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This new book by Jon Elster purports to be 'an elementary, informal, and personal presentation of ideas that have', he believes, 'considerable potential for illuminating social behaviour' (p. ix). Elster's original intention was to update Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, an attractive little book published in 1989. What turned out is this volume, three times as long, covering more topics and entering into more details.
Let me give an idea of its content, leaving aside for the moment Part 1 and the Conclusion. Part 2 is devoted to 'the mind', with chapters on motivations, self-interest and altruism, myopia and foresight (with a good, accessible, introduction to hyperbolic discounting), beliefs, and emotions, Part 3 to 'action', with chapters on desires and opportunities, persons and situations, rational choice, rationality and behaviour, responding to irrationality, and 'some implications for textual interpretation'. I found the development on 'persons and situations' particularly interesting. The main idea (not Elster's, originally) is that individual behaviour is the result of situation more than of character. The fact that folk psychology suggests otherwise and that, therefore, we also tend to think otherwise when interacting with other individuals has behavioural consequences to which Elster returns later in the book. The chapter on textual interpretation is about assessing consistency in novels - perhaps a digression, but quite fascinating as well, at least if one is a reader of fiction. Entitled 'lessons from natural sciences', Part 4 includes three brief chapters on physiology and neuroscience, explanation by consequences and natural selection, selection and human behaviour. The following section, Part 5, entitled 'Interaction', is divided into nine chapters. There, a brief and relatively disappointing chapter on unintended consequences is followed by two chapters on game theory, followed themselves by individual chapters on trust, social norms, collective belief formation, collective action, collective decision making and 'organisations and institutions'. To avoid being misled by the titles, one must stress that, in that section also, the main reliance is on psychology and history.
Even when analyses and arguments seem familiar, they are typically accompanied by new (or forgotten) stimulating illustrations, remarks and references. This remains true whether Elster summarizes analyses he developed himself in previous work (rationality, sour grapes, emotions, social...