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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Please remove customer review for old book,
By
This review is from: Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences (Paperback)
I am the author of this book. Please remove the 1997 customer review from the site. (Once you have done that you can remove this review as well.) It refers to an older, much shorter and vastly different version. As a guide to the new book it is seriously misleading.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Answers some fascinating questions,
By P Newall "poker author" (London, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences (Paperback)
Elster opens his book by posing some questions which rational choice theory has had difficulty answering, such as:Why do some gamblers bet on trends, and others on reversals? Why do humiliating initiation rituals make group members more and not less loyal? Why does switching prescription drugs from bottles to blister packs significantly reduce the incidence of suicide? Why do stocks offer a much higher long-run return than bonds? Why can a reputation for irrational behaviour improve your bargaining situation? Rational choice theory -- which assumes that people objectively and unbiasedly pursue their goals -- has had little success in explaining these (and more) phenomena of the real world. Elster invokes a number of different fields, such as psychology, behavioural economics, neuroscience, biology, history, and political science in search of sensible answers. Not only are Elster's answers intuitively appealing, but they also eschew the mind-bendingly complicated mathematics and implausible assumptions of rational choice. However, he doesn't entirely denigrate rational choice: we do, after all, want to act more-or-less rationally in life, and Elster provides a number of mechanisms by which we can attain greater rationality in our decision making.
10 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A well-written summary of Elster's main themes.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences (Paperback)
A very cogent summary of Elster's main themes: rationality and how one departs from it, especially from the static notion common in current rational choice theory. Anyone interested in rationality and departures from rationality--a topic much-ignored in current thinking and applications of rational choice theory-- should read this book. While I don't find that I agree with every conclusion Elster makes, he does make me think hard, which is about the best I ever expect.
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