DOI: https://doi.org/10.36719/2706-6185/63/71-77
Adaptive and Maladaptive Behavioral Dynamics of Personality: Psycho-Philosophical Aspects of the Interaction Between Contingency and Subjective Reality
Dilqam Mammadov 
Abstract. The article examines the theoretical limitations of the conventional categorical division between adaptive and maladaptive behavior in personality psychology. Empirical evidence on within-person behavioral variability indicates that the same behavioral act may serve either a regulatory or a disruptive function depending on the context in which it occurs. Adaptivity therefore appears to be a property not of the act itself, but of the relation among act, situation and time horizon. The central construct of the study, contingency, refers to whether behavioral variability is systematically linked to situational input; it is distinguished here both from mere variability and from the broader notion of flexibility. The principal claim advanced in the paper is that contingency operates on the subject's construal of the situation rather than on the objective situation, which places subjective reality at the centre of the adaptive-maladaptive distinction. This position requires a two-criterion evaluative model combining the internal coherence of behavior with the correspondence of the subjective model to external reality. The paper further considers the phenomenon of the adaptive trap, the temporal asymmetry between short-term regulation and long-term development, and the management of uncertainty. Conducted through conceptual analysis and theoretical synthesis, the study argues that the norm of adaptivity is relational rather than substantive, and discusses the empirical operationalization and falsifiability of the proposed framework.
Keywords: adaptive behavior, maladaptive behavior, contingency, subjective reality, personality dynamics, self-regulation, situation perception