Rethinking the relationship between economics and psychology

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Journal of Economic Psychology 17 (1996) 275-287

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Rethinking the relationship between economics and psychology Peter Lunt * Department of Psychology, Unicersity College London, GowerStreet, London, WCI E 6BT. UK

Abstract This paper takes the opportunity to discuss issues around the interdisciplinary relations between economics and psychology. It argues that there is a discernible gap between economists interested in psychology and psychologists interested in economics. Economists are interested in cognitive neuro-psychoiogy as a resource for elaborating the rationality assumptions of neoclassical economics whereas many economic psychologists are more interested in social aspects of economic beliefs and behaviour. The paper presents a criticism of the prevailing approaches within economics to the appropriation of psychological ideas as mental accounts and in experimental economics. It is then proposed that economic psychologists stop adopting economists' agendas and start to examine economic theory to open new lines of collaboration that will allow them to apply their own conception of psychology to economics.

PsyclNFO classification: 3000 Keywords: Economics; Theories; Rationality; Cognitive processes; Social behaviour

" I think that the central issue of philosophy and critical thought since the eighteenth century has always been, still is, and will, I hope, remain the question: What is this reason that we use? What are its historical effects? What are its limits and what are its dangers?" (Foucault, 1984, p. 249)

* E-mail: [email protected], Fax: +44 171 436-4276. 0167-4870/96/$15.00 © 1996 Elsevier Science B.V. PII S01 67-4870(96)00007-4

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" O n e of the distinguishing features of recent research on consumption has been the way in which a coherent account of uncertainty has been introduced into the analysis. When the permanent income and life-cycle theories of consumption were developed in the 1950s, all the participants recognized the importance of uncertainty, of expectations, and that there would be a need to replan in the face of new information." (Deaton, 1992, p. 18) Economic psychology is by definition an interdisciplinary area, yet the relationship between the disciplines concerned, economics and psychology, is not easy to specify. Examining any issue of the Journal of Economic Psychology or attending an IAREP conference provides many clues but does little to clarify the basis of collaboration between 'the two disciplines. In this paper I argue that the issue of interdisciplinarity now needs some discussion within economic psychology. Katona (1975) established a paradigm case of the relation between economics and psychology that is now inappropriate. I will suggest that the recent incursions of economists into psychology need to be understood in terms of the economic agendas they address. I have an underlying concern that there is a danger that attention to the social aspects of economic behaviour will decline. Interdisciplinarity can take many forms. For example, one discipline can set the agenda into which the other discipline offers expert knowledge or technique. In contrast, both disciplines can produce agendas that have a fortunate overlap. Alternatively, there can be a dispute between disciplines as to the appropriate characterization, theory and method that are applicable to a phenomenon. Another scenario is that an agenda may develop in response to funding for research on social problems or policy issues, attracting research from more than one discipline although the relation of research to theory development in the two disciplines may be unclear. This is not supposed to be an exhaustive list but, as I have argued elsewhere, there are examples of work in economic psychology that fall under all these descriptions (Lunt, 1995). There is a further complication when more than two disciplines develop overlapping or competing interests. Katona (1975) was concerned exclusively with the relation between economics and psychology but since then interest in consumption has developed in other social science disciplines (Miller, ~ 1995a). The disciplines concerned include: anthropology (Miller, 1995b), history (Glennie, 1995), geography (Jackson and Thrift, 1995)and sociology (Campbell, 1995). Much of economists' interest in psychology results from the application of cognitive theories of reasoning under uncertainty to models of consumer preferences (Deaton, 1992; Shefrin and Thaler, 1988). Although there are differences

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in the ways that psychological research is assimilated into economics, the basic model is that of psychologists providing descriptions of cognitive biases or behavioural tendencies with which economists can explain deviations from expected utility models. In comparison to the appeal of cognitive heuristics in decision making and the theory of games, social psychological approaches to economic psychology are having little impact on economics. The argument of this paper is that there is no longer a unitary sub-discipline or area of research called economic psychology. The argument is prompted by a paradox that came to mind when I attended the IAREP conference in Bergen and a workshop, principally attended by economists, at the Centre for Economic Research at Tilburg. Many psychologists that I listened to and talked to at Bergen were, in a broad sense, social psychologists. I do not know how much we can think of economic psychology as a branch of social psychology but that impression could be formed by a random selection of papers from the Bergen conference. Against this background, the first turn in the paradox came as I sat and listened to Lowenstein's invited lecture on introducing the passions into economics. The psychology that Lowenstein referred to during his talk was not social psychology. He drew upon behavioural and cognitive-neuropsychology to make various arguments about rationality assumptions in neoclassical economics. It became clear to me that here was an agenda for a link between psychology and economics that bore little direct relation to the agenda of most conferees in Bergen. In other words, while it appears that many economic psychologists are interested in social aspects of economic beliefs and behaviour, most economists are interested in the role that cognitive neuropsychology can play in the specification of rationality assumptions. The impression that economic psychology is concerned primarily with a social psychological agenda is strengthened by reading the recent special issue of the Journal of Economic Psychology on the future of the field (Robben and Groenland, 1993). Most of the papers there were concerned with social aspects of economic psychology. The papers by Van Raaij (1993), Poiesz (1993), Olander (1993) are sensitive to the changing social and political context of the contemporary consumer. Most contributors think that new social economic conditions require more detailed, contextualized study of consumers' everyday practices. There was little or no call for further experiments to clarify rationality assumptions of economic theories. In contrast, the recent rise of interest in psychology among economists has come from macro-economists who have taken an interest in cognitive psychology. The proponents of this approach to economic psychology have done a great deal to create the conditions for a growing interest in economic psychology. I

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offer a critique of their work here on the understanding that the broader project of a positive collaboration between economics and psychology is desirable. In a sense it is the success of their approach that concerns me because it might preclude other possibilities in the relation between the two disciplines. It has often been argued that the rationality assumptions of neoclassical economics constitute a psychological theory of a very particular kind. Indeed, Shefrin and Thaler (1988) regard the argument that the rational agent at the core of utility maximization models is not psychologically real as trite. I agree that the general criticism of the expected utility model as invalid or unreal has been overdone. However, Shefrin and Thaler (1988) then go on to urge a very particular role for psychological theory and data as part of a project to make the assumptions of neoclassical economics more realistic. To characterize their approach, they use specific, even ad hoc bits of psychological theory to modify the expected utility model in the face of specific empirical anomalies. For example, the problems over the breaking of the fungibility assumptions of the life cycle hypothesis are explained as the result of mental accounts that separate money into liquid and non-liquid assets in a way that mirrors the hemispheric separation of the human brain into a planner and a doer. This is a potent mix by which links are made between studies of brain function, economic behaviour and macro-economic assumptions. It is important to realize that there is no agenda here for the empirical study of, for example, the financial strategies of individuals with brain damage. Rather, their argument takes broad conceptions from psychological theory to bridge gaps between the assumptions of macro economic theory and observed economic behaviour (for the anomalies arising from specific behavioural data represents a recurrent concern in macroeconomics). Shefrin and Thaler's account draws on an apparently plausible mechanism gleaned from the psychological literature to offer an explanation for a phenomenon (here, people treating different kinds of money in different ways) that is not part of utility maximisation (which assumes that people treat all money in a similar way). Thaler (1990) extends this logic to deal with a variety of anomalies to the life cycle hypothesis including excess sensitivity to income and fungibility. Another important area in which economists have taken up psychological work is in the study of bounded rationality using game theory methods. Experimental economics adopts the Simon (1957) notion of bounded rationality as a model for judgements under uncertainty (see Giith et al., 1992, for a review). This principle asserts that people adopt particular, specified modes of reasoning which operate reasonably rather than optimally. An advantage of this approach is that there exists a set of methods in game theory already applied to a wide range of psychological processes such as conflict, bargaining and negotia-

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tion, altruism, intergroup relations, and personal relationships. Experimental economists set up 'games' which have clearly specified parameters. Rules constrain the behaviour of players and the utilities that can be maximised are controlled. Researchers then invite people to play the game. Deviations from maximum utility can then be explained as a function of changes in constraints and utilities. An underlying assumption of this approach is that many aspects of conflict are unobservable in real life contexts which makes systematic observation invalid. The argument continues that controlled experimentation will reveal stronger data than observation in the sense of making fewer assumptions concerning the unobservable influences on overt behaviour. The assumption is that this process of abstraction and control over variables leads to an analysis of fundamental processes. A key development in experimental economics is to allow a psychological account of rule governed decision procedures to replace the notion of maximum value of choice between preferences. Using variations in utilities, the 'roles' of the players can be varied. These 'roles' are usually given qualitative descriptions such as 'strong', 'protector', 'bourgeois' (Ostmann, 1992). Communication is also restricted in these games so that the participant is restricted to a set of experimenter defined acts: Proposals, offers, demands, agreements. These are not to be confused with their everyday counterparts because every attempt is made to strip them of argumentation and emotion. All these controls reduce the game and distance its relation to real life bargaining. In effect the games are attempts to rule out hot cognition and see how people act when all distractions from a cold rational decision are removed. Psychological research clearly has a role to play in specifying the psychological processes that underlie judgments under uncertainty. There is a role for such assumptions in the economic dispute over whether psychological phenomena should be characterised as exogenous variables or whether a more central role should be given to rationality assumptions grounded in psychological research. Indeed, there is a traditional oscillation within economic theory by which anomalies in the utility maximization model are identified, labelled with a psychological or sociological construct (such as self control, risk aversion or social comparison) and then argued over. The argument follows because the anomalies sometimes turn out to reveal specific problems in data or modelling rather than a substantive revision of rationality assumptions. In terms of interdisciplinarity, it is important to remember that the economist is always interested in the rational utility model. Indeed, economists are wedded to this conception of the economic agent in a way that is very difficult for us to

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appreciate as psychologists. Rationality assumptions really constitute a paradigm in a sense that no such paradigm exists in contemporary psychology, and has been around in various forms for about a hundred years. In a curious reversal of the Kuhnian interpretation of anomalies, economists are vigilant over anomalies, seeking them out and then arguing them through in terms of theory, data and external theory. There is no equivalent to this activity within psychology, which seems to me better understood as a temporary coalition of very different approaches. This difference between the two disciplines creates several problems. The economist has criteria oriented towards bolstering and examining an overarching theoretical framework. For work to be credible in economics, it has to work in principle, formally stated in terms that are usable in relation to the expected utility model. The validity of the data, indeed, the psychological plausibility of the account, is not quite but almost irrelevant. The point is that the interest of economists in psychology is not substantively psychological. They do not locate their work in psychological theory but rather use selected propositions encoding specific effects as labels for putative psychological processes in rational decision making under uncertainty. Although decision theory has had an enduring influence on social psychology, the way that social psychology approaches the study of the agent is very different from that of economics. Social psychologists are influenced by sociological theories and methods, are sceptical about universality, are doubtful about reductions to the individual level to explain inter-individual, intra-group, intergroup, and societal phenomena. All of this leads to an engagement with theories and data collection methods that are atypical of mainstream behavioural and cognitive psychology. Truth claims in social psychology are under constant revision and contestation but there would be very few takers for an explanatory model based on assumptions about a hypothetical individual. Social psychology regards, or should regard, the processes of social life to be disaggregated, localised, and historical. This contextualization precludes a model like those adopted in neoclassical economics. It is ironic, therefore, that while many economic psychologists seek to study social aspects of economic behaviour, economists are focused more on the potential contribution of behavioural and cognitive psychology. This impression intensified when I attended a workshop on savings in Tilburg. For my part, I had intended to give a paper on the semiotic interpretation of television adverts for financial services, having mistakenly believed there would be a variety of social scientists present. Having discovered that the workshop largely consisted of economists, it no longer seemed appropriate to give a paper that came so strongly out of the cultural tradition in consumption. So instead, I offered a

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diatribe against neoclassical macro-economic theory, based on a Foucaultian critique of the fusion between neoclassical economics and cognitive neuro-psychology. The critique focused on Thaler's (1990) paper in which he adopted psychological assumptions of framing and self-control to explain anomalies in the life-cycle model. He proposed various putative psychological mechanisms to assert that the anomalies point to factors of a broadly psychological nature that should be added to the life-cycle model to create a behavioural life-cycle model. The point of my talk was to try to understand the role that such argumentation plays in economic theory while evaluating it as psychological theory. If we imagine that Thaler's paper was a piece of psychological theory rather than a part of a debate about the scope of assumptions needed for expected utility models then we would make a variety of criticisms. The main force of the criticisms concern the extrapolation from the individual to the aggregate level. In contrast, a social psychological perspective would urge that there are mediating relationships between, particularly group, societal and historical processes. There has been some theorizing of the notion of levels of explanation in social psychology in recent years (Doise, 1986). Thaler (1990) has assumed that there are only two levels - the individual and the aggregate - with no levels of explanation in between. In a sense then, Thaler's position is a denial of social psychology. The assumption must be that of an individual differences position where the world is made up of isolated individuals with identifiable psychological traits. Now I don't want to say that this issue is resolved in social psychology, far from it, and there are some social psychologists who might accept this kind of view of social psychological processes. The point I want to make is that Thaler's position makes social psychological assumptions that are not explicitly articulated. That is a shame because there are positions within social psychology (maybe even most positions) that would not allow the sleight of hand extrapolation from individual to group behaviour. The link that Thaler argues between hemispheric specialisation and the planner/doer is speculative in the extreme. It is ironic that the concern with formal models on the economic side is achieved through such speculation, lack of theorizing and lack of data on the psychological side. The use of the terms 'planner' and 'doer' is a kind of mentalism by which an observed regularity in behaviour is attributed to underlying psychological traits or processes with no direct psychological evidence. Indeed, this is the sort of reasoning about the link between psychological and social behaviours that social psychologists have been arguing against for fifty years! Moreover, similar criticisms can be levelled at the game-theoretical approach to experimental economics. Again, a series of objections can be raised about the psychological reality of such games and the mapping of games onto

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social aspects of consumption is particularly bereft of any content. Also, the problems in the use of crude lay psychological categories to depict the styles of players in the games is particularly irksome. I make no comment here about the usefulness of either the behavioural life-cycle model or applications of game theory in terms of their contribution to economics, but as psychology, and therefore as models for economic psychology, they have a variety of problems. I suggest that economists have not understood that there are several problems for social psychologists in the way that they appropriate psychological variables. There is a basic problem in taking variables that explain individual level psychological phenomena and using them to explain social behaviour. It is one thing to study only aggregate data, by making idealised assumptions about rationality, but it is quite another to take psychologically real accounts and build a model of an agent with bounded rationality. The choice is between an angel and Frankenstein's monster! If we are going to look at practice, then let us look at practice. Another critique lies outside the terms of the economic debate within which Thaler (1990) is operating. There are many ways to come at this critique but the one that came to mind during the Tilburg symposium was from Foucault (1970). Economics describes a set of institutional arrangements that shape and delimit the possibilities available to the ultimate users of the system - the consumers. We should not be surprised that the decision processes are articulated by economics in the language of behavioural theory as drives, incentives and self-control mechanisms, and in the language of cognitive-neuropsychology as decision biases. This psychologistic discourse at the heart of neoclassical economics can be analysed as the construction of the subject through institutional processes. Modem rationality is a force organised around coercion - first of nature and the external, then of the subject and the internal. Foucault argues that practices in contemporary life dominate through the careful, detailed construction of knowledge and discourses. In the same way that reason attempted to bring order to the chaos of the natural world, so reason attempts a rational ordering of the social world. This is achieved through such discursive processes of knowledge construction as classification, specialization and regulation. Everyday life is studied and transformed using the categories of rational scientific discourse to subject them to regulatory control. Knowledge becomes a source of power. Let me now link my earlier arguments with the Foucauldian critique of knowledge as power. I suggest that economists' denial of social aspects of psychology can be understood as an attempt to subjugate difference to a specific rationality. The discourse of modernity is couched as neutral, objective, univer-

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sal, the source of emancipation. Foucault reverses this, suggesting that the modern construction of truth through investigation be a prelude to classification and regulation. As such, economic expertise is interested, subjective, specific, and therefore a means of domination. In particular, Foucault emphasises the way that diversity is denied through this process. Under this interpretation, economists' handling of psychological variables is part of the rationalising trend of modern institutions. Arie Kapteyn suggested that economists are the ultimate pragmatists, not concerned with the theoretical context within which ideas are developed if those ideas are useful. That is why economists work with simplified and anachronistic applications of psychological theory. We have to understand that psychology has become a resource for the economist, and the motivation for integration is all on the side of psychology, and this is made particularly problematic by the kind of psychology utilised within economic theory. In my view, economists are not ready, prepared or even vaguely interested in changing their core assumptions as a response to psychological work. Indeed, we should realise that if an economist sounds interested in our work they are only trying us out to see what kind of resource we have to offer. The agenda for their interest will be some debate in economics that we won't have even heard of. This may not be a problem but if it is what can we do about it? I think that resisting this process requires us to gain a better understanding of the economic agenda that psychology might address. One tempting response is to argue that there should be an economic psychology that is free of the economic agenda and is a part of applied psychology, whether social or cognitive. The work of Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) is an example of a strictly psychological agenda where consumption behaviour is treated as just another behaviour subject to the influence of attitudinal and social influence variables. I assume that most economic psychologists believe that such a view is limited and not the appropriate foundation for their study. For there is a vaguely formulated motivation underlying most economic psychology that our work should be of interest to economists. However, the issue of a non-economic social psychology of consumption has to be considered for several reasons. If we want to develop links with other social sciences in the study of the consumer then it is going to be increasingly difficult to hold onto an economic agenda. Further, the elaboration of social psychological approaches to consumption (Lunt and Livingstone, 1992) leads away from the agenda set for economic psychology by Katona (1975). So we are drifting into a new agenda for the relation between economics and psychology. Also, a strong impetus for economic psychology has come from researchers

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who are interested in social psychological issues and see economic beliefs and behaviour as a fertile domain for their work (Dittmar, 1992; Lewis et al., 1995; Lunt and Livingstone, 1992). I hope this approach to economic psychology will not fade in the face of the more formalistic appropriations of psychology by economists. The problem arises that concern with social and cultural aspects of economic behaviour are tending to neglect economic theory and to move away from an economic agenda. The imperialistic tendencies of economists and the detachment (often ignorance) of psychologists from economics could result in the comparative neglect of social economic psychology. So, how can we not be swamped by the formality and plausibility of the economists' appropriation of psychology? I identify the following possibility for a different kind of rapprochement between economics and a more social economic psychology. I will sketch some first ideas about that in the rest of this paper. My starting point is Deaton's (1992) description of a split within macroeconomics concerning the role of micro-economic data in relation to aggregate modelling. He distinguishes between those approaches to economics that seek to develop the expected utility model in the form of the life cycle hypothesis and the permanent income assumption, and those approaches that seek to build macro models bottom-up from micro level data. My argument here is that this distinction provides a foothold for a more social economic psychology that might have a relation to economics. The relation to psychology would be different for these two approaches. Approaches to macro economics that take micro-economic data seriously, attempt to model that data and argue bottom up to the aggregate level. As Deaton (1992) suggests there is, now, no clear typology for macro-economic studies grounded in micro analysis, and I'm in no position to argue with him about that. However, the general approach looks much more like social psychological theory. Here, real life data of a much more diverse nature than that considered by macro economics is considered. The methodology is more familiar too. Neoclassical theories are tested against real world data sets. There are familiar issues at stake, such as intertemporal choice, liquidity constraints, excess sensitivity and so on. Moreover, the permanent income and life-cycle hypotheses are being tested rather than formally modelled. What is also familiar is the range of methodological problems associated with the collection of real-world data. Now this way of thinking about economic theory raises different kinds of theoretical and methodological issues that might present opportunities for economic psychology of a different order to those developed in response to econometric anomalies or the theory of games. I can only speculate here because

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there has been no serious attempt to work these opportunities through yet. One example would be to reconsider the issue of income sensitivity that Thaler (1990) explains in terms of the distinction between planners and doers. Instead of seeing liquidity constraints as the result of individual differences in propensity to regard money as more or less liquid we could examine the institutional, social and cultural constructions of liquidity. Another issue that could be developed concerns the problems in economics around aggregation, in particular the debates about representative agents. Here the arguments are about the appropriate model agent in economic theory in terms of representing variations in household level data. There are many possible ways that social psychology could approach this issue, but one in particular involves the assumption that representative agents have equal access to information. Unequal resources in access to information, the ability to interpret and use information, and the cultural context of information use is an area where a social psychological account of processes of communication and influence could play an important role. Yet another issue would be to examine how experiences and distribution of risk in contemporary society are linked to inequalities in insurance against economic risk. Finally, changing conceptions of identity in relation to the life-course and the construction of self (Giddens, 1992) could be related to changing expectations of lifetime economic profiles. In conclusion, I have argued that there is an illusion caused by the apparent collaboration between economics and psychology. Three problems have concerned me. First, that because economists are referencing psychology we must not make complacent assumptions about the collaboration between the two disciplines. The economists who have taken an interest in psychology have created a problematic relation between the two disciplines that precludes alternate forms of interest from economists (partly because they cannot agree to the psychologising of the rationality assumptions of the expected utility model) and also excludes social economic psychology. Second, that in response to this and because of the general lack of interest in social psychological approaches to the economy, economic psychologists might drift away from an economic agenda. Third, that the relative success of the economic work that has incorporated psychological variables might become the dominant form of economic psychology and that the opportunity for a social economic psychology will be lost. My suggested solution is that if economic psychologists get more into economic theory, they may explore alternate economic perspectives that may allow for a different kind of engagement. I have suggested Deaton's (1992) position as a starting point for that enterprise.

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Acknowledgements Thanks to David Laibson for telling me to read Deaton's (1992) book and to James Banks and Richard Disney for continuing to prompt me. The need for a more serious engagement with economic theory became obvious to me during the Center-VSB Savings workshop in Tilburg, July 1995. Thanks to Arie Kapteyn for inviting me. I found many willing discussants there who stimulated me but particular thanks to Carl Scholz, David Laibson, Jeff Dominitz, Marjorie Flavin, Don Cox, Jack Knetsch, Micheal Hurd, Richard Disney, James Banks and Herman Brandst~itter. Thanks also to James Banks, Richard Disney, Sonia Livingstone, Alan Lewis and Paul Webley for commenting on previous versions of these ideas.

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