When I read books on economics, I often find myself wondering: why are so many concepts and conclusions in economics—and the ways of thinking derived from economic principles—so profoundly “counterintuitive”?
Our intuition seems capable of judging whether only a few very simple economic behaviors are appropriate: for instance, whether a face-to-face transaction is fair, or whether it is worth it for you to pay me 50 yuan in exchange for a day of my labor.
But as soon as we encounter economic behavior that is even slightly more complex, people almost invariably get it wrong when they rely on intuition to judge whether it is legitimate.
Without getting into anything complicated, take the two essentials for keeping a somewhat large economic system running—“profit” and “interest.” It was only in the modern era that human society stopped broadly resisting them.
For most of human history, profit and interest were widely regarded as improper, even evil. In almost all classical works of literature and art, merchants and moneylenders are villains or comic figures (for example, The Merchant of Venice).
Actually, even today, most people still instinctively hate profit and interest. The former shows up in the naturally righteous-sounding hostility toward capitalists and companies earning high profits; the latter shows up in the fact that, in many people’s minds, the financial industry—making money make money—is practically synonymous with swindlers.
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Market morality:
There should be a kind of morality called “market morality.” For example, earning a profit through a transaction both sides enter willingly should count as market-moral behavior; by contrast, earning a profit through coercive buying and selling should be considered immoral.
Clearly, “market morality” has not yet been universally written into the human genome. When we use intuition to judge market morality, we keep making mistakes (“All capitalists are profiteers,” “Everyone in finance is a bloodsucker”). Our judgments become a little more accurate when we rely on reasoning and knowledge.
This is clearly because humans have been engaging on a large scale in market transactions and complex market behavior for too short a time. Whether people could quickly understand the legitimacy of market behavior has not yet had enough time to become a selection pressure capable of screening the human gene pool on a broad scale.
In a word, humans have not yet evolved a “market morality gene.”
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If the market morality gene has not had time to evolve, are there any moral judgments that have already been internalized as instincts?
Yes.
According to anthropologist Alan Fiske’s theory of the four models of moral interaction, at least three kinds of moral judgment have already become embedded in people’s intuitive responses.
They are—
Community-sharing morality:
People instinctively protect the interests of their loved ones, families, communities, and country. “Community sharing” evolved from maternal care, kin selection, and the like, and at least part of it has been implanted in the brain through the oxytocin system. Oxytocin was originally a hormone that enhanced maternal care; it later generalized into a hormone that strengthens all kinds of close relationships.
Authority-ranking morality:
People instinctively accept “hierarchy.” Superiors naturally feel entitled to take whatever they want from subordinates, accept tribute, and demand obedience and loyalty. At the same time, subordinates naturally expect superiors to take on the duty of protecting them in a parental, pastoral, or aristocratic manner. This pattern could be said to have evolved from the hierarchical order of primates (although Jordan Peterson would say it originated with lobsters ^_^). It has very likely been embedded in the human brain to some extent through testosterone-response circuits: individuals higher in the hierarchy secrete significantly more testosterone than those lower down.
Equality-based reciprocity morality:
People instinctively demand equality in transactions, expecting contributions and rewards to be equivalent. When treated unfairly, they can be inflamed by an instinctive fury for revenge. The intuitive response to simple transactions mentioned above belongs to this category. Steven Pinker describes equality-based reciprocity morality this way: “The neural basis of equal reciprocity is our brain’s ability to record people’s intentions, deception, conflict, shifts in perspective, and calculations. The brain regions involved include the insula, orbitofrontal cortex, cingulate cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex, and temporoparietal junction. Equal reciprocity is the basis of the human sense of fairness and intuitive economic awareness. Beyond friends and comrades, it connects people as neighbors, colleagues, acquaintances, and trading partners.”
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Community-sharing morality, authority-ranking morality, and equality-based reciprocity morality, together with the market morality discussed earlier (called “market-pricing morality” in Alan Fiske’s book): of these four moralities, the first three have been internalized in the human genome to some degree. Only the last one, market morality, still cannot be accepted intuitively by people—not for quite some time yet, anyway.
No wonder things like market economies and free trade are so difficult to get off the ground. After all, they’re “against human nature.”
References:
- Fiske, A. P. (1991). Structures of social life: The four elementary forms of human relations: Communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, market pricing. Free Press.
- Steven Pinker. (2015). The Better Angels of Our Nature. CITIC Press.
Note
- This series, “Short Lessons on New Findings in Psychology,” consisted of popular-science and casual short essays written at the time to accompany related content in Zhichao Wei: A Course on New Findings in Psychology. They were published on the now-closed platform Fatuan, and the original link no longer exists.
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