Via Mark Thoma, Miller-McCune has a nice writeup of some research done by psychologists and published in Psychological Science. The results of their study explain the seeming “irrationality” of people who stayed behind in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina (this might be of interest to Sean and his recent Big Easy blogging at Economies in Cultural Perspective). I think these results actually shed some light on shortcomings of even behavioral economics. First, some excerpts:
According to new study by a group of psychologists, to think of it as an active decision betrays a particular model of human agency, an individual-centered one held by mainstream American culture, in which people both have resources and generally enjoy a high degree of personal efficacy…
The psychologists framed the study around a distinction between two models of human agency — the disjoint and the conjoint — in order to understand what happened in New Orleans and why.
The disjoint model is built on assumptions of independence. It assumes that individuals have opportunities, make choices to influence their environment and that their choices are a reflection of their goals and preferences. This is the model that dominates mainstream American discourse and culture, and the model of agency held by many of the people who did leave.
The conjoint model, on the other hand, is built on assumptions of interdependence. Here, human agency is primarily about adapting one’s self to the world (rather than trying to change the environment), often through faith and spirituality, and decisions are more community-oriented. Though the conjoint model might seem more familiar to many middle-class observers as an East Asian philosophy, the authors argue that these attitudes are also prevalent in working-class Americans.
That’s because many working-class folks lack the resources to engage in individualistic, independent behaviors. And this particular lived experience leads them to adapt by developing a sense of personal agency in which they make the most of their lives, given the challenges they face in exerting meaningful control over their environment. This is something that is often very difficult for outsiders to get.
I find the conjoint/disjoint distinction very interesting, and it adds a meaningful dimension to our thinking about human behavior. As the authors recognize, it has ramifications for social science as well:
“All of the social sciences are using one and the same model of the person,” Markus said. “And that’s a particular model that comes out of the middle-class American context in particular. It’s the rational actor of economics, the reasonable person of the law.
“But as far as it goes,” Markus added, “it’s really right for about 5 percent of the world’s population. When it comes down to it, when we say ‘people,’ we’re talking only about North American, middle-class people with a reasonably high level of education and resources. … This model is an historical and philosophical product, but it’s not the way people naturally are. There are other ways to be an agent that deserve study.”
So social science is dominated by a paradigm that explains five percent of humans’ behavior. Can behavioral economics do better? Psychological studies like this seem to indicate yes. However, my guess would be that even this fairly nuanced view of human behavior (the ‘joint’ model), a fair amount of behavioral will remain unexplained. How deep can behavioral economics dig, even aided by high quality psychological studies like this one? At some point, we may have to admit that human behavior is actually unpredictably irrational, as we find other dimensions of irrationality and even interactions smog those dimensions.
I don’t even know where to start…
This might warrant another whole post.
That’s what I want to hear!
they stayed because they had always been better off staying: to defend themselves, their meager possessions, their families. they stayed because for forty years (since betsy), the army corps had told everyone the levees were safe. they stayed because evacuation is expensive and stressful, and katrina came at the end of the month, and everyone thought it was going to apalachicola until the last minute. they stayed because the government lied, and they died because of the worst engineering catastrophe in united states history. those are the facts.
but you’re on to something here; after living in the 9th ward during the summer of 06, i came back to ND and the “myth of the rational actor” suddenly made absolutely no sense. we’re irrational people living in a crazy, fucked up world. probably over half the city was walking around like zombies with PTSD that summer. how were their decisions rational? lord knows mine were not.
I agree with everything Alli said. She knows the on-the-ground stories much better than I do.
But I’ll add my two cents: This model still relies on a notion of “choice” and is a slippery slope to a “blame the victim” mentality even if it a more “sensitive.”
And I still don’t see where the “interdependence” comes in. He mentions it once, and then merely talks about adaptive agencies, which do not necessarily require acknowledging any sort of interdependence with others (presumably of a like-kind).
Above all, it ignores the larger social/structural forces that Alli outlined above. New Orleans residents did not “choose” to stay through a disaster, they chose to stay through a hurricane, like many of them had done before.
While the author claims that the conjoint model fits the attitude of many “working class” Americans, I wonder how he defines working class. While it is a rather politically correct term that can cover a wide range of peoples and income groups, I think it obscures the high levels of poverty and inequality in New Orleans (one of the highest in the country for urban areas). In my opinion, “working class” does not cover a large swath of New Orleans residents, many of whom could more accurately be termed “working poor.”
And though he acknowledges the conjoint model of agency as representing %95 percent of the population, he seems to hold the disjoint model in higher regard (in a normative sense), considering his comments that it reflects “people with a reasonably high level of education and resources.” Shouldn’t we all want education and resources? Shouldn’t we all make decisions according to our individual self-interest?
Finally, it’s a reductionist model, with agency determined by access to “resources.” What about other factors?
Nice breakdown, Sean. My biggest concern initially was with the diversity within the “working class,” but you’ve raised some other important problems, especially the final one, concerning resources. This model still runs out of the “max u” mold, although that’s not entirely surprising.