Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences

By Jon Elster. 2007

210 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Preface Part I. Explanation and Mechanisms: 1. Explanation 2. Mechanisms 3. Interpretation Part II. The Mind: 4. Motivations 5. Self-interest and altruism 6. Myopia and foresight 7. Beliefs 8. Emotions 9. Transmutations Part III. Action: 10. Constraints: opportunities and abilities 11. Reinforcement and selection 12. Persons and situations 13. Rational choice 14. Rationality and behavior 15. Responding to irrationality 16. Implications for textual interpretation Part IV. Interaction: 17. Unintended consequences 18. Strategic interaction 19. Games and behavior 20. Trust 21. Social norms 22. Collective belief formation 23. Collective action 24. Collective decision making 25. Institutions and constitutions Conclusion: is social science possible? Index.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1cdde1493607958fe2a1de53634f8f5c601efbd6

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In Economics and Econometrics

1. Hélène Landemore
2. Yoshimichi Sato
3. Hugo Mercier

Citations in the corpus

• Rational choice theory (2013, background): “Furthermore, Elster (2007) offers severe, serious criticisms of rational choice theory.”
• Social networks (2009, unknown): “None is more prominent than rational actor theory (Coleman, 1990; Becker, 1993; Elster, 2007; but see Merton, 1936; Weber, 1978; Kadushin, 2002).”
• Reasoning is for Arguing: Understanding the Successes and Failures of Deliberation (2012, background): “In order to understand when reasoning works well, we can imagine how we would proceed if we were not studying a mental competence but a manmade object.”