The limitation of rationality in solving tasks for action

The article presents modern views on the decision-making process. It is shown that the traditional position about the advantage of conscious rational thinking in making important decisions has been questioned by a number of researchers, and examples of experimental data supporting an alternative opinion are given. Rational decision-making involves assessing a problematic situation and logically choosing the preferred alternative, while mature action involves creativity. The aim of the study is to identify the relationship between rationality and maturity of solutions in action tasks representing life situations in which it is necessary to make a choice between value-laden alternatives. The empirical study involved 130 people aged 30–50 (69 women, 61 men), using the methods of «Personal factors of decision-making» (T.V. Kornilova) and the structured interview «Five situations» (E.L. Dotsenko, V.A. Startseva, O.V. Pchelina). The results showed that switching the subjects' attention to performing a simple task during the experiment contributes to an increase in the quality of the target task solutions — decision-making in action tasks. Distraction to inventing names for semantically neutral pictures statistically significantly increases the maturity of decisions. No correlation was found between rationality as a psychological variable reflecting personal regulation of choices and the maturity of decisions in action tasks. Thus, making high-quality decisions in action tasks involves not only rational, but also implicit semantic preparation.