Wim Hordijk — The Evolutionary Roots of Irrationality

Standard economic theory assumes that humans behave fully rationally and are able to objectively calculate the value (or cost) of the different choices they are presented with. In fact, we pride ourselves on our rationality. Different from the animals, we humans have the unique capacity for logical thought and rational decision making. Or do we?

According to behavioral economist Dan Ariely, we should be less proud of ourselves. In his entertaining book Predictably Irrational, Ariely describes many case studies of every-day irrational human behavior. His simple but clever scientific experiments often require nothing more than a box of chocolates. However, subtle differences in the way these chocolates are offered to people can cause large and completely irrational differences in the way we behave. Moreover, these irrational behaviors fly square in the face of what conventional economic theory, based on rationality, would predict....

So much for methodological atomist in economics, or other social disciplines as James Buchanan's rational choice theory spreads.

Humans are not like atoms in physics and chemistry or even like cells in biology. They are not homogeneous and cannot be assumed to be so as the concepts of homo economicus and representative agent that underly neoclassical method do.  

Social systems in which human agents are elements, or families, do not resemble atoms and molecules closely enough to serve as a framework for representational models, where the arrangements of symbols in possibility space are asserted to reflect the configuration and behavior of objects in actual space with more than rough approximation.

Wim Hordik argues that this is not a imperfection, but rather an important aspect of the evolutionary development of humans that serves to protect. For example, if homo economicus were entirely true then life would be determined by quantity, objectivity and positivity, while quality, subjectivity and values would be largely excluded from importance and banished from consideration in decisions. The world would be colorless, so to speak.

The Evolution Institute
The Evolutionary Roots of Irrationality
Wim Hordijk | Senior Fellow at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Klosterneuburg, Austria