Human Behavior in Routine Problem Situations

The activity of individuals within social-organizational forms of interaction manifests itself as their behavior. Behavior is a way of including the individual in activity, and it is conditioned by the concrete historical development of the given individual. Activity is always what, specifically, the individual does. Behavior is always how, in what way, by what means, the individual does this "something". Goethe said that behavior is a mirror in which everyone shows their true self.

Behavior — the process of an individual's interaction with the environment,

mediated by their external (motor) and internal

(mental) activity'.

Social activity and social behavior are two forms of the existence and development of social activeness. They arise historically at the same time and function systemically, as a whole. The distinctiveness of a person's behavior depends on the nature of their relationships with society, on norms, value orientations, and role prescriptions. Traditionally, behavior is described as a set of actions conditioned by established skills and habits, by the specific situation, and of deeds that require a struggle of motives and decision-making.

The entire diversity of models of individual behavior in society can be differentiated into two large groups:

• • adaptive, socially desirable, constructive, adequate;
• • maladaptive, socially undesirable, destructive, disruptive, inadequate.

In the process of a person's socialization, desirable, adaptive behavior is developed in them:

• • in accordance with the laws of society;
• • in connection with the moral norms accepted in society;
• • with regard to the specific situation in which the person is acting or has found themselves by force of circumstance;
• • in accordance with the goals that the person sets for themselves;
• • on the basis of psychological characteristics (both their own and those of the individuals in their immediate social environment).

Widely known is a typology of individual behavior as applied to situations of clash or overlap of their interests

Its author, the American social psychologist K. Thomas, identified the following types of behavior:

• • rivalry, struggle, competition — a confrontation of conflicting interests from a position of strength. The main goal — the victory of one side and the defeat of the other;
• • accommodation, adaptation, one-sided concession — an unwillingness to defend one's own interests (given their low significance for the individual) in a situation that is objectively or subjectively significant for the other side;
• • compromise — the defense and securing of one's own interests through more or less adequate mutual concessions;
• • avoidance — withdrawal from participation in the conflict due to the individual's complete indifference to their own interests and to those of the partner;
• • cooperation — securing mutually beneficial interests on the basis of joint activity and partnership.

This typology reflects an understanding of behavioral strategy within a coordinate system: the subject takes their own interests into account — the subject takes the partner's interests into account. In a routine problem situation, a person may behave depending on the behavioral strategy they have chosen: pursuing their own goals while ignoring the goals of others, yielding to someone else's demands, arriving at a compromise solution, or avoiding the problem situation. Cooperative behavior is the most favorable, since there is an interest in the maximum achievement of mutually beneficial interests.