The relation of students’ and schoolchildren’s hardiness and decision making in the situation of different kinds of uncertainty

The article analyses the problem of relation of hardiness and decision making in the situation of uncertainty. The authors examine different kinds of such situations as they are presented in the theories by Kaheman, Tversky, Gigerenzer and in information cascade theories. They also analyze students' and schoolchildren's strategies of decision making in such situations. In the course of investigation 229 subjects of different sex and age were asked to solve a number of tasks choosing one of the answers. Besides, the situation of information cascade was modeled in the groups of subjects. It turned out that both students and schoolchildren have the risk of irrational behavior in the situation of uncertainty and these risks have gender and age character. The senior schoolchildren have less impact of the effect of “Illusion control” described by Kaheman and Tversky. Besides according to Gigerenzer' theory reformulating of the tasks presented as frequencies decreases the irrationality of behavior of the subjects and the differences in student groups are more significant than in the groups of schoolchildren. The majority of subjects follow optimal strategy described by Bikhchandani, Hirshleifer and Welch for information cascade. The analyses of the relation of hardiness and the way the subjects make decisions concerning problems showed that expressed quality of hardiness is not connected unambiguously with a choice of more rational behavior. People with less expressed hardiness and its attitudes show their hardiness positively correlates with irrational strategies of decision making and in the case of high hardiness the connection with these effects is decreasing. The authors of this article think that the subjects with high level of hardiness attempt to control even losing situations. Although the expressed control attitude might make the subjects feel confident and reassured: they are sure they can find the way out even in a hopeless situation where they could just accept their losses. Analyses of hardiness and subjects' strategy relation in the situation of information cascade showed that in the situation of high level of uncertainty the expressed quality of hardiness and its Control attitude prevent from its productive solving. It turned out that in the situation of high uncertainty when the subjects do not know the possible results the strongly expressed quality of hardiness can prevent from solving the tasks in a positive way because it does not allow them to follow the productive strategy of following the majority. The authors come to the conclusion that expressed hardiness and such component as Control prevent from effective behavior in the situation of uncertainty.

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