Human motivation: evolutionary foundations – HMEF

A significant part of human activity consists in building or managing public goods. The environment, a society’s public institutions and infrastructure, or the performance of publicly owned firms, are all (more or less pure) public goods. For much of the 20th century, the core of economic theory was premised on the assumption that human behavior is driven by material self-interest (the homo oeconomicus assumption). Analysis relying on this assumption leads to the conclusion that contributions to public goods will be much smaller than the socially desirable contribution levels.

But empirical and experimental evidence has largely rejected this prediction. To make correct predictions, and develop appropriate policy recommendations, economists need models that provide a more accurate description of human motivation.

Several alternative models of human motivation, or preferences, have been proposed. Pushing the analysis one step further, however, one may ask: which preferences should one expect, from first principles? The proposed research will seek to make significant contributions to this analysis, by clarifying the evolutionary foundations of human motivation. The proposed research will build further on existing research conducted by the PI (together with Jörgen Weibull, Stockholm School of Economics). The models developed in this past research will serve as building blocks to expand the theory of preference evolution in several directions.

This research has a significant interdisciplinary component, since it combines theoretical models from economics and from evolutionary biology with an aim to yield novel insights in both fields, although the main focus will remain in economics.