Everything Is Obvious_ _Once You Know the Answer - Duncan J. Watts [17]
Given the ubiquity of choice in the world and its relevance to virtually every aspect of life—from everyday decisions to the grand events of history—it should come as little surprise that theories about how people make choices are also central to most of the social sciences. Commenting on an early paper by the Nobel laureate Gary Becker, the economist James Duesenberry famously quipped that “economics is all about choice, while sociology is about why people have no choices.”2 But the truth is that sociologists are every bit as interested in how people make choices as economists are—not to mention political scientists, anthropologists, psychologists, and legal, business, and management scholars. Nevertheless, Duesenberry had a point in that for much of the last century, social and behavioral scientists of different stripes have tended to view the matter of choice in strikingly different ways. More than anything, they have differed, sometimes acrimoniously, over the nature and importance of human rationality.
COMMON SENSE AND RATIONALITY
To many sociologists, the phrase “rational choice” evokes the image of a cold, calculating individual who cares only for himself and who relentlessly seeks to maximize his economic well-being. Nor is this reaction entirely unjustified. For many years, economists seeking to understand market behavior invoked something like this notion of rationality—sometimes referred to as “homo economicus”—in large part because it lends itself naturally to mathematical models that are simple enough to be written down and solved. And yet, as countless examples like the ultimatum game from the previous chapter show, real people care not only about their own welfare, economic or otherwise, but also the welfare of others for whom they will often make considerable sacrifices. We also care about upholding social norms and conventions, and frequently punish others who violate them—even when doing so is costly.3 And finally, we often care about intangible benefits, like our reputation, belonging to a group, and “doing the right thing,” sometimes as much as or even more than we care about wealth, comfort, and worldly possessions.
Critics of homo economicus have raised all these objections, and many more, over the years. In response, advocates of what is often called rational choice theory have expanded the scope of what is considered rational behavior dramatically to include not just self-interested economic behavior, but also more realistic social and political behavior as well.4 These days, in fact, rational choice theory is not so much a single theory at all as it is a family of theories that make often rather different assumptions depending on the application in question. Nevertheless, all such theories tend to include variations on two fundamental insights—first, that people have preferences for some outcomes over others; and second, that given these preferences they select among the means available to them as best they can to realize the outcomes that they prefer. To take a simple example, if my preference for ice cream exceeds my preference for the money I have in my pocket, and there is an available course of action that allows me to exchange my money for the ice cream, then that’s what I’ll choose to do. But if, for example, the weather is cold, or the ice cream is expensive, my preferred course of action may instead be to keep the money for a sunnier day. Similarly, if buying the ice cream requires a lengthy detour, my preference to get where I am going may also cause me to wait for another time. Regardless of what I end up choosing—the money, the ice cream, the walk followed by the ice cream, or some other alternative—I am always doing what is “best” for me, given the preferences I have at the time I make the decision.
What is so appealing about this way of thinking is its implication that all human behavior can be understood in terms of individuals’ attempts to satisfy their preferences. I watch TV shows because