Preference purification and the inner rational agent: a critique of the conventional wisdom of behavioural welfare economics Article Swipe

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Normative Preference Rational choice theory (criminology) Economics Revealed preference Positive economics Context (archaeology) Rational expectations Rational agent Epistemology Psychology Microeconomics Neoclassical economics Econometrics Philosophy Biology Paleontology Criminology

Gerardo Infante , Guilhem Lecouteux , Robert Sugden ·

YOU? · · 2016 · Open Access · · DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2015.1070527 · OA: W2280738422

Neoclassical economics assumes that individuals have stable and context-independent preferences, and uses preference-satisfaction as a normative criterion. By calling this assumption into question, behavioural findings cause fundamental problems for normative economics. A common response to these problems is to treat deviations from conventional rational-choice theory as mistakes, and to try to reconstruct the preferences that individuals would have acted on, had they reasoned correctly. We argue that this preference purification approach implicitly uses a dualistic model of the human being, in which an inner rational agent is trapped in an outer psychological shell. This model is psychologically and philosophically problematic.