Rational Self-interest Research Articles

The Beneficiary Statement and Beyond

Abstract The beneficiary statement refers to a passage in the Introduction of The Virtue of Selfishness. It concerns who the beneficiary of an action should be and any breach between actor and beneficiary. This article critiques said passage and shows how rational self-interest extends beyond the actor's self-interest more narrowly conceived. It critiques the Trader Principle and shows further how trade extends rational self-interest beyond the actor's self-interest more narrowly conceived. It shows how the virtue of independence does not imply that all dependence is a vice. Dependence in collaborative action even extends to the virtue of productiveness.

Identity and Professional Networking.

Despite evidence that large professional networks afford a host of financial and professional benefits, people vary in how motivated they are to build such networks. To help explain this variance, the present article moves beyond a rational self-interest account to examine the possibility that identity shapes individuals' intentions to network. Study 1 established a positive association between viewing professional networking as identity-congruent and the tendency to prioritize strengthening and expanding one's professional network. Study 2 revealed that manipulating the salience of the self affects networking intentions, but only among those high in networking identity-congruence. Study 3 further established causality by experimentally manipulating identity-congruence to increase networking intentions. Study 4 examined whether identity or self-interest is a better predictor of networking intentions, providing support for the former. These findings indicate that identity influences the networks people develop. Implications for research on the self, identity-based motivation, and professional networking are discussed.

Collective action in organizational structures

Public goods games played by a group of individuals collectively performing actions towards a common interest characterize social dilemmas where both competition and cooperation are present. By using agent-based simulation, this paper investigates how collective action in the form of repeated n-person linear public goods games is affected when the interaction of individuals is driven by the underlying hierarchical structure of an organization. The proposed agent-based simulation model is based on generally known empirical findings about public goods games and takes into account that individuals may change their profiles from conditional cooperators to rational egoists or vice versa. To do so, a fuzzy logic system was designed to allow the cumulative modification of agents’ profiles in the presence of vague variables such as individuals’ attitude towards group pressure and/or their perception about the cooperation of others. From the simulation results, it can be concluded that collective action is affected by the structural characteristics of hierarchical organizations. The major findings are as follows: (1) Cooperation in organizational structures is fostered when there is a collegial model defining the structure of the punishment mechanisms employed by organizations. (2) Having multiple, and small organizational units fosters group pressure and highlights the positive perception about the cooperation of others, resulting in organizations achieving relatively high aggregate contribution levels. (3) The greater the number of levels, the higher the aggregate contribution level of an organization when effective sanctioning systems are introduced.

Reflections on a Funhouse Mirror—Racist Violence, the Protection of Privilege, and the Limits of Tolerance

Jeannine Bell's Hate Thy Neighbor: Move In Violence and the Persistence of Racial Segregation in American Housing provides an account of racist violence as a tool for maintaining housing segregation that challenges perceptions of rising tolerance and demonstrates the importance of understanding racism as a structural feature of social organization. Bell shows how some perpetrators of move in violence deploy claims about “property values” as a defense against charges of racism. The use of such claims starkly illustrates how colorblind racism allows assertions of racial privilege to resonate as neutral articulations of rational self-interest. The desire to defend racial privileges persists as a significant practical barrier to racial equality even when tolerance increases.

Honoring a pioneer: Gordon Tullock (1922–2014)

Gordon Tullock made seminal contributions to three disciplines, economics, political science, and biology. He was also a founder of bioeconomics. Although economic theory has moved beyond the rational self-interest assumption that underlies his work, Tullock’s contributions were important theoretical stepping stones.

Going to the ground (or AstroTurf): a grassroots view of regime resilience

ABSTRACTWhile disproportional resources and curbs on civil and political rights clearly matter to electoral authoritarian persistence, long-term acculturation to political norms and modes of governance on the ground in such regimes – of which Singapore and Malaysia are the most durable examples – complicate transformation. A combination of what amounts to classic machine politics with the structural “assist” of sub-par elections renders electoral authoritarianism extraordinarily increasingly resilient over time, not just because it is hard or unlikely for voters to vote in new leaders, but also because the aspiring or elected opposition may end up reproducing rather than subverting key attributes of that regime. Clientelist political praxis may be highly responsive, offer direct accountability, and align with voters’ rational self-interest, at least in the short term. However, its persistence impedes pursuit of new ideological or programmatic objectives, perpetuates piecemeal and inefficient allocation of resources, assumes that most voters should expect little from state policies, and discourages attention to proactive legislation, in favour of a more localized, reactive politics. A machine-oriented political regime, then, is not only exceptionally hard to shake, but suboptimal in the long term.

Motivational and Ideological Underpinnings of Welfare Preferences in Eastern and Western Europe.

In our study we investigated the motivational and ideological correlates of the approval of welfare services in postsocialist Central Eastern and Western Europe. In the centre of our inquiry stood how the motivations of selflessness and conventionality, along with distributional justice principles, are related to our welfare preferences beyond our rational self-interest, furthermore, how these associations depend on social-cultural circumstances. We have found that the motivational background of egalitarian economic and welfare attitudes are substantially different in the two regions. While beside of the rationalisation of self-interest, it seems to be related to selflessness-driven solidarity in Western Europe, pro-welfare and egalitarian distributional views are primarily motivated by conventionality-driven norm adherence in postsocialist countries in the form of the mechanism of postsocialist economic system nostalgia. Our results highlight the benefits of a context-specific ’motivated social cognition’ approach to ideological and political attitudes.

The Rational Auditor and Moral Norms: The Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants Lip Service or Self-Binding Agreement?

Since the public has vehemently debated financial scandals like Enron or WorldCom numerous articles asked for ethical responsibility from auditors. The financial scandals were also seen as ethical scandals. A Code of Ethics with moral content could be a potential remedy but the crucial question is: Why should a rational and egoistic auditor obey moral norms contained in a Code of Ethics? The paper discusses if moral norms and the Code of Ethics can be justified under the assumption that a Rational Egoist, i.e. a purely selfishoriented individual, has to be convinced. Furthermore, evidence is presented which shows that human behaviour is driven by a mixture of selfish and altruistic motives. For example altruistic sanctions can effectively discipline free-riders in public good experiments. The moral reputation of the auditing profession can be interpreted as an impure public good which has to be protected against free-riders within the profession. Exactly because the empirical evidence shows that the human nature is neither truly altruistic nor truly egoistic there is a need for moral norms in general or a “Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants” in particular, otherwise they would be superfluous. In this sense the Code of Ethics is neither a pure lip-service nor a strict self-binding agreement: The truth lies between these two exterme positions.

Results of the study on customers’ awareness of social responsibility in trade

The problematics of corporate social responsibility is relevant both for the society at large, and for individual business subjects. Despite the significant number of works in this field, at present we can observe a lack of studies of corporate social responsibility in trade with the account of specifics of the industry. Based on the theory of “rational egoism”, in accordance with which the work in the field of corporate social responsibility may be advantageous for the company, the authors conducted a study (a poll), aimed at solving the following tasks: to assess customers’ awareness of the corporate social responsibility in trade; to determine the most effective ways of increasing customers’ awareness of the corporate social responsibility in trade. The practical significance of the results of the study constitutes the possibility of application thereof by the trade organizations with the purpose of the most effective realization of the conception of corporate social responsibility.

The role of moral economy in two British Columbia fisheries: Confronting neoliberal policies

What have been the moral values and practices allowing equitable economic opportunities and a sense of fairness in North American small-scale fisheries? How have these “moral economies” been affected by neoliberal policies with their emphasis on efficiency, rational self-interest, and wealth accumulation? Focusing especially on the salmon and halibut fisheries in British Columbia, Canada, this discussion summarizes key findings on the manner in which small-scale fisheries and their moral practices tend to be marginalized and undervalued under neoliberal regimes. The paper considers the value of these moral economies for promoting social, economic, and ecological welfare as grounds for the expansion of small-scale fisheries.

Asking for Facebook Logins: An Egoist Case for Privacy

With the advent of social networking websites, privacy concerns have reached a new high. One particularly problematic concern entails employers requesting login credentials to popular social media platforms. While many people may consider this request unethical, they may not agree on the reasons it is unethical. One reason may be to blame the behavior on egoism. Egoism, however, comes in multiple flavors, not all of which would agree that violating privacy is acceptable. In this paper, we articulate how one egoist perspective provides a defense of privacy in the face of unjust information access requests. Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, offers an egoist approach to ethics that values individual privacy on rational, self-interested grounds. By applying Objectivist principles to a business context, we observe that businesspeople should not violate other people’s privacy for short-term gains. Furthermore, we observe that privacy can be protected without distinct right to privacy. Rather, Objectivism’s conception of rational self-interest suggests that long-term flourishing is the proper end of individuals and businesses, predicated on, among other things, respecting privacy and enforcing individual rights.

Paraconsistent games and the limits of rational self-interest

It is shown that logical contradictions are derivable from natural translations into first order logic of the description and background assumptions of the Soros Game, and of other games and social contexts that exhibit conflict and reflexivity. The logical structure of these contexts is analysed using proof-theoretic and model-theoretic techniques of first order paraconsistent logic. It is shown that all the contradictions that arise contain the knowledge operator K. Thus, the contradictions do not refer purely to material objects, and do not imply the existence of inconsistent, concrete, physical objects, or the inconsistency of direct sensory experience. However, the decision-making of rational self-interested agents is stymied by the appearance of such intensional contradictions. Replacing the rational self-interest axioms with axioms for an appropriate moral framework removes the inconsistencies. Rational moral choice in conflict-reflexive social contexts then becomes possible.

For Cause and Comrade: Devoted Actors and Willingness to Fight

This report provides initial evidence that “devoted actors” who are unconditionally committed to a sacred cause, as well as to their comrades, willingly make costly sacrifices, including fighting and dying. Although American military analysts since WWII tend to attribute fighting spirit to leadership and the bond of comradeship in combat as a manifestation of rational self-interest, evidence also suggests that sacrifice for a cause in ways independent, or all out of proportion, from the reasonable likelihood of success may be critical. Here, we show the first empirical evidence that sacred values (as when land or law becomes holy or hallowed) and identity fusion (when personal and group identities collapse into a unique identity to generate a collective sense of invincibility and special destiny) can interact to produce willingness to make costly sacrifices for a primary reference group: by looking at the relative strength of the sacred values of Sharia versus Democracy among potential foreign fighter volunteers from Morocco. Devotion to a sacred cause, in conjunction with unconditional commitment to comrades, may be what allows low-power groups to endure and often prevail against materially stronger foes.

The Electoral Salience of Trade Policy: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Welfare and Complexity

Why do some trade policies become electorally salient while others do not? While much of the literature argues that citizens act as a domestic constraint in the formation of trade policy, a general consensus has emerged that trade is most often a nonsalient issue among voters. This poses a paradox. On the one hand, trade models hinge upon voters’ rational self-interest and preferences for varying levels of protectionism to keep their governments accountable. On the other hand, the conditions by which trade becomes salient to these very voters in the first place are both undertheorized and untested. Using experimental evidence, I argue that two dimensions of a trade policy affect the likelihood of that issue becoming electorally salient. First, policies with large welfare effects should be more salient. Second, more complex issues should be less salient because such agreements are more likely to obfuscate an individual’s ability to discern its effects. I find support for my hypotheses that a trade policy’s salience tends to increase with the magnitude of its welfare effects and decrease with its complexity.

Creating a Business Culture Based on Ethics

WHAT IS BUSINESS ETHICS: Business ethics as we define the term is “the ethics underpinning business”, so in order to appreciate the ethics we need to understand the different schools of philosophy on which the fundamentals of ethics are based. The fundamentals of business ethics are about the mapping of the value set into the management decisions of the business. Business ethics begins with the premise that subjective concepts like ethics and morality are consistent with the economist’s notion of rational self-interest. The problem is applying this premise to the business and to corporate management and employee behaviour. Businesses usually codify the value set into a code of ethics. Business ethics has two aspects: one involves the specific situations in which ethical controversy arises; the other concerns the key principles of behaviour that can be applied both within the firm and across the family of stakeholders. Business ethics is not necessarily a new phenomenon. In 18th and 19th century, for example, business transactions were largely conducted on the principle of caveat emptor, a principle carried through to the 21st century. The onus is on the purchasers of goods and services to assure themselves that the products they tended purchasing were of the quality for which they would hope, and the vendor’s duty was simply to fulfil a few legal obligations.

‘Utilitarian’ judgments in sacrificial moral dilemmas do not reflect impartial concern for the greater good

A growing body of research has focused on so-called ‘utilitarian’ judgments in moral dilemmas in which participants have to choose whether to sacrifice one person in order to save the lives of a greater number. However, the relation between such ‘utilitarian’ judgments and genuine utilitarian impartial concern for the greater good remains unclear. Across four studies, we investigated the relationship between ‘utilitarian’ judgment in such sacrificial dilemmas and a range of traits, attitudes, judgments and behaviors that either reflect or reject an impartial concern for the greater good of all. In Study 1, we found that rates of ‘utilitarian’ judgment were associated with a broadly immoral outlook concerning clear ethical transgressions in a business context, as well as with sub-clinical psychopathy. In Study 2, we found that ‘utilitarian’ judgment was associated with greater endorsement of rational egoism, less donation of money to a charity, and less identification with the whole of humanity, a core feature of classical utilitarianism. In Studies 3 and 4, we found no association between ‘utilitarian’ judgments in sacrificial dilemmas and characteristic utilitarian judgments relating to assistance to distant people in need, self-sacrifice and impartiality, even when the utilitarian justification for these judgments was made explicit and unequivocal. This lack of association remained even when we controlled for the antisocial element in ‘utilitarian’ judgment. Taken together, these results suggest that there is very little relation between sacrificial judgments in the hypothetical dilemmas that dominate current research, and a genuine utilitarian approach to ethics.

Blind Intuitions: Modernism's Critique of Idealism

Adorno contends that something of what we think of knowing and rational agency operate in ways that obscure and deform unique, singular presentations by relegating them to survival-driven interests and needs; hence, in accordance with the presumptions of transcendental idealism, we have come to mistake what are, in effect, historically contingent, species-subjective ways of viewing the world for an objective understanding of the world. And further, this interested understanding of the world is deforming in a more radical way than just obscuring what is there for the sake of interested needs and purposes; these instrumental ways of knowing and acting, are broadly self-interested, in the interest of survival, without effective concern for the well-being and worth of others; by becoming generalized and exclusive, hegemonic, by driving out modes of encountering things and persons that support their differences and independence, their needs and interests, these instrumental practices are the deepest cause of the ills of our time. As heightened forms of rational self-interest, self-interest being the drive of reason, transcendental interests suppress the interests of others. Adorno argues that modernist artistic practices perform a critique of the set of assumptions governing idealism by demonstrating how there is a suppressed rational form of human comportment directed towards the making and comprehension of unique sensuous particulars. Art, according to Adorno's ‘Aesthetic Theory’, is a broken off and isolated fragment of human knowing; in its hibernates the rational forms of acting and knowing that have been suppressed in the coming to be of Enlightened modernity.

Reasonable Pluralism, Interculturalism, and Sterba on Question-Beggingness

In From Rationality to Equality, James Sterba (From rationality to equality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) argues that the non-moral, and non-controversial, principle of logic, the principle that good arguments do not beg-the-question, provides a rationally conclusive response to egoism. He calls this “the principle of non-question-beggingness” and it is supposed to justify a conception of “Morality as Compromise.” Sterba’s basic idea is that principles of morality provide a non-question-begging compromise between self-interested reasons and other-regarding reasons. I will focus, first, on Sterba’s rejection of the alternative Kantian rationalist justification of morality, and second, I discuss the logical principle of non-question-beggingness and I argue that Sterba is wrong to assume that there is a formal, logical requirement that a rational egoist must provide a non-question-begging defense of egoism. I argue that, like the Kantian, Sterba needs a more substantial conception of practical reason to derive his conclusion. My third focus is the problem of reasonable pluralism and public reason (Rawls in Political liberalism. Columbia University Press, New York, 1996; The law of peoples with the idea of public reason revisited. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1999). The Rawlsian principle of public reason is analogous to Sterba’s principle of non-question-beggingness. Sterba recognizes that public policies should respect competing perspectives and that a public conception of justice must be justifiable to all reasonable people. The problem is that that reasonable people disagree about fundamental moral questions. Rawls calls this the fact of reasonable pluralism. I argue that an intercultural conception of justice is necessary to provide a response to reasonable pluralism and a shared basis for public reason.

Relative deprivation, self-interest and social justice: why I do research on in-equality

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to offer an insight into why men do research on in-equality.Design/methodology/approach– The author utilizes autoethnography, as a form of self-reflection, to help make sense of the own experiences and to connect it with the broader world. It is a narrative based on personal experiences which connects the author's biography with his research endeavours. It also enables to engage in self-analysis and self-awareness of the motives for conducting research on in-equality.Findings– In this narrative, the author shares his journey as an equality scholar, and how his multiple identities as a visible minority, an immigrant to Canada, and a gay person shapes my worldview, attitudes, and beliefs, which in turn influences his own work on equality and diversity. The narrative is based on the intersection of multiple identities, and not just solely based on the author's gender. The attribute feeling deprived on behalf of others, rational self-interest, and social justice as the chief reasons for engaging in in-equality research.Research limitations/implications– Autoethnography is inherently subjective, based upon the author's own biases and interpretation of events, but the subjectivity can also be an opportunity for intentional self-awareness and reflexivity. Given the multiple identities that the author holds, some of the experiences recounted here may be unique to the author, and some may be shared with others. Thus, it is not the author's intention to represent, in general, why men do in-equality research.Originality/value– This autoethnography has allowed the author the opportunity to be self-aware of the complexity of the multiple identities. This self-awareness also allows the author to be more respectful, authentic, and inclusive of others. The author hopes that these reflections will resonate with some of you, and perhaps inspire one to engage in similar work, for reasons that are unique to one and all.

Global Warming: A Tragedy of the Commons

This paper scrutinises two of the leading models for dealing with so-called ‘tragedy of the commons’ issues as to their suitability to tackle the problem of global warming; the polycentric model favoured by Ostrom, and the Leviathan approach as advocated by Ophuls. The paper then sets out a hybrid approach which it argues is the only viable solution to the current crisis of global warming. It proposes that, while agreement setting out goals for reductions in GHG emissions must be reached on the international arena, such an agreement should confer on each individual nation the choice of the manner of implementation, and that each nation, and also each region or locality, should devise their own strategy for achieving their required reduction. Such decentralised implementation would not only reduce the costs of both formulation and enforcement of solutions, but also permit more broad-based input by the local community, thereby resulting in an enhanced solution. Furthermore, local solutions would enable the development of a more responsive framework of rules and also facilitate regulatory competition. While legal rules will necessarily constitute a large proportion of the governmental response, this paper also addresses the role that non-legal rules such as social norms may play. Such norms can be altered through the use of taxation, which can effect “carefully biased options,” as well as education as to the consequences of certain everyday actions. As Charny noted, systems of non-legal sanctions for the violation of the rules of conduct specified by the norm system help to explain, “in terms of ‘rationality’” why individuals often act in ways that ostensibly depart from rational self-interest. Such departure from rational self-interest is exactly what is required to counteract the rational actions which result in ‘the tragedy of the commons.’ That efficient norms may evolve among members of a close-knit community is yet another argument in favour of decentralisation of the implementation of centrally agreed goals.