Description
In this new edition of his critically acclaimed book, Jon Elster examines the nature of social behavior, proposing choice as the central concept of the social sciences. Extensively revised throughout, the book offers an overview of key explanatory mechanisms, drawing on many case studies and experiments to explore the nature of explanation in the social sciences; an analysis of the mental states - beliefs, desires, and emotions - that are precursors to action; a systematic comparison of rational-choice models of behavior with alternative accounts, and a review of mechanisms of social interaction ranging from strategic behavior to collective decision making. A wholly new chapter includes an exploration of classical moralists and Proust in charting mental mechanisms operating 'behind the back' of the agent, and a new conclusion points to the pitfalls and fallacies in current ways of doing social science, proposing guidelines for more modest and more robust procedures.
Chapter
Rationality and intelligibility
From visceral to rational
Interest, reason, and passion
Taking account of consequences
States that are essentially by-products
Material and formal preferences
5 Self-interest and altruism
Approbativeness and shamefulness
Moral, social, and quasi-moral norms
The warm glow (the Valmont effect)
Motivational versus cognitive myopia
What is it to ``believe´´ something?
Subjective assessments of probability
Some errors of statistical inference
Motivated belief formation
The need to act for good reasons
The need to reduce cognitive dissonance
The need to find meaning and order in the world
The need to maintain amour-propre
The need to see oneself as guided by a motivation that is highly ranked in the hierarchy of motivations
Self-poisoning of the mind
10 Constraints: opportunities and abilities
Desires and opportunities
Relations between desires and opportunities
11 Reinforcement and selection
Natural selection and human behavior
Intentional variation, intentional selection
Non-intentional variation, intentional selection
Intentional variation, non-intentional selection
Selection and as-if rationality
12 Persons and situations
When folk psychology goes wrong
The power of the situation
The spontaneous appeal to dispositions
The rehabilitation of the person
The structure of rational action
Preferences and ordinal utility
Cardinal utility and risk attitudes
Risk aversion and decreasing marginal utility
Optimal investment in information-gathering
Rational choice under uncertainty
Rationality is subjective through and through
14 Rationality and behavior
Ignoring the costs of decision making
Some canonical principles of rationality
Alternatives to rational-choice theory
15 Responding to irrationality
Future selves as adversaries
16 Implications for textual interpretation
17 Unintended consequences
Unintended consequences of individual behavior
The younger sibling syndrome
Strategic interaction with simultaneous choices
Some frequently occurring games
Intentions and consequences
Some failures of rational-choice game theory
Reasons for trustworthiness
The collective consciousness
The operation of social norms
What social norms are not
22 Collective belief formation
Tocqueville on conformism
Some collective action problems
The technology of collective action
24 Collective decision making
How voting differs from individual decisions
25 Institutions and constitutions
The principal-agent problem
Conclusion: is social science possible?
Rational choice theory: tool-box or toy-box?
Explaining Social Behavior
：More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences
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