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Rational Choice Theory: People
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Rational choice theory is based on unitary actors; it carries the underlying assumption that singular entities are the primary unit in politics and that these actors will always make decisions based on their own material interests. A "unitary actor" can be any singular entity such as a country, business, party or person. People will behave, vote and protest based on their own expected utility from the action. ("Utility", by the way, means the usefulness or gain from an action "from the perspective of that individual.") So, under rational choice theory, it makes sense that a rich man would vote for the party with the more fiscally conservative agenda; the individual's utility is maximized by a politician that will save the man money. Now, it should be noted that many rational choice theorists stress that it is most applicable when "the stakes are relatively high and the number of players relatively low."*
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There are further conditions which makes rational choice models useful when applied to the theory of collective choice. For example, it is a fact that many relationships are repeated, there is often some uncertainty and people have limited mathematical abilities. These conditions enable rational choice to generate cooperation because in a world of uncertainty one might believe that the other individual will deviate from their selfish rational strategy to free ride (... uncertainty about when he repetitions will stop makes the game approximately similar to infinite games in which cooperation is generated). Because of repetition cooperation becomes more profitable and hence more attractive according to rational choice. Finally limited mathematical abilities improve the possibilities for rational choice cooperation because it stops the backward induction defection argument (The backward induction argument is that in a finitely repeated prisoner's dilemma case it is rational for selfish individuals to defect in the first round. This is based on the argument that it is rational to defect in the second last round, so then it becomes rational for the other player to defect one round before the second last round.
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[One] perspective gaining popularity in recent years is known as Rational Choice Theory. Sociologists in this tradition have drawn heavily on the work of economists and political scientists in their analyses of the ways that economic incentives and other material considerations affect the choices people make. Some of the earliest sociological work of this type was known as Exchange Theory, exemplified in the works of George Homans and Peter Blau. More recently, James S. Coleman, with his monumental book, Foundations of Social Theory (1990), emerged as the leading sociologist in the field. Despite the name "rational choice," much of the sociological work in this tradition has focused on probing the limits of rationality and on devising mathematical models of the conditions needed for maintaining trust and solidarity within a social group.
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Which illustrates the next incontrovertible fact about game theory: In the foreboding world view of rational choice, everyone is a raging dirtbag. Bueno de Mesquita points to dictatorships to prove his point: “If you liberate people from the constraint of having to satisfy other people in order to advance themselves, people don’t do good things.” When analyzing a problem in international relations, Bueno de Mesquita doesn’t give a whit about the local culture, history, economy, or any of the other considerations that more traditional political scientists weigh. In fact, rational choicers like Bueno de Mesquita tend to view such traditional approaches with a condescension bordering on disdain. “One is the study of politics as an expression of personal opinion as opposed to political science,” he says dryly. His only concern is with what the political actors want, what they say they want (often two very different things), and how each of their various options will affect their career advancement. He feeds this data into his computer model and out pop the answers.
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In addition to its treatment of politics as a “political marketplace”, empirical studies ... challenge the adequacy of the rational choice model of marriage or non-economic markets as isomorphic to economic ones, thus to the exchange of material goods and capital. A study shows that these are not genuine “markets” but sets of matches anchored in culture similarity rather than generalized exchanges of resources, thus suggesting that cultural “capital” is more important than economic factors (DiMaggio and Mohr, 1985). If so, then extra-economic criteria like cultural or symbolic “capital” play a greater role than economic ones in assortative mating, as a presumed hallmark of marriage “markets”, which is a correct interpretation of the finding of its increase in the U.S. from the 1930s to 1980s (Mare, 1991). Also, a study (Steelman and Powell, 1991) shows that in family, including parent-children, relations economic rationality simply may not operate, thus supporting Simmel’s proposition, implicit in a multivariate model, that when people “exchange love for love” they do not sacrifice material goods or make cost-benefit calculations. Another study (Pescosolido, 1992) examines family-linked interactions, such as mutual help-seeking, and infers that rational choice models fail to account for essential features of social exchange. A key reason for this failure is their overlooking or playing down the social setting within which individual exchanges take place and are sustained.
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[A]s a result of this rational choice theory of religious participation, the authors rule out mass conversion as an empirical reality. Mass conversion does not occur. Even when mass conversion appears to occur, it is always conversion along social networks, and not the conversion of isolated individuals. Conversion is always moving along social networks - it always involves people realigning themselves with their social capital. For instance,
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