George Akerlof and Robert Shiller introduce Robert Cialdini early in their last book about manipulation and deception.[1] A social psychologist and marketer, Cialdini has written a book about psychological biases that has been accepted well by behavioral economists.[2] According to his list, humans can be influenced because they want to reciprocate gifts and favors; because they want to be nice to people they like; because they do not want to disobey authority; because they tend to follow others in deciding how to behave; because they want their decisions to be internally consistent; and because they are adverse to taking losses.[3] As Cialdini argues, each of these biases is paired with a common salesman’s trick. Akerlof and Shiller thus follow Cialdini throughout their own book. But the first thought that came to my mind when I went through the list of psychological biases was that they reflected the tribal origin of the human species pretty well. In short, they smack of prehistory. And this is exactly how I see humans, as well. As I argue in my book about climate change and what is to be done about it, humans will fit well in posthistory, where they will return to tribal life that is still in their bones.[4] Luckily for them, capitalism with its tricks will be dead and buried by then.

Footnotes

1. Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015, p. 7.

2. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, New York: Harper Collins, 2007.

3. Akerlof and Shiller, loc. cit. In an endnote, Akerlof and Shiller explain that these correspond to Cialdini’s categories of reciprocation, liking, authority, social proof, commitment and consistency, and scarcity (p. 186). However, Akerlof and Shiller have referred to the last category as loss aversion since Cialdini emphasizes that “the way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost” (Cialdini, op. cit., p. 204).

4. What is to Be Done? Climate Change for Beginners, Belgrade: HISPERIAedu, 2014.