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You can't give permission to be a bastard: Empathy and self-signaling as uncontrollable independent variables in bargaining games

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2005

George Ainslie
George Ainslie*
Affiliation:
Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, 116A, Coatesville, PA19320; and Temple University, Philadelphia, PA19140www.Picoeconomics.com
*
George.Ainslie@va.gov
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Abstract

Canonical utility theory may have adopted its selfishness postulate because it lacked theoretical rationales for two major kinds of incentive: empathic utility and self-signaling. Empathy – using vicarious experiences to occasion your emotions – gives these experiences market value as a means of avoiding the staleness of self-generated emotion. Self-signaling is inevitable in anyone trying to overcome a perceived character flaw. Hyperbolic discounting of future reward supplies incentive mechanisms for both empathic utility and self-signaling. Neither can be effectively suppressed for an experimental game.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 28 , Issue 6 , December 2005 , pp. 815 - 816
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005

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References

Notes

The author of this commentary is employed by a government agency and as such this commentary is considered a work of the U.S. government and not subject to copyright within the United States.

1. Determined canonical theorists might see such choices as a test of whether they had overcome “irrational” empathic urges – hence the reported epidemic of selfishness among economists (Frank et al. 1993).