The Unification of the Behavioral Sciences

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert Gintis
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Complexity Theory ◽  
Strategic Interaction ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Behavioral Sciences ◽  
Unified Framework ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
Graduate Curriculum ◽  
Rational Actor

The behavioral sciences include economics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and political science, as well as biology insofar as it deals with animal and human behavior. These disciplines have distinct research foci, but they include four conflicting models of decision making and strategic interaction, as determined by what is taught in the graduate curriculum and what is accepted in journal articles without reviewer objection. The four are the psychological, the sociological, the biological, and the economic. These four models are not only different, but are also incompatible. That is, each makes assertions concerning choice behavior that are denied by the others. This means, of course, that at least three of the four are certainly incorrect. This chapter argues that in fact all four are flawed but can be modified to produce a unified framework for modeling choice and strategic interaction for all of the behavioral sciences. The framework for unification includes five conceptual units: (a) gene-culture coevolution; (b) the sociopsychological theory of norms; (c) game theory, (d) the rational actor model; and (e) complexity theory.

Soviet security

1988 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-76
Author(s):  
J. T. G. Jukes
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
Rational Actor ◽  
Policy Fields ◽  
Historical Methods

Most early attempts to assess Soviet behaviour in the defence and foreign policy fields perforce used historical methods, perhaps better known to political scientists under the title of the 'rational actor model', or assumed implicitly or explicitly a 'balance of power' framework, or imposed a 'world domination' totalitarian scenario for Soviet decision-making and setting of national goals.

Inequality, Decisions, and Altruism

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 282-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Dietz ◽  
Cameron T. Whitley
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Adaptive Landscape ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Heuristics And Biases ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
Class Model ◽  
Redistributive Policies ◽  
Rational Actor

We argue that sociological analyses of inequality could benefit from engaging the literatures on decision-making. In turn, a sociological focus on how contexts and structural constraints influence the outcomes of decisions and the strategies social groups can use in pursuit of their goals could inform our understanding of decision-making. We consider a simple two-class model of income and the need of capitalists and workers to mobilize resources to influence the adaptive landscape that shapes responses to decisions. We then examine the implications of the rational actor model and the heuristics and biases literature for class-based decision-making. We consider the importance of altruism in mobilizing collective action, and we offer some evidence that altruism is most common in the middle ranges of income and that altruism is a major influence on support for redistributive policies. These results, while tentative, suggest the value of having scholars of development and inequality engage with the literatures on decision-making.

Behavioral Game Theory and Contemporary Economic Theory

2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert Gintis
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Economic Theory ◽  
Incentive Compatibility ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Individual Choice ◽  
Behavioral Game Theory ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
Rational Actor ◽  
Behavioral Game ◽  
Individual Choices

AbstractIt is widely believed that experimental results of behavioral game theory undermine standard economic and game theory. This paper suggests that experimental results present serious theoretical modeling challenges, but do not undermine two pillars of contemporary economic theory: the rational actor model, which holds that individual choice can be modeled as maximization of an objective function subject to informational and material constraints, and the incentive compatibility requirement, which holds that macroeconomic quantities must be derived from the interaction and aggregation of individual choices. However, we must abandon the notion that rationality implies self-regarding behavior and the assumption that contracts are costlessly enforced by third parties.

The limitations of unification

2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-34
Author(s):  
Arthur B. Markman
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
Behavioral Sciences ◽  
Explanatory Framework ◽  
Psychological Processing

There are two roadblocks to using game theory as a unified theory of the behavioral sciences. First, there may not be a single explanatory framework suitable for explaining psychological processing. Second, even if there is such a framework, game theory is too limited, because it focuses selectively on decision making to the exclusion of other crucial cognitive processes.

A Typology of Human Morality

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert Gintis
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Genetic Constitution ◽  
Behavioral Game Theory ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamic ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Rational Actor ◽  
Behavioral Game

This chapter suggests a typology of human morality based on gene–culture coevolution, the rational actor model, and behavioral game theory. The basic principles are that human morality is the product of an evolutionary dynamic in which evolving culture makes new behaviors fitness enhancing, thus altering our genetic constitution. It is thus predicated upon an evolved set of human genetic predispositions and consists of the capacity to conceptualize and value a moral realm governing behavior beyond consequentialist reasoning.

Virtue Ethics and Contractarianism: Towards a Reconciliation

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet McCracken ◽  
Bill Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Business Ethics ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
Business Decision ◽  
Business People ◽  
Rational Actor ◽  
Aristotelian Ethics ◽  
Apparent Conflict

Abstract:The notion of rationality underlying contemporary business and business ethics, or the “rational actor” model of moral decision-making in business, links a roughly utilitarian notion of the good to a contractarian notion of human agency. The “C-U model” provides inadequate means for explaining how business people do or ought to behave or think about their behavior, because the notion of rationality upon which it relies is far too narrow a picture of business people’s character. An alternative to these assumptions and to the Contractarian-Utilitarian model, is offered in an ethics of virtue. Despite the traditional apparent conflict between these divergent models, the C-U model, if founded in a notion of rationality consistent with Aristotelian ethics, is recognized as a useful instrument in business ethics and business decision-making. Hence, a reconciliation is effected between the C-U model and virtue ethics.

Behavioral Democratic Theory

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Terence Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Behavioral Approach ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
Rational Actor ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
Theoretical Considerations ◽  
Epistemic Competence

This chapter lays out the advantages of a behavioral approach to democratic theory. In particular, it contrasts this approach with three more common ways of treating the decision making of citizens in a democracy. In order to bring out the contrast, it uses the notion of epistemic competence to stand in for the various cognitive skills and abilities that are required for democracy to function properly. It shows that rejecting the rational actor model of human decision making allows us to focus on three important theoretical considerations. The chapter proceeds in three stages. First, it proposes the notion of epistemic competence as a way to simplify discussion of the empirical data relevant to the author's account. Next, it considers and reject three familiar approaches to democratic theory. Finally, it explains the benefits of a behavioral approach to normative theories of democracy.

Operational Code Theory: Beliefs and Foreign Policy Decisions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen G. Walker ◽  
Mark Schafer
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Strategic Interaction ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Code Theory ◽  
Code Analysis ◽  
Operational Code

The process of foreign policy decision making is influenced in large part by beliefs, along with the strategic interaction between actors engendered by their decisions and the resulting political outcomes. In this context, beliefs encompass three kinds of effects: the mirroring effects associated with the decision making situation, the steering effects that arise from this situation, and the learning effects of feedback. These effects are modeled using operational code analysis, although “operational code theory” more accurately describes an alliance of attribution and schema theories from psychology and game theory from economics applied to the domain of politics. This “theory complex” specifies belief-based solutions to the puzzles posed by diagnostic, decision making, and learning processes in world politics. The major social and intellectual dimensions of operational code theory can be traced to Nathan Leites’s seminal research on the Bolshevik operational code, The Operational Code of the Politburo. In the last half of the twentieth century, applications of operational code analysis have emphasized different cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms as intellectual dimensions in explaining foreign policy decisions. The literature on operational code theory may be divided into four general waves of research: idiographic-interpretive studies, nomothetic-typological studies, quantitative-statistical studies, and formal modeling studies. The present trajectory of studies on operational code points to a number of important trends that straddle political psychology and game theory. For example, the psychological processes of mirroring, steering, and learning associated with operational code analysis have the potential to enrich our understanding of game-theoretic models of strategic interaction.

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