The hidden persuaders: institutions and individuals in economic theory

By Geoffrey M. Hodgson. 2003

338 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In his classic book The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard claimed that large corporations manipulated consumers, using advertising techniques. John Kenneth Galbraith and others have repeated a similar view. Against this, Gary Becker and George Stigler have claimed that advertising is essentially informative rather than manipulative. In contrast, it is argued here that both of these opposed accounts of human agency neglect the more subtle and undesigned processes by which institutions bear upon and mould individuals. This paper proposes a concept of 'reconstitutive downward causation' in which institutions act upon individual habits and dispositions. The mechanisms involved do not fall foul of past critiques of 'holism' or methodological collectivism. This argument involves a rehabilitation of the concept of habit in social science, with far-reaching implications. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0c009333d12ea73658e535ca135642d346927839

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Citations in the corpus

Structure, institution, agency, habit, and reflexive deliberation (2008, background): “(Hodgson, 2003: 166) How exactly does repeated car use cause a preference for car use?”
Relational Economic Geography: A Partial Understanding or a New Paradigm? (2008, background): “Instead, it is more fruitful to see institutions as sets of durable systems of social rules and conventions that are constituted by habits and that structure social interactions (Hodgson 2003).”
Climate-Resilient Pathways: Adaptation, Mitigation, and Sustainable Development (2014, background): “Institutions define roles and provide social context for action and structure social interactions (Hodgson, 2003).”
Geographies of production: growth regimes in spatial perspective 3 - toward a relational view of economic action and policy (2006, background): “On the one hand, institutions shape economic practices and should, thus, be studied at the level of the economic actor (Hodgson, 1998).”
Consumer over‐indebtedness in the EU: measurement and characteristics (2007, background): “Others have argued that individuals' habits and preferences are constantly evolving and social institutions and information provision affect this process (see, Hodgson, 2003”
Institutions and the shaping of different forms of entrepreneurship (2010, background): “In spite of their inertia, resistance to change (Hoffman, 1999), persistence (Parto, 2005) and durability (Hodgson, 2003), institutions are subject to change.”
Institutional change in economic geography (2014, background): “The conceptual foundations of action in this approach are based on an institutional perspective (Amin, 1999), in which the goals and preferences of economic action are not predetermined by the assumption that actors are rational, utility-maximizing individuals (Hodgson, 2003).”
The Evolution of Institutions: An Agenda for Future Theoretical Research (2002, background): “Elsewhere, this process of habit formation, resulting from institutional channels and constraints, is described elsewhere as ‘reconstitutive downward causation’ ( Hodgson, forthcoming; Hodgson and Knudsen 2001).”
The Complex Evolution of a Simple Traffic Convention: the Functions and Implications of Habit (2004, background): “The question then is whether rational choice is the foundation of habit, or whether the reverse is true (Becker, 1992; Hodgson, 1998, 2003, in press ).”
Geographies of production: growth regimes in spatial perspective (II) - knowledge creation and growth in clusters (2005, background): “Actors are socialised in a particular societal context and adjust their habits to the corresponding institutional mix (Hall and Soskice, 2001; Hodgson, 2003).”
Exporting the German Model: The Establishment of a New Automobile Industry Cluster in Shanghai (2005, background): “Actors are socialized in a particular societal context and adjust their habits in response to the existing specific institutional mix (Hall and Soskice 2001; Hodgson 2003).”