Rational choice model

Rational choice theory in political science

Rational choice theory provides a framework to explain why groups of rational individuals can come to collectively irrational decisions. For example, while at the individual level a group of people may have common interests, applying a rational choice framework to their individually rational preferences can explain group-level outcomes that fail to accomplish any one individual's preferred objectives. Rational choice theory provides a framework to describe outcomes like this as the product of rational agents performing their own cost–benefit analysis to maximize their self-interests, a process that doesn't always align with the group's preferences.^[19]

Rational choice theory in social interactions

G.S Becker concludes that people marry if the expected utility from such marriage exceeds the utility one would gain from remaining single, and in the same way couples would separate should the utility of being together be less than expected and provide less (economic) benefit than being separated would.^[25]

George C. Homans suggested that behavior of humans in social situations can be modelled as individual actors who have preferences on how others behave, and expectations based on their personal history.^[26]

Psychological critiques

The validity of Rational Choice Theory has been generally refuted by the results of research in behavioral psychology. The revision or alternative theory that arises from these discrepancies is called Prospect Theory.

The 'doubly-divergent'^[35] critique of Rational Choice Theory implicit in Prospect Theory has sometimes been presented as a revision or alternative.^[36] Daniel Kahneman's work has been notably elaborated by research undertaken and supervised by Jonathan Haidt and other scholars.^[37][38]

Empirical critiques

In their 1994 work, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory, Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro argue that the empirical outputs of rational choice theory have been limited. They contend that much of the applicable literature, at least in political science, was done with weak statistical methods and that when corrected many of the empirical outcomes no longer hold. When taken in this perspective, rational choice theory has provided very little to the overall understanding of political interaction – and is an amount certainly disproportionately weak relative to its appearance in the literature. Yet, they concede that cutting-edge research, by scholars well-versed in the general scholarship of their fields (such as work on the U.S. Congress by Keith Krehbiel, Gary Cox, and Mat McCubbins) has generated valuable scientific progress.^[39]

Methodological critiques

Schram and Caterino (2006)^[40] contains a fundamental methodological criticism of rational choice theory for promoting the view that the natural science model is the only appropriate methodology in social science and that political science should follow this model, with its emphasis on quantification and mathematization. Schram and Caterino argue instead for methodological pluralism. The same argument is made by William E. Connolly, who in his work Neuropolitics^[41] shows that advances in neuroscience further illuminate some of the problematic practices of rational choice theory.

Sociological critiques

Pierre Bourdieu fiercely opposed rational choice theory as grounded in a misunderstanding of how social agents operate. Bourdieu argued that social agents do not continuously calculate according to explicit rational and economic criteria. According to Bourdieu, social agents operate according to an implicit practical logic – a practical sense – and bodily dispositions. Social agents act according to their "feel for the game" (the "feel" being, roughly, habitus, and the "game" being the field).^[42]

Other social scientists, inspired in part by Bourdieu's thinking have expressed concern about the inappropriate use of economic metaphors in other contexts, suggesting that this may have political implications. The argument they make is that by treating everything as a kind of "economy" they make a particular vision of the way an economy works seem more natural. Thus, they suggest, rational choice is as much ideological as it is scientific.^[43]

Criticism based on the biopolitical paradigm

The basic assumptions of rational choice theory do not take into account external factors (social, cultural, economic) that interfere with autonomous decision-making. Representatives of the biopolitical paradigm such as Michel Foucault drew attention to the micro-power structures that shape the soul, body and mind and thus top-down impose certain decisions on individuals.^[51] Humans – according to the assumptions of the biopolitical paradigm – therefore conform to dominant social and cultural systems rather than to their own subjectively defined goals, which they would seek to achieve through rational and optimal decisions.

Critiques on the basis of evolutionary psychology

An evolutionary psychology perspective suggests that many of the seeming contradictions and biases regarding rational choice can be explained as being rational in the context of maximizing biological fitness in the ancestral environment but not necessarily in the current one. Thus, when living at subsistence level where a reduction of resources may have meant death it may have been rational to place a greater value on losses than on gains. Proponents argue it may also explain differences between groups.^[52]

Critiques on the basis of emotion research

Proponents of emotional choice theory criticize the rational choice paradigm by drawing on new findings from emotion research in psychology and neuroscience. They point out that rational choice theory is generally based on the assumption that decision-making is a conscious and reflective process based on thoughts and beliefs. It presumes that people decide on the basis of calculation and deliberation. However, cumulative research in neuroscience suggests that only a small part of the brain's activities operate at the level of conscious reflection. The vast majority of its activities consist of unconscious appraisals and emotions.^[53] The significance of emotions in decision-making has generally been ignored by rational choice theory, according to these critics. Moreover, emotional choice theorists contend that the rational choice paradigm has difficulty incorporating emotions into its models, because it cannot account for the social nature of emotions. Even though emotions are felt by individuals, psychologists and sociologists have shown that emotions cannot be isolated from the social environment in which they arise. Emotions are inextricably intertwined with people's social norms and identities, which are typically outside the scope of standard rational choice models.^[54] Emotional choice theory seeks to capture not only the social but also the physiological and dynamic character of emotions. It represents a unitary action model to organize, explain, and predict the ways in which emotions shape decision-making.^[55]

The difference between public and private spheres

Herbert Gintis has also provided an important criticism to rational choice theory. He argued that rationality differs between the public and private spheres. The public sphere being what you do in collective action and the private sphere being what you do in your private life. Gintis argues that this is because “models of rational choice in the private sphere treat agents’ choices as instrumental”. “Behaviour in the public sphere, by contrast, is largely non-instrumental because it is non-consequential". Individuals make no difference to the outcome, “much as single molecules make no difference to the properties of the gas" ^{[citation needed]}(Herbert, G). This is a weakness of rational choice theory as it shows that in situations such as voting in an election, the rational decision for the individual would be to not vote as their vote makes no difference to the outcome of the election. However, if everyone were to act in this way the democratic society would collapse as no one would vote. Therefore, we^[who?] can see that rational choice theory does not describe how everything in the economic and political world works, and that there are other factors of human behaviour at play.