Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social SciencesThis book is an expanded and revised edition of the author's critically acclaimed volume Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. In twenty-six succinct chapters, Jon Elster provides an account of the nature of explanation in the social sciences. He offers an overview of key explanatory mechanisms in the social sciences, relying on hundreds of examples and drawing on a large variety of sources - psychology, behavioral economics, biology, political science, historical writings, philosophy and fiction. Written in accessible and jargon-free language, Elster aims at accuracy and clarity while eschewing formal models. In a provocative conclusion, Elster defends the centrality of qualitative social sciences in a two-front war against soft (literary) and hard (mathematical) forms of obscurantism. |
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Page 15
... suicides in one country than in another, we have to make sure that the latter does not tend, perhaps for religious reasons, to underreport suicides. Before we try to explain why Spain has a higher unemployment rate than France, we have ...
... suicides in one country than in another, we have to make sure that the latter does not tend, perhaps for religious reasons, to underreport suicides. Before we try to explain why Spain has a higher unemployment rate than France, we have ...
Page 32
... suicide or a car accident . To get around these problems , it is often argued that we should replace the idea of a general law with that of a mechanism . Actually , as I use the term " mechanism ” in a special sense later , I shall use ...
... suicide or a car accident . To get around these problems , it is often argued that we should replace the idea of a general law with that of a mechanism . Actually , as I use the term " mechanism ” in a special sense later , I shall use ...
Page 57
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Other editions - View all
Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences Jon Elster Limited preview - 2015 |
Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences Jon Elster No preview available - 2007 |
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alcohol altruistic argued argument assume backward induction bargaining behavior belief formation benefits better BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE bicameralism Cambridge University Press cardinal utility causal cause Chapter choice choose cited claim consequences consider constitution cooperation cost decision desire discussed disulfiram drinking economic effect emotions equilibrium event example expected experiment explanandum explanation fact favor fear Figure folk psychology French game theory hyperbolic discounting idea individuals induce instance intentional interaction interest investor irrational Kitty Genovese later less loss aversion magical thinking mechanism motivated mutation natural selection observed occur offer one’s oneself opportunity optimal option outcome party payoff percent person player pluralistic ignorance political precommitment predict preferences present value Prisoner's Dilemma probability proposal proverb punishment rational agent rational-choice reason reward risk rumors sense situation social norms social sciences strategy subjects suicide Suppose tendency theory Tocqueville triggered trust Ultimatum Game utility violate voting wishful thinking workers
Popular passages
Page 172 - Extend the sphere and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength and to act in unison with each other.
Page 304 - By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention, v Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it.
Page 341 - It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one's judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.
Page 192 - For the purposes of a typological scientific analysis it is convenient to treat all irrational, affectually determined elements of behavior as factors of deviation from a conceptually pure type of rational action.
Page 80 - From the other point of view, however, we see this same ego as a poor creature owing service to three masters and consequently menaced by three dangers: from the external world, from the libido of the id, and from the severity of the super-ego.
Page 101 - State attachments and state importance have been the bane of this country. We cannot annihilate, but we may perhaps take out the teeth of the serpents. He wished our ideas to be enlarged to the true interest of man instead of being circumscribed within the narrow compass of a particular spot. And after all, how little can be the motive yielded by selfishness for such a policy! Who can say whether he himself, much less whether his children, will the next year be an inhabitant of this or that state?
Page 215 - We talked of the education of children; and I asked him what he thought was best to teach them first. JOHNSON. "Sir, it is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learnt them both.
Page 291 - But, for our purpose, a form of Selection, which may be called Unconscious, and which results from every one trying to possess and breed from the best individual animals, is more important.
Page 100 - Only one must not form the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within the frame of which alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided.