What’s the dumbest social ritual you’ve partaken in?
Fraternity hazing, perhaps? Or maybe debating a lunch mate over who gets the
privilege of picking up the tab? How about pretending that the style of eggs
you had for breakfast is must-share news for social media?
Not bad—those all seem pretty dumb—but take a moment to
ponder these beauties: Deciding criminal defendants’ guilt or innocence by
seeing how their hands react to being plunged into a cauldron of boiling water.
Consulting a poisoned chicken to decide how to behave toward your neighbors.
Adjudging land disputes by having litigants’ legal representatives club one another
before an arena of spectating citizens. Each of these practices lasted for over
a hundred years—sometimes hundreds of years—and they’re just the tip of
humanity’s seemingly-stupid-social-ritual iceberg. Kind of makes posting your
croissant on Facebook seem, well, reasoned.
So what’s the deal with the silly stuff people do? How do we
explain it? Are people just dumb—pardon me, “irrational”?
That’s one theory, and it offers the kind of excuse that’s
easy to reach for when we encounter practices that strike us as stupid: People
behave in ways that seem senseless because people are senseless. There’s
even scholarship to make us feel better about thinking this way—experiments involving
coffee cups, college students and “games” of this or that, which suggest that
people aren’t so great at making decisions; often, they’re pretty damn bad.
Case closed! Right?
Not so fast. Is it so clear that people’s bad decisions are
actually “bad”? Are coffee-cup experiments with college students really so
convincing?? Could entire societies, for centuries, have just been banging
their collective heads against the proverbial wall???
Call me irrational, but I vote no. People make plenty of mistakes—just
flip through an old family photo album for proof. And sometimes the
institutions people develop are downright destructive—a fact worth remembering
as we mark the hundredth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. But the same
species built the ancient pyramids, created the common law, and gave us Game
of Thrones—our species.
There’s another theory—one that explains mankind’s seemingly
senseless social rituals—and according to it, lurking beneath the craziness,
there’s actually a good deal of sense. I call this theory “rational choice,”
but don’t get hung up on the name. “Rational” doesn’t mean omniscient; it doesn’t
even mean well-informed. It simply means that people have goals, which they
pursue as best they can given the limitations they face. In this alternative
theory, those limitations—the particular features of people’s environments—account
for their practices that sometimes seem stupid.
The particular features of people’s environments shape the
incentives they face, and the incentives people face shape their behavior. At
root, rational choice theory is just about thinking in terms of these
incentives—thinking “economically”—and this is the approach WTF?! uses
to find the sense in seemingly senseless practices.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The wide angle
What’s the dumbest social ritual you’ve partaken in? Fraternity hazing, perhaps? Or maybe debating a lunch mate over who gets the privilege of picking up the tab? How about pretending that the style of eggs you had for breakfast is must-share news for social media?
Not bad—those all seem pretty dumb—but take a moment to ponder these beauties: Deciding criminal defendants’ guilt or innocence by seeing how their hands react to being plunged into a cauldron of boiling water. Consulting a poisoned chicken to decide how to behave toward your neighbors. Adjudging land disputes by having litigants’ legal representatives club one another before an arena of spectating citizens. Each of these practices lasted for over a hundred years—sometimes hundreds of years—and they’re just the tip of humanity’s seemingly-stupid-social-ritual iceberg. Kind of makes posting your croissant on Facebook seem, well, reasoned.
So what’s the deal with the silly stuff people do? How do we explain it? Are people just dumb—pardon me, “irrational”?
That’s one theory, and it offers the kind of excuse that’s easy to reach for when we encounter practices that strike us as stupid: People behave in ways that seem senseless because people are senseless. There’s even scholarship to make us feel better about thinking this way—experiments involving coffee cups, college students and “games” of this or that, which suggest that people aren’t so great at making decisions; often, they’re pretty damn bad. Case closed! Right?
Not so fast. Is it so clear that people’s bad decisions are actually “bad”? Are coffee-cup experiments with college students really so convincing?? Could entire societies, for centuries, have just been banging their collective heads against the proverbial wall???
Call me irrational, but I vote no. People make plenty of mistakes—just flip through an old family photo album for proof. And sometimes the institutions people develop are downright destructive—a fact worth remembering as we mark the hundredth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. But the same species built the ancient pyramids, created the common law, and gave us Game of Thrones—our species.
There’s another theory—one that explains mankind’s seemingly senseless social rituals—and according to it, lurking beneath the craziness, there’s actually a good deal of sense. I call this theory “rational choice,” but don’t get hung up on the name. “Rational” doesn’t mean omniscient; it doesn’t even mean well-informed. It simply means that people have goals, which they pursue as best they can given the limitations they face. In this alternative theory, those limitations—the particular features of people’s environments—account for their practices that sometimes seem stupid.
The particular features of people’s environments shape the incentives they face, and the incentives people face shape their behavior. At root, rational choice theory is just about thinking in terms of these incentives—thinking “economically”—and this is the approach WTF?! uses to find the sense in seemingly senseless practices.