Beyond homo economicus: New developments in theories of social norms

Philosophy and Public Affairs

Volumn 29, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 170-200

  Anderson, Elizabeth ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33750127289     PISSN: 00483915     EISSN: 10884963     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (83)

1. This essay largely sets aside related grand problems of social theory, such as explaining the content of social norms or why they change over time.
2. I shall explain below how these ideas are related in one account of social rationality.
3. Amartya Sen, "Foreword," in EVO, pp. vii-xiii.
4. Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky, eds., Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982);
5. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, "Choices, Values, and Frames," American Psychologist 39 (1984): 341-50;
6. Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch, and Richard Thaler, "Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem," Journal of Political Economy 98 (1990): 1325-48;
7. Richard Thaler, The Winner's Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life (New York: Free Press, 1992).
8. Mary Zey, ed., Decision Making: Alternatives to Rational Choice Models (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1992);
9. Herbert Simon, Models of Bounded Rationality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982);
10. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, "Prospect Theory: Analysis of Decision Under Risk," Econometrica 47 (1979): 263-91;
11. Martin Hollis, The Cunning of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
12. Jane Mansbridge, "Starting with Nothing: On the Impossibility of Grounding Norms Solely in Self-interest," in EVO, pp. 151-68.
13. Avner Ben-Ner and Louis Putterman, "Values and Institutions in Economic Analysis," in EVO, pp. 20-22.
14. Mansbridge, "Starting with Nothing," pp. 158-59.
15. Ernst Fehr and Simon Gächter, "How Effective Are Trust- and Reciprocity-Based Incentives?" in EVO, pp. 337-63.
16. Jonathan Baron, "Trust: Beliefs and Morality," in EVO, pp. 408-18.
17. Andrew Schotter, "Worker Trust, System Vulnerability, and the Performance of Work Groups," in EVO, pp. 364-407.
18. See, for example, Robyn Dawes, Alphonse van de Kragt, and John Orbell, "Cooperation for the Benefit of Us - Not Me, or My Conscience," in Jane Mansbridge, ed., Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
19. David Lewis, Convention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969).
20. See, however, Margaret Gilbert, On Social Facts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 329-67 for a searching critique of Lewis's theory.
21. Russell Hardin, "Institutional Commitment: Values or Incentives?" in EVO, pp. 422-23.
22. A state of affairs is in a person's interest only if someone who loved that person would want that state for that person's sake. Stephen Darwall, "Self-interest and Self-Concern," Social Philosophy and Policy 14 (1997): 158-78. Most of the goals given to workers and officeholders by their roles are not like that. It would be absurd to suppose, for example, that someone who loved a congressperson would desire that many of the laws she votes for (which advance only the interests of certain subgroups) exist for her sake, apart from any rewards attached to her passing these laws. One might say: isn't the state of her successfully passing laws good for her? I reply: success in a role - achievement of its intrinsic goals - cannot be seen as advancing one's self-interest unless one judges those goals independently worthwhile. For something not worth doing is not worth doing well.
23. On the difficulties of accounting for voting behavior in rational choice terms, see Donald Green and Ian Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).
24. Michael Taylor, The Possibility of Cooperation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), chap. 3;
25. Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984);
26. Lee Alan Dugatkin, Cooperation Among Animals: An Evolutionary Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 19-30. Dugatkin provides a concise and sobering summary of the main results from tinkering with Axelrod's iterated PD evolutionary model. The result stated in the text reports the implication of the folk theorems of repeated game theory that has received the most attention from social theorists. The folk theorems actually imply that there are many possible equilibrium strategies (not just tit-for-tat) in indefinitely repeated PDs, and, more generally, that numerous mutually beneficial cooperative equilibria can obtain in many indefinitely repeated games for which the rational strategy in a single play of the game would be uncooperative.
27. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, "How Communities Govern: The Structural Basis of Prosocial Norms," in EVO, pp. 208-9.
28. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, "How Communities Govern: The Structural Basis of Prosocial Norms," in EVO, pp. Ibid.208-9.
29. However, on p. 224 they postulate that parochial cultural values will reduce the rate of migration and thereby reinforce the ability of communities to promote prosocial values. The implications of this alternative will be discussed in Section VII.
30. Michael Taylor, "Cooperation and Rationality: Notes on the Collective Action Problem and Its Solutions," in The Limits of Rationality, ed. Karen Schweers Cook and Margaret Levi (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990), pp. 222-40.
31. Robert Sugden, "Normative Expectations: The Simultaneous Evolution of Institutions and Norms," in EVO, pp. 73-100.
32. Leading examples of this strategy include Michael Hechter, Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987);
33. James Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
34. Little is gained by supposing that some people just like to bully others into following social norms. If it is supposed that they bully people to follow the norms because and only when violations hurt their self-interest, then it is mysterious why so many norms tell people to be polite, cooperative, and fair to everyone, rather than just to bullies. Revenge also explains little: (a) many norms benefit people from being generally observed, although the injury to anyone from a single violation is too negligible and impersonal to motivate revenge. It is absurd to exact revenge against someone for littering on public property, or even for evading taxes. When the costs of deviance are highly diffused rather than personally directed, as in most norms providing for the production or protection of public goods, revenge is not a plausible motivation for sanctioning. (b) In any event, there are norms against revenge. (c) Revenge is itself a norm-governed practice inexplicable in terms of rational choice theory. See Jon Elster, "Norms of Revenge," Ethics 100 (1990): 862-85.
35. For the first two arguments, see Jon Elster, The Cement of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 132-33.
36. Bruno S. Frey, "Institutions and Morale: The Crowding-Out Effect," in EVO, 452-54.
37. Timur Kuran, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
38. For this argument, see Philip Pettit, "Virtus Normativa: Rational Choice Perspectives," Ethics 100 (1990): 725-55.
39. Robert Sugden, "Normative Expectations"; Chaim Fershtman and Yoram Weiss, "Why Do We Care What Others Think About Us?" in EVO, pp. 133-50.
40. Robert Sugden, "Normative Expectations," p. 85.
41. One might suppose that the reproach of others would be more powerful because it causes embarrassment or a loss of status. But these facts would rationally motivate people only if they already cared about others' normative judgments about how their actions ought to affect others' interests. Why would people care about such judgments if they do not already care about others' interests? The general problem is that emotions have an evaluative basis. It is hard to credit emotions with intrinsic reason-giving force without crediting the evaluations that justify those emotions with comparable reason-giving force.
42. This list is drawn from the important article by Justin D'Arms, Robert Batterman, and Krzyzstof Górny, "Game Theoretic Explanations and the Evolution of Justice," Philosophy of Science 65 (1998): 76-102.
43. Brian Skyrms, The Evolution of the Social Contract (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 21.
44. Sugden claims that his concept of normative expectations accounts for normativity by grounding resentment, without agents' presupposing any judgments of how others ought to behave. Mansbridge objects that, unless one judges that others are obligated to behave as one expects, that they frustrate one's expectations will lead only to irritation, not resentment. Mansbridge, "Starting with Nothing," pp. 162-63.
45. Sugden replies that requiring the moral sentiments to have normative content violates a naturalistic constraint on social scientific explanation. Sugden, "Normative Expectations," p. 84. But all that Mansbridge requires is that people represent the objects of their resentment as having acted unjustly, not that their representations are true.
46. Fershtman and Weiss, "Why Do We Care What Others Think About Us?"
47. Ken Binmore, "A Utilitarian Theory of Political Legitimacy," in EVO, pp. 101-32.
48. Binmore's theory, like Skyrms's, focuses more on the content of norms than on the motive for compliance with them. For another discussion of both problems, including a more thorough discussion of Binmore and Skyrms, see Peter Vanderschraaf, "Game Theory, Evolution, and Justice," Philosophy & Public Affairs 28, no. 4 (Fall 1999): 324-58.
49. Binmore, "A Utilitarian Theory of Political Legitimacy," p. 115.
50. This argument does not discredit all rational choice explanations of social phenomena. In certain institutional contexts, such as competitive markets, the results predicted by rational choice theory can be generated by only a few rational actors at the margins. The trouble with Binmore's evolutionary argument is that it requires people in general to be endowed with the skills and preference structure of Homo economicus.
51. Binmore, "A Utilitarian Theory of Political Legitimacy," p. 129.
52. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (London: J. W. Parker and Son, 1859).
53. Zelizer, "How Do We Know Whether a Monetary Transaction is a Gift, an Entitlement, or Compensation?", 329-31.
54. Zelizer, "Gift, Entitlement, or Compensation?" p. 332.
55. This follows the model provided by Margaret Gilbert, On Social Facts, pp. 422-24.
56. Exemplary works include A. C. Baier, The Commons of the Mind (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1996);
57. J. Searle, "Collective Intentions and Actions," in Intentions in Communication, ed. P. Cohen, J. Morgan, and M. Pollack (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 401-15;
58. Michael Bratman, "Shared Intention," Ethics 104 (1993): 97-113;
59. R. Tuomela, A Theory of Social Action (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1984);
60. David Velleman, "How to Share an Intention," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (1997): 29-50;
61. Margaret Gilbert, On Social Facts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
62. Gilbert, On Social Facts, pp. 204-5.
63. Gilbert, On Social Facts, p. 373.
64. This account does not distinguish joint acceptance from joint commitment. For an argument that commitments provide reasons for action, see my "Reasons, Attitudes, and Values: Replies to Sturgeon and Piper," Ethics 106 (1996): 538-54.
65. Ben-Ner and Putterman, "Values and Institutions in Economic Analysis," pp. 20, 23;
66. Frey, "Institutions and Morale," p. 440.
67. Timur Kuran, "Moral Overload and Its Alleviation," in EVO, pp. 231-66.
68. Kuran, "Moral Overload," p. 243.
69. Kuran, "Moral Overload," pp. 251-55.
70. Exemplary works in this tradition include Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1942);
71. Robert Putnam, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," Journal of Democracy 6 (1995): 65-78;
72. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944);
73. Fred Hirsch, Social Limits to Growth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976).
74. Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).
75. Robert Lane also takes a pessimistic view of markets, but more for making people subjectively unhappy (in substituting income for more important goods) than for undermining social norms. "The Joyless Market Economy," in EVO, pp. 461-88.
76. Frank, "Social Norms as Positional Arms Control Agreements," in EVO, pp. 275-95.
77. Frey, "Institutions and Morale," pp. 437-60.
78. Frey, "Institutions and Morale," pp. Ibid., pp. 448-51.
79. Bowles and Gintis, "How Communities Govern," pp. 206-30.
80. Baron, "Trust: Beliefs and Morality," p. 417.
81. Susan Rose-Ackerman, "Bribes and Gifts," in EVO, pp. 316-24.
82. Folbre and Weisskopf, "Did Father Know Best? Families, Markets, and the Supply of Caring Labor," in EVO, pp. 171-205.
83. Milton Friedman, "The Methodology of Positive Economics," in Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).