Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Breakdown of Will. G Ainslie (Cambridge UP 2001)

This looks relevant to people working on risky behaviour as well as neuroecon.

Synopsis
Ainslie argues that our responses to the threat of our own inconsistency determine the basic fabric of human culture. He suggests that individuals are more like populations of bargaining agents than like the hierarchical command structures envisaged by cognitive psychologists. The forces that create and constrain these populations help us understand so much that is puzzling in human action and interaction: from addictions and other self-defeating behaviors to the experience of willfulness, from pathological over-control and self-deception to subtler forms of behavior such as altruism, sadism, gambling, and the 'social construction' of belief. This book integrates approaches from experimental psychology, philosophy of mind, microeconomics, and decision science to present one of the most profound and expert accounts of human irrationality available. It will be of great interest to philosophers and an important resource for professionals and students in psychology, economics and political science.

4 comments:

Liam Delaney said...

picoeconomics is in my to-read list - ainslie is an important figure in this work - i have been reading jon elster's books over the last few days as well - ill post some summaries at some stage

Kevin Denny said...

I think this book may be the one that was to be called Picoeconomics? When I looked for the latter on Amazon this was the one I found.

Michael99 said...

There are at least two different abbreviated versions, one of which is available here: http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Ainslie-09072004/Referees/Ainslie.pdf

Kevin Denny said...

Eh,I couldn't find it here.Duh.