Search

Behavior is rational to the extent that it optimizes actions, beliefs, and information collection subject to various constraints. It is intelligible to the extent that it makes sense to an interpreter. The two concepts are connected because interpretation ordinarily proceeds on the assumption that others would do what we do under the same circumstances, mutatis mutandis. And because we of necessity understand our own behavior as being as rational as possible given the constraints we face, we must interpret the behavior of others in the same way. This paper develops the concepts of rationality and intelligibility, and applies them to the problem of interpretation. It does so by relying upon Jon Elster's recent work upon the same concepts. Like Elster, moreover, this paper concerns both the interpretation of real behavior and that of fictional characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main body of rational-choice literature aims to deduce the necessary consequences that result from the interaction of rational agents. In contrast, this paper shows how small accidents of history can determine the character of social life among even perfectly rational decision makers. The paper describes those circumstances in which the structure of interaction is determinant, so that random events are averaged away, and those circumstances in which chance events leave a permanent mark on the collective life of rational beings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to integrate the idea of Pygmalion or self-fulfilling prophecy research into the subjective expected utility framework of inequality in educational opportunities. The theoretical section develops a formal model about the impact of teachers’ expectations on students’ educational transitions in sense of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the empirical section, I test this model to predict both students’ educational success (in terms of high school graduations) and their university transitions. Analyses control for selection bias and unobserved heterogeneity by means of a bivariate probit model. I find that even net of both students’ performance and motivation, teachers’ expectations show significant effects on students’ educational success (Abitur), but not on their university transitions. This finding is stable against several robustness checks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we address the general question of how social influence determines collective outcomes for large populations of individuals faced with binary decisions. First, we define conditions under which the behavior of individuals making binary decisions can be described in terms of what we call an influence-response function: a one-dimensional function of the (weighted) number of individuals choosing each of the alternatives. And second, we demonstrate that, under the assumptions of global and anonymous interactions, general knowledge of the influence-response functions is sufficient to compute equilibrium, and even non-equilibrium, properties of the collective dynamics. By enabling us to treat in a consistent manner classes of decisions that have previously been analyzed separately, our framework allows us to find similarities between apparently quite different kinds of decision situations, and conversely to identify important differences between decisions that would otherwise appear very similar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we address the free-rider problem from a network perspective. We suggest that individuals' groups of relevant others are considerably smaller than is usually assumed in the Olsonian tradition. Instead of focusing on the interest group as a whole, we argue that a group of relevant others consists of those to whom the individual is tied through various social bonds. Since these groups tend to be small, social selective incentives are likely to be efficient in inducing individual participation. In testing these ideas empirically, we use microdata on members of a Swedish temperance movement organization during the period of 1896-1937. We estimate how individuals' groups of relevant others are composed with respect to membership in the movement organization and how the composition of the groups affects individuals' decisions to join the movement organization. The results of the analysis support our thesis that additional movement members in the group of relevant others increase an individual's propensity to join a social movement organization. However, the results also lend support to Olson's free-rider thesis: When controlling for the composition of the group of relevant others, additional members in the movement as a whole decrease an individual's propensity to join the movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents parallels between network exchange experiments and N-person cooperative games with transferable utility, to show how game theory can assist network exchange researchers, not only in predicting outcomes, but in properly specifying the scope of their models. It illustrates how utility, strategy and c-games, concepts found in game theory, could be used by exchange theorists to help them reflect on their models and improve their research design. One game theoretic solution concept, the kernel, is compared to recent network exchange algorithms as an illustration of how easy it is to apply game theory to the exchange network situation. It also illustrates some advantages of using a game theory solution concept to model network exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents papers dealing with the application of rational choice to environmental related behavior. One uses the social customs approach first developed in 1980 to take into account social norms for predicting environmental behavior. The concept is rooted in economics in the sense that actors maximize utility given some constraints. However, the individual is assumed to interact with others, whereby a process of relative positioning takes place within a rational-choice model. In their contribution, the relationship between the most widely used action theory in social psychology, which is the theory of planned behavior, and rational choice were first shown. The rational-actor theory contains direct measurements of preferences and restrictions including social norms. Also, the longitudinal intervention study of travel-mode choice was used in a region to demonstrate simultaneously how the measurement model, the structural relations between the latent constructs and the bridge assumptions between the policy measure and the theoretical concepts can be empirically rested. C. Lüdeman, in his paper, addresses the issue of framing and bounded rationality in the sense of restricted information processing capacity.