ABSTRACT
Our elaborate market exchange system owes its existence not to our calculating brain or insatiable self-centeredness, but rather to our sophisticated and nuanced human sociality and to the inherent rationality built into our emotions. The modern economic system is helped a lot more than hindered by our innate social instincts that support our remarkable capacity for building formal and informal institutions.
The book integrates the growing body of experimental evidence on human nature scattered across a variety of disciplines from experimental economics to social neuroscience into a coherent and original narrative about the extent to which market (or impersonal exchange) relations are reflective of the basic human sociality that was originally adapted to a more tribal existence.
An accessible resource, this book will appeal to students of all areas of economics, including Behavioral Economics and Neuro-Economics, Microeconomics, and Political Economy.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |8 pages
Introduction
part I|1 pages
Social brain
chapter 1|12 pages
The myth of the dissociative identities
chapter 2|2 pages
Why wouldn’t chimpanzees wear sunglasses while playing poker?
part II|1 pages
Economizing brain
chapter 3|10 pages
Cognitively lazy
chapter 4|11 pages
Emotionally smart
part III|1 pages
Interactive minds
chapter 5|10 pages
Reciprocal brain
chapter 6|5 pages
Mind reading
part IV|1 pages
Key innate competencies
chapter 7|5 pages
Emotional path to willpower
chapter 8|5 pages
Sapiens see, sapiens do (monkey? not so much)
part V|1 pages
Pursuit of identities, tribes, and emotional connections