主讲人

Dario Maestripieri是芝加哥大学比较人类发展学系(Department of Comparative Human Development)的教授。凭借对于行为生物学的跨学科研究，他为我们理解灵长类动物以及人类行为和认知的生物学基础，生物和文化的进化动力学做出了重大贡献。在主要研究领域以外，Maestripieri教授还深入研究了科学思想的历史演变，以及艺术和文学对智力塑造的影响。他还同时在芝加哥大学心理与生物学研究所(Institute for Mind and Biology)、芝加哥大学知识形成研究所(Institute on the Formation of Knowledge)从事研究工作。

摘要

Economics has traditionally been interested in explaining and predicting human behavior at the level of individuals (microeconomics) or at the level of institutions or societies (macroeconomics). Models of human behavior and decision-making developed in classical economics in the 20th century were grounded in Rational Choice Theory (RCT). The roots of RCT can be traced back to British philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790), who argued that individuals always act to maximize their self-interest (later called ‘utility’) and make decisions after weighing the costs and benefits of their actions. Two types of models of human behavior and decision-making were derived from RCT by classical economists: optimization models and game theory models. In the second half of the 20th century, psychology-oriented behavioral economists conducted experiments which showed that individuals often make mistakes in calculating probabilities, have difficulty with math problems involving large numbers, and display numerous biases in their thinking, which result in seemingly irrational preferences and decisions. Although behavioral economists demonstrated that human behavior often deviates from the predictions of RCT and that individuals are less rational than previously thought, they did not replace RCT with a new theory of human behavior. Instead, they argued that RCT could still be viable and useful provided that it allowed for some exceptions. It has been argued that there is a parallel between the reluctance of economists to discard RCT in light of its failures, and the reluctance of early astronomers to discard geocentrism as a model of the solar system in light of its failure to account for the observed movements of celestial bodies. After the invention of the telescope by Galileo and the new observations that were made with it, geocentrism had to be abandoned and replaced by a new model, heliocentrism, which assumed that the sun, and not the earth, was at the center of the solar system.