We agree with the authors that seeing human cognition as a collection of biases is of little help to understand the logic behind people's folk beliefs and that it often amounts to re-describing the phenomenon that needs to be understood. What economists and psychologists need is a more mechanistic approach to the origins of folk beliefs, based on distinct specialized systems that, crucially, did not evolve to help humans to understand the market economy and the workings of modern politics.
But what are these evolved systems? Boyer & Petersen (B&P) put forward the idea that, just like religious beliefs (Boyer Reference Boyer2001), economic processes trigger a range of cognitive systems: cheater detection, communal sharing, partner choice, ownership intuitions, coalitional psychology, and so on (see Figure 2 in the target article). However, it is unclear to us to what extent these processes are really distinct from one another. In their target article, B&P mention the importance of fairness several times and describe it as the result of partner choice: When individuals are in competition with one another to be chosen as cooperative partners, they have no choice but to share the benefits of cooperation in a fair way (Baumard et al. Reference Baumard, André and Sperber2013a; Debove et al. Reference Debove, Baumard and André2017). The goal of fairness mechanisms is to help individuals solve the following question: “Did I get as many benefits as others from the interaction given my effort, my talent, or my opportunity costs?” A range of empirical works have shown that, indeed, people are fine with unequal distributions of goods; what matters is whether resources are distributed in a fair way (Baumard et al. Reference Baumard, André and Sperber2013a, Starmans et al. Reference Starmans, Sheskin and Bloom2017).
In this perspective, it is conceivable that the different systems presented in the target article can in fact be traced back to a single fairness mechanism (see Figure 2 in the target article). For instance, B&P describe cheater detection as aiming to identify “a situation where some agent has taken a benefit without paying the cost for it” (sect.4.2, para. 1). But assessing whether the costs paid by an individual match the benefits she receives is precisely the function of the fairness system. Later, the authors give another example of cheating: “have the recipients paid sufficient costs in order to be entitled to these benefits?” (sect. 5.3, para. 3). Again, comparing the inputs brought by an individual with the benefits she receives essentially amounts to deciding whether the resources are distributed in a fair way.
More generally, detecting cheaters or free-riders presupposes the existence of fairness computations. Going back to the recipient of the welfare state: when does cheating start? Am I a cheater if I received unemployment benefits after only 3 months of work? How about 6 months? Or a year? Am I a cheater if I do not show-up at work when I have a cold? How about when I am pregnant? All judgments about cheating presuppose an anterior computation about the contribution of each individual to a common pool and the amount of resources she is supposed to receive if fairness is to be respected.
In the same way, communal sharing does not differ from fairness (Baumard et al. Reference Baumard, André and Sperber2013b). As the authors note: “Communal sharing, although typically presented as including all group members, is often in fact modulated by past or expected reciprocation” (sect. 4.4, para. 2). Matching present distribution to past contribution, or present contribution to present distribution, is exactly the kind of output that the fairness system is supposed to produce.
About ownership, the authors note that “adults and even young children assume that working to transform an object carries a potential claim to ownership such that, for example, the artist, not the owner of the quarry, is the owner of a sculpture. This ownership claim is made stronger by the extent of the transformation” (sect. 5.5, para. 1). These observations about people's intuitions of ownership strongly suggest that the intuitions are an output of the fairness system because the more someone has contributed to producing or transforming an object, the more unfair it will be to take it from her (Baumard et al. Reference Baumard, André and Sperber2013b).
Do these cognitive considerations matter for understanding folk-economic beliefs? We believe they do because they suggest that fairness, more than any other cognitive system, is what drives people's beliefs regarding immigration, trade, or the welfare state. We agree with the authors that markets are very counter-intuitive phenomena for which the human brain is ill-prepared. Yet, it is striking that the same (conservative) people who fail to understand that immigrants create jobs (FEB2) rather than take jobs (because they increase the demand for goods and services in their new country) have no problem understanding that price-regulations can have unexpected negative effects (FEB8). Similarly, the same (liberal) people who fail to understand the very same expected negative effects of price regulations have no problem explaining to their conservative friends that immigrants are dynamic and honest contributors who will foster economic growth.
In the face of these observations, we suspect that what prevents people from understanding the workings of markets and modern states is not their impersonal or abstract nature but first and foremost considerations of fairness (see, for instance, how fairness considerations prevent people from accepting utility-maximizing policies; Baron Reference Baron1994). For many people, inequalities of talents, wealth, or nationality are unfair: nobody deserves to be born wealthy, smart, or a citizen of a first-world country. As a consequence, the products of these inequalities in the form of salaries or property rights are unfair. Acknowledging the benefits of free markets would amount to legitimizing the inequalities of wealth or talents that are magnified by free markets, hence emporiophobia.
In the same way, many people consider that, given the level of prosperity achieved in industrialized countries, every citizen should have a right to have an accommodation. In consequence, they consider unfair that some unlucky individuals lose their accommodation. Acknowledging that landlords have a right to expel people from their accommodation if they do not pay their rent would amount to negating people's right to an accommodation, even if ultimately, such evictions allow for the housing market to flourish and for more people to have decent accommodation. In other words, because humans evolved to respect others' rights (because of partner choice), and not to maximize the utility of (yet) nonexistent large-scale democratic entities, “rights trump utility,” as Ronald Dworkin (Reference Dworkin1978) famously wrote. In this perspective, compensating the victims and the losers is possibly the best way for policy designers to make their policies morally acceptable and thus cognitively intuitive.
We agree with the authors that seeing human cognition as a collection of biases is of little help to understand the logic behind people's folk beliefs and that it often amounts to re-describing the phenomenon that needs to be understood. What economists and psychologists need is a more mechanistic approach to the origins of folk beliefs, based on distinct specialized systems that, crucially, did not evolve to help humans to understand the market economy and the workings of modern politics.
But what are these evolved systems? Boyer & Petersen (B&P) put forward the idea that, just like religious beliefs (Boyer Reference Boyer2001), economic processes trigger a range of cognitive systems: cheater detection, communal sharing, partner choice, ownership intuitions, coalitional psychology, and so on (see Figure 2 in the target article). However, it is unclear to us to what extent these processes are really distinct from one another. In their target article, B&P mention the importance of fairness several times and describe it as the result of partner choice: When individuals are in competition with one another to be chosen as cooperative partners, they have no choice but to share the benefits of cooperation in a fair way (Baumard et al. Reference Baumard, André and Sperber2013a; Debove et al. Reference Debove, Baumard and André2017). The goal of fairness mechanisms is to help individuals solve the following question: “Did I get as many benefits as others from the interaction given my effort, my talent, or my opportunity costs?” A range of empirical works have shown that, indeed, people are fine with unequal distributions of goods; what matters is whether resources are distributed in a fair way (Baumard et al. Reference Baumard, André and Sperber2013a, Starmans et al. Reference Starmans, Sheskin and Bloom2017).
In this perspective, it is conceivable that the different systems presented in the target article can in fact be traced back to a single fairness mechanism (see Figure 2 in the target article). For instance, B&P describe cheater detection as aiming to identify “a situation where some agent has taken a benefit without paying the cost for it” (sect.4.2, para. 1). But assessing whether the costs paid by an individual match the benefits she receives is precisely the function of the fairness system. Later, the authors give another example of cheating: “have the recipients paid sufficient costs in order to be entitled to these benefits?” (sect. 5.3, para. 3). Again, comparing the inputs brought by an individual with the benefits she receives essentially amounts to deciding whether the resources are distributed in a fair way.
More generally, detecting cheaters or free-riders presupposes the existence of fairness computations. Going back to the recipient of the welfare state: when does cheating start? Am I a cheater if I received unemployment benefits after only 3 months of work? How about 6 months? Or a year? Am I a cheater if I do not show-up at work when I have a cold? How about when I am pregnant? All judgments about cheating presuppose an anterior computation about the contribution of each individual to a common pool and the amount of resources she is supposed to receive if fairness is to be respected.
In the same way, communal sharing does not differ from fairness (Baumard et al. Reference Baumard, André and Sperber2013b). As the authors note: “Communal sharing, although typically presented as including all group members, is often in fact modulated by past or expected reciprocation” (sect. 4.4, para. 2). Matching present distribution to past contribution, or present contribution to present distribution, is exactly the kind of output that the fairness system is supposed to produce.
About ownership, the authors note that “adults and even young children assume that working to transform an object carries a potential claim to ownership such that, for example, the artist, not the owner of the quarry, is the owner of a sculpture. This ownership claim is made stronger by the extent of the transformation” (sect. 5.5, para. 1). These observations about people's intuitions of ownership strongly suggest that the intuitions are an output of the fairness system because the more someone has contributed to producing or transforming an object, the more unfair it will be to take it from her (Baumard et al. Reference Baumard, André and Sperber2013b).
Do these cognitive considerations matter for understanding folk-economic beliefs? We believe they do because they suggest that fairness, more than any other cognitive system, is what drives people's beliefs regarding immigration, trade, or the welfare state. We agree with the authors that markets are very counter-intuitive phenomena for which the human brain is ill-prepared. Yet, it is striking that the same (conservative) people who fail to understand that immigrants create jobs (FEB2) rather than take jobs (because they increase the demand for goods and services in their new country) have no problem understanding that price-regulations can have unexpected negative effects (FEB8). Similarly, the same (liberal) people who fail to understand the very same expected negative effects of price regulations have no problem explaining to their conservative friends that immigrants are dynamic and honest contributors who will foster economic growth.
In the face of these observations, we suspect that what prevents people from understanding the workings of markets and modern states is not their impersonal or abstract nature but first and foremost considerations of fairness (see, for instance, how fairness considerations prevent people from accepting utility-maximizing policies; Baron Reference Baron1994). For many people, inequalities of talents, wealth, or nationality are unfair: nobody deserves to be born wealthy, smart, or a citizen of a first-world country. As a consequence, the products of these inequalities in the form of salaries or property rights are unfair. Acknowledging the benefits of free markets would amount to legitimizing the inequalities of wealth or talents that are magnified by free markets, hence emporiophobia.
In the same way, many people consider that, given the level of prosperity achieved in industrialized countries, every citizen should have a right to have an accommodation. In consequence, they consider unfair that some unlucky individuals lose their accommodation. Acknowledging that landlords have a right to expel people from their accommodation if they do not pay their rent would amount to negating people's right to an accommodation, even if ultimately, such evictions allow for the housing market to flourish and for more people to have decent accommodation. In other words, because humans evolved to respect others' rights (because of partner choice), and not to maximize the utility of (yet) nonexistent large-scale democratic entities, “rights trump utility,” as Ronald Dworkin (Reference Dworkin1978) famously wrote. In this perspective, compensating the victims and the losers is possibly the best way for policy designers to make their policies morally acceptable and thus cognitively intuitive.