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Rational Choice Theory: Models
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The above considerations suggest that most of current social exchange theory represents a version of the rational choice approach (as protested by Blau, 1994) and/or behaviorism (as lamented by Coleman, 1988). This is indicated by the prevalence of economic and behavioral models, often mixed together (as in Homans, Emerson and their followers), of social exchange and human interaction. As admitted by some its exponents, modern exchange theory blends its “roots in behaviorism” with “concepts and principles borrowed from microeconomics” (Cook, 2000: 687), including wealth, utility, profit, cost, market, etc. If so, then the theory is parasitic on the place of economic determinism, utilitarianism, behaviorism and hedonism in modern social science, standing or (more likely) falling with them. The preceding has ... outlined an alternative multilevel conception of social exchange along the lines of sociological social psychology in the sense of an analysis of co-determination between macro-processes, especially institutions, and individual behaviors, including exchanges. As regards market exchange, such a conception proposes that sociological influences admittedly “deeply affect the psychology underlying economic behavior [so] any serious reevaluation of the psychological underpinning of economics requires that careful attention be paid to sociological analyses.
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Bueno de Mesquita had arrived, and so, too, had rational-choice theory. Rational choicers began sprouting up in political-science departments around the country and, say their critics, strangling anyone and anything in their way. By 2000, according to one estimate, some 40 percent of all articles published in the prestigious American Political Science Review were rational-choice themed. Increasingly, graduate students in political science viewed a fluency in formal mathematic modeling as a prerequisite for career advancement. And the leaps in technology taking place only fueled rational choice’s advance: faster, more powerful computers allowed rational choicers to build bigger, ever more complex models that could be applied to ever more complex situations. And, naturally enough, an intellectual counteroffensive was launched.
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Rational choice theorists have become increasingly mathematical in orientation, converging more closely with trends in micro-economics. Indeed, some economists have attempted to colonise areas occupied by other social scientists. This trend towards formal, mathematical models of rational action was apparent in such diverse areas as theories of voting and coalition formation in political science (Downs 1957; Buchanan and Tullock 1962; Riker 1962) and explanations of ethnic minority relations (Hechter 1987) and, in a less rigorously mathematical form, social mobility and class reproduction (Goldthorpe 1996, Breen and Rottman 1995). Economists such as Becker (1976, 1981) set out theories of crime and marriage. A particularly striking trend of recent years has been the work of those Marxists who have seen rational choice theory as the basis of a Marxist theory of class and exploitation (Elster 1983, 1986; Roemer 1988. See ... Wright 1985; 1989).
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In addition, some neo-Marxians are rational choice theorists. While there are many different aspect to Marx’s model of capitalism, in some ways it is a rational choice model, beginning with some simple assumptions about the commodity and how humans exe rcise choice, and building an explanation for exploitation and class struggle from this. Some recent Marxist theorists (most notably Jon Elster and John Roemer – p. 265) have developed new models of exploitation based on models of rational choice. These h ave been useful in showing how exploitation can emerge in ways other than the exploitation of labour directly in the labour process – for example, exploitation might occur in the exchange process. Roemer argues that "exploitation has much more to do with property relations than with the labor market – and that Marxists’ focus on the labor market has been excessive and has given rise to their own fetishism of labor" (Roemer, 1988, p. 10). Roemer shows how exploitation can exist in socialist societies and h ow ownership of skills and credentials can be associated with exploitation, just as well as ownership of capital.
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Following the economic model, then, rational choice theorists see social interaction as a process of social exchange. Economic action involves an exchange of goods and services; social interaction involves the exchange of approval and certain other valued behaviours. In order to emphasise the parallels with economic action, rewards and punishments in social exchange have generally been termed rewards and costs, with action being motivated by the pursuit of a 'profitable' balance of rewards over costs. The various things that a person might do - his or her opportunities - vary in their costs, but they ... vary in their rewards. In many cases, there will be a combination of monetary and non-monetary rewards and costs.
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[E]mpirical evidence is less supportive of the rational choice than of the multivariate model of collective political action, including participation in social movements. As shown for the Civil Rights Movement, participation in social movements is prompted not only by rational planning and cost-benefit calculations, but ... by spontaneity, emotions, ideals, personal ties and networks, emergence and a myriad of other non-rational elements (Killian, 1984). Other studies (Klandermans, 1984) present evidence that expectations of others’ participation in social movements or their anticipated actions15 rather than individual cost-benefit calculations act as self-fulfilling prophecies through collective definitions of situations. Reportedly, contrary to the free-rider hypothesis of rational choice, individual calculations become irrelevant, since though these expectations need not be realistic, they can be real in their aggregate unintended, even perverse effects (Boudon, 1982), thus confirming the Thomas theorem of irrational, including paranoid, social behavior (Merton, 1995).
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