A Human Actor Model for Social Science

This article presents a model of the production of human behaviour, grounded in a pragmatist perspective. The model has two components: a small set of considered behaviours, and a set of motivators which I group into four subsets: material, reproductive, and two sets of attributional motivators. The model is based on a minimum principle. A person performs that considered behaviour which comes closest to ideal in light of the person's motivators. I show that both declining marginal utility and satisfying follow as deductions from the model. In addition, especially with the inclusion of attributional motivators, the model accounts for a variety of findings in social science. I also show how it can generate theory and testable empirical predictions.