alterations in the age of globalization
Each psycho-type has its own type of intelligence. It begins to be realized more and more in modern psychology. With this initial reference it is clear that with a change in psyche of people along with the changing cycles of solar activity the results of psycho-diagnosis will also vary by means of one and the same intelligence tests. This thesis fully supports the Flynn effect and the data on its refinement. The essence of the effect is in gradual increasing of the levels of intelligence quotient (IQ) of people in different countries within decades. The publication of data on this was in 1984 (The mean IQ of Americans: Massive gains 1932 to 1978 in the magazine “Psychological Bulletin”). The explanation of this fact with the genetic evolution of humanity that appears to be the “growing clever” is not tenable, since this effect affects the decades and not the change of generations.
The new tested ones with the time difference of 10 or more years since 1932 in the United States (these are the years when resonants came to power), showed higher scores on the old tests. According to Flynn, from 1934 to 1978 the IQ of the average person in the United States increased by 15 points, in other words it grew by 3 points per decade. We should not that in respect to the United States it was the time of the activity of the resonants and postresonants.
There are lots of facts on this matter. And they do not allow us to doubt in accuracy of the conclusions of Flynn, but at the same time they show the historical boundaries of this effect in developed countries.
So, in 2004 the Norwegian scientists (Jon Martin Sundet, et cetera.) from the University of Oslo published in the journal «Intelligence» the article about the evolution of the test results of the conscripts in the period from 1950 to 2002 in collaboration with colleagues from the psychological service of the Norwegian armed forces. According to them during the first two decades Flynn effect took place as even more pronounced than that recorded by Flynn himself. But according to these scientists it was found that the rate of increase in IQ 70-80 years began to slow down noticeably,