PB101 Formative Blog Post 1

Word Count: 1100

 Cognitive Cobblers: The Problems with Economic
Models of Humans and how Psychology Can Help

Have you ever made a mistake? If you answered yes, then like me you’re no doubt aware at how
common mistakes, and their consequences, can be. If you said no, well, I want what you’re having
before my next exam.

My exam aside though, some serious congratulations are in order. You may be the only person ever
who behaves in the way economists model people. In their eyes, people are totally predictable and
never put a foot wrong. This is obviously way off the mark, but if economists are so poor at
modelling one person, then how could they possibly model an election, which can consist of millions
of people? Well, unsurprisingly, there’re countless economic models which try and do just this. How
and why countries vote certain ways during elections is the focus of hundreds of academic papers,
and often the conclusions of these papers simply don’t reflect reality. I’m here to show you how
psychology, specifically the concept of social learning, can provide some much-needed insight into
the realm of electoral politics.

What the economists say?

So, what do these economists say? Perhaps the most famous example of economic thinking in
electoral politics is provided by Duncan Black (1948). He stated that if we assume that politics
operates along a single spectrum (for example, left and right), then a party could always win by
pandering to the preferences of the median (or average) voter (Christensen, 2020). However, history
has shown us the problem with this idea. Was Adolf Hitler an accurate representation of the average
1930s German? Indeed, I’d encourage you to consider your political leader (assuming you live in a
democratic country!). Do they really represent the views of the most average, middle of the road,
boring person you can think of? Almost certainly not. How, then, are we to remedy this situation?

What is Social Learning?

Now we have identified the problem, we need to understand what will form the basis or our
remedy. What is social learning? While social learning isn’t just present in humans, Albert Bandura
(1977) claimed that social learning theory ‘… considers how both environmental and cognitive
factors interact to influence human learning and behaviour’. In other words, our behaviour is
learned from observing our environment and how successful others are in responding to whatever
challenges may be thrown their way (Olsson et al., 2020). This process is shown in Figure 1.
 Figure 1: A typical model of how social learning occurs in humans.
Source: http://www.gerardfriel.com/instructional-design/social-learning-theory/

What Drives Social Learning?

Despite our whistle-stop tour of what social learning is, we’ll need a more technical understanding of
it if were to deploy it effectively enough to upend decades of economic thinking. So, what’re the
drivers of social learning?

Dual Inheritance Theory (Feldman et al., 1981) is the belief that the evolution of Homo Sapiens relied
on the interaction of both genetic and cultural evolutionary forces. Using an evolutionary lens, this
leads on to the idea that humans evolved to select cognitive adaptions which aided the learning and
transferral of cultural information (Gervais et al., 2020). What is critical here though is an
assumption that humans are a social animal. Afterall, why else would evolutionary forces place such
an importance on development of a cognitive architecture which could transmit culture? A visual
representation of the interaction between cultural and genetic factors is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: A visual representation of how human genes and

human culture play a role in an offspring’s life.
Source: https://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7782
Now we know we are social animals; the final question is how we decide what to learn from our
peers. Rendell et al. (2011) show how different biases form the basis for the selection of what to
learn. What do these biases look like? Well, if you wanted to learn how to cook, would you copy how
your mum or dad cooked? Your decision would likely depend on who’s historically made the tastiest
food for you. Within this decision is an implicit metric with which you make your decision, in this
case the skill at cooking of your parents. It’s what this metric is that answers who we choose to learn
from (Newson et al.,2018). This fact will be key to updating the story told be economists.

Are there problems with social learning?

Now we know what social learning is and how it works, are there any problems with it. Bossan et al.
(2015) answer this by comparing the outcomes of individual and social learning strategies. Their
overarching conclusion conforms to what we already know. This is that social learning often leads to
more successful long-term solutions, so is selected for under evolutionary processes. They do,
however, also find some drawbacks of social learning. Because social learning relies upon observing
not only the phenomena but also other’s response to it, it often leads to delayed responses. Crucially
though, many of the biases which form the basis for choosing who to learn from (such as success,
prestige, and social conformity biases) lead to the adoption of behaviour which becomes
increasingly ‘detached from the environment’ and ‘exaggerated’.

How can we use this to rethink economist’s models of elections?

To get a hint on how this newfound understanding can help us rethink elections, we’ll revisit the
case of Adolf Hitler. We’ve established that the traditional economic account cannot explain this
phenomenon, but what about if we introduce our newfound understanding of social learning and
biases?

Figure 3: Traditional economic models wouldn’t have predicted

Hitlers rise to power in 1933.
Source:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Daspolitischepla00scho_0210_Erwin_Sch
ockel_Das_politische_Plakat_Hitler_poster_Reichspr%C3%A4sidentenwahl_M%C3%
A4rz_April_1932_Heinz_Franke_Druck_M%C3%BCnchen_Anonymous_No_known_c
opyright_restrictions.jpg
Satyanath et al. (2015) show that in Germany during the 1930’s, the Nazi Party became more
popular faster in areas of Germany where social networks are denser. What’s the relevance? Well,
the economists would have no answer. But, what if the decision of who the individual voted for was
based off social cues and social learning. Fatas et al. (2018) find that in areas of denser social
networks, the Nazi Party picked up support faster. Uchiyama et al. (2021) suggest that social
network density (how many people everyone knows) can play a significant role in the prevalence of
social conformity bias, or the rate at which you seek to copy the majority of your peers. The
relevance of social learning in the decision to vote could therefore explain the ‘exaggerated’ and
‘disconnected’ (to use Bossan’s words) result of the 1933 German election.

I’ll leave it up to you as to whether this argument convinces you. Despite Muthukrishna et al.,
(2019)’s support for the academic rigor of dual inheritance theory, any given psychological or
economic paper could be subject to the replication issues these authors identify. Scepticism is
always advised when reading academic work, including this blog. Regardless though, hopefully this
blog demonstrated the potential power psychological insights can have in helping refine theories
from other academic disciplines.

Further Readings:

A fun piece on shark attacks influencing voters’ behaviour: https://www-journals-uchicago-

edu.gate3.library.lse.ac.uk/doi/full/10.1086/699244

A paper showing party convergence isn’t synonymous with rationality: https://www-jstor-

org.gate3.library.lse.ac.uk/stable/2111212?origin=crossref&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

More modern critiques of Dual-Inheritance Theory:

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.26613/esic.1.1.27/html