Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: Zero-sum thinking and aversion to trade pervade our society, yet fly in the face of everyday experience and the consensus of economists. Boyer & Petersen's (B&P's) evolutionary model invokes coalitional psychology to explain these puzzling intuitions. I raise several empirical challenges to this explanation, proposing two alternative mechanisms - intuitive mercantilism (assigning value to money rather than goods) and errors in perspective-taking.
Source: Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Author: Samuel G. B. Johnson
Institution: University of Bath
Language: English
Subfield: General Decision Sciences
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2887440102