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Homo Moralis—Preference Evolution Under Incomplete Information and Assortative Matching
Author(s) -
Alger Ingela,
Weibull Jörgen W.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
econometrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 16.7
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1468-0262
pISSN - 0012-9682
DOI - 10.3982/ecta10637
Subject(s) - assortativity , selfishness , preference , homo economicus , morality , stochastic game , degree (music) , mathematical economics , economics , microeconomics , social psychology , mathematics , psychology , combinatorics , philosophy , epistemology , physics , acoustics , complex network
What preferences will prevail in a society of rational individuals when preference evolution is driven by the resulting payoffs? We show that when individuals' preferences are their private information, a convex combination of selfishness and morality stands out as evolutionarily stable. We call individuals with such preferences homo moralis . At one end of the spectrum is homo oeconomicus , who acts so as to maximize his or her own payoff. At the opposite end is homo kantiensis , who does what would be “the right thing to do,” in terms of payoffs, if all others would do likewise. We show that the stable degree of morality—the weight placed on the moral goal—is determined by the degree of assortativity in the process whereby individuals are matched to interact.