Raymond Boudon Beyond Rational Choice theory

11 Jun 2003 19:32 AR AR190-SO29-01.tex AR190-SO29-01.sgm LaTeX2e(2002/01/18) P1: IBC10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100213

Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2003. 29:121doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100213

Copyright c 2003 by Annual Reviews. All rights reservedFirst published online as a Review in Advance on June 4, 2003

BEYOND RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY

Raymond BoudonUniversity of Paris-Sorbonne, Universite Paris IV, ISHA, 96 boulevard Raspail,75006 Paris, France; email: [email protected]

Key Words beliefs, cognitivism, epistemology, methodological individualism,values Abstract Skepticism toward sociology has grown over recent years. The atten-tion granted to rational choice theory (RCT) is, to a large extent, a reaction againstthis situation. Without doubt, RCT is a productive instrument, but it fails signally inexplaining positive nontrivial beliefs as well as normative nonconsequential beliefs.RCTs failures are due to its move to use too narrow a definition of rationality. Amodel can be developed that combines the advantages of the RCT (mainly providingself-sufficient explanations), without falling victim to its shortcomings. This model isimplicitly used in classical and modern sociological works that are considered to beilluminating and valid.

RCT: A SOLUTION TO THE CRISISOF SOCIOLOGY?

It is evident that sociology has not achieved triumphs comparable to thoseof the several older and more heavily supported sciences. A variety of in-terpretations have been offered to explain the differencemost frequently,that the growth of knowledge in the science of sociology is more randomthan cumulative. The true situation appears to be that in some parts of thediscipline. . .there has in fact taken place a slow but accelerating accumula-tion of organized and tested knowledge. In some other fields the expansionof the volume of literature has not appeared to have had this property. Criticshave attributed the slow pace to a variety of factors.

Encyclopaedia BritannicaThe evaluation is fair. Some evaluators are more critical: Horowitz (1994) evokesthe decomposition of sociology, whereas Dahrendorf (1995) wonders whethersocial science is withering away. To many sociologists the state of the disciplineis unsatisfactory.One reason for the peculiar state of sociology is that, while its main objective

might be to explain puzzling phenomena, just like other scientific disciplines, infact it follows other directions. As I have tried to show elsewhere (Boudon &Cherkaoui 1999, Boudon 2001b), sociology has always pursued cameral, critical,

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2 BOUDON

andexpressivedirections aswell as its cognitive approach.While some sociologicalworks aim at explaining social phenomena, others produce data for the benefit ofpublic policy, critical analyses of society for the benefit of social movements, oremotional descriptions of society in the spirit of realistic novels or movies for thebenefit of the general public.Another source of this particularity is that the notion of theory has a much more

uncertain meaning in sociology than it does in the other sciences. Thus, labelingtheory, a theory often referred to over recent decades, does nothing more than labelfamiliar phenomena. Much is written about social capital theory today. But socialcapital is just a word for well-known mechanisms. As Alejandro Portes (1998)writes, Current enthusiasm for the concept of social capital. . .is not likely toabate soon (. . .) However, . . .the set of processes encompassed by the concept arenot new and have been studied under other labels in the past. Calling them socialcapital is, to a large extent, just a means of presenting them in a more appealingconceptual garb.So, explanation is not always the main aim that sociologists seem to pursue,

and they sometimes give the impression of taking the idea of explanation down aparticular path that has nothing to do with the meaning of the word in other, moresolidly established sciences.I see the attention currently granted to rational choice theory (RCT) as being,

to a large extent, a reaction against this state of affairs.

RATIONAL ACTION IS ITSOWN EXPLANATION

The motivations of RCT contenders are reminiscent of the discussions aboutphysics that took place in the Vienna Circle in the early twentieth century. Physicaltheories, Carnap contended, include obscure notions (such as force); a truly validtheory should be able to eliminate such notions. Once expressed in an entirelyexplicit fashion, it should have the property of constituting, in principle, a set ofuncontroversial statements.Rational Choice theorists, along the same line of argument, contend that ex-

plaining a phenomenon means making it the consequence of a set of statementsthat should all be easily acceptable. They assume that a good sociological theoryis one that interprets any social phenomenon as the outcome of rational individ-ual actions. As Hollis (1977) puts it, rational action is its own explanation. ToColeman (1986, p. 1), Rational actions of individuals have a unique attractivenessas the basis for social theory. If an institution or a social process can be accountedfor in terms of the rational actions of individuals, then and only then can we saythat it has been explained. The very concept of rational action is a conceptionof action that is understandable, action that we need ask no more questionsabout. To Becker (1996), The extension of the utility-maximizing approach toinclude endogenous preferences is remarkably useful in unifying a wide class ofbehavior, including habitual, social and political behavior. I do not believe that anyalternative approachbe it founded on cultural, biological, or psychological

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BEYOND RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY 3

forcescomes close to providing comparable insights and explanatory power.Briefly, as soon as a social phenomenon can be explained as the outcome of ra-tional individual actions, the explanation invites no further question: It containsno black boxes. By contrast, irrational explanations necessarily introduce varioustypes of forces that raise even further questions as to whether they are real and, ifso, which is their nature.As Becker rightly maintains, a theory appears less convincing as soon as it

evokes psychological forces (as when cognitive psychologists explain that peo-ple tend to give a wrong answer to a statistical problem because of the existenceof some cognitive bias), biological forces [as when sociobiologists, e.g., Ruse(1993), claim that moral feelings are an effect of biological evolution], or culturalforces (as when sociologists claim that a given collective belief is the productof socialization). In contrast to rational explanations, all these explanations raisefurther questions: They include black boxes. Moreover, these explanations leavethe feeling that it is easy to elicit data that are incompatible and/or that the furtherquestions they raise have little chance of ever being answered. Thus, once we haveexplained that most Romans in the early Roman Empire believed in the traditionalRoman polytheistic religion because they had been socialized to it, we are con-fronted with the question as to why Roman civil servants and centurions, althoughthey too had been socialized to the old polytheistic religion, tended rather to beattracted by monotheistic religions such as the Mithra cult and then Christianity[Weber 1988 (1922)]. Moreover, the notion of socialization generates a black boxthat seems hard to open: Nobody has yet been able to discover the mechanismsbehind socialization in the way, say, that the mechanisms behind digestion havebeen explored and disentangled. I am not saying that socialization is a worthlessnotion, nor that there are no such things as socialization effects, but merely that thenotion is descriptive rather than explanatory. It identifies and christens the variouscorrelations that can be observed between the way people have been raised andeducated and their beliefs and behavior; it does not explain them.

THE SYSTEMOF AXIOMSDEFINING RCT

RCT can be described by a set of postulates. I will present them in a general wayin order to transcend the variants of the theory. The first postulate, P1, states thatany social phenomenon is the effect of individual decisions, actions, attitudes,etc., (individualism). A second postulate, P2, states that, in principle at least, anaction can be understood (understanding). As some actions can be understoodwithout being rational, a third postulate, P3, states that any action is caused byreasons in the mind of individuals (rationality). A fourth postulate, P4, assumesthat these reasons derive from consideration by the actor of the consequences ofhis or her actions as he or she sees them (consequentialism, instrumentalism). Afifth postulate, P5, states that actors are concerned mainly with the consequencesto themselves of their own action (egoism). A sixth postulate, P6, maintains thatactors are able to distinguish the costs and benefits of alternative lines of action and

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that they choose the line of action with the most favorable balance (maximization,optimization).

The Importance of RCT

That RCT is the adequate framework of many successful explanations is incon-trovertible. Why did the cold war last so many decades and why did it come toa sudden conclusion? Why did the Soviet Union disappear? Why did the SovietEmpire collapse suddenly in the early 1990s and not 20 years before or after? Suchgeneral causes as low economic efficiency and the violation of human rights cannotexplain why it collapsed when it did or why it collapsed so abruptly. RCT can helpin answering these questions. The Western World and the Soviet Union becameinvolved in an arms race shortly after the end of World War II. Now, an armsrace presents a prisoners dilemma (PD) structure: If I (the U.S. government)do not increase my military potential while the other party (the government of theU.S.S.R.) does, I run a deadly risk. Thus, I have to increase military spending, eventhough, as a government, I would prefer to spend less money on weapons andmoreon, say, schools, hospitals, or welfare because these would be more appreciatedby the voters. In this situation, increasing ones arsenal is a dominant strategy, al-though its outcome is not optimal. The United States and the Soviet Union playedthis game for decades and accumulated so many nuclear weapons that each coulddestroy the planet several times over. This foolish outcome was the productof rational strategies. The two superactors, the two governments, played theirdominant strategy and could not do any better than marginally reducing their ar-senals through negotiations. The game stopped when the PD structure that hadcharacterized the decades-long interaction between the two powers was suddenlydestroyed. It was destroyed by the threat developed by then U.S. President Reaganof reaching a new threshold in the arms race by developing the SDI project, the so-called Star Wars. The initiative contained a certain measure of bluff. Technically,the project was nowhere near ripe. Even today, the objective of devising defensivemissiles to intercept any missile launched against territories protected by the SDIappears problematic at best. Economically, the project was so expensive that theSoviet government saw that there was no way to follow without generating seriousinternal economic problems. Hence, it did not follow and by not so doing, lost itsstatus of superpower, which had been uniquely grounded in its military strength.Of course, there are other causes underlying the collapse of the Soviet Union, buta fundamental one is that the PD game that had hitherto characterized relationsbetween the two superpowers was suddenly disrupted by Reagans move. Here,an RCT approach helps identify one of the main causes of a major macroscopichistorical phenomenon. It provides an explanation as to why Gorbachev movedin a new direction that would be fatal to the U.S.S.R., and why the U.S.S.R. col-lapsed at precisely that point in time. In this case, we get an explanation withoutblack boxes as to why the stupid arms race was conducted, and why it sud-denly stopped at a given point in time, leaving one of the protagonists in defeat.

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Although the RCT game-theoretical approach uses a very simple representation ofthe actors, it provides a convincing explanation. The explanation works becausethe RCT axioms, though reductionist, are not unrealistic here: It is true that anygovernment has to be egoist, i.e., has to take care of its own national interests.Consider as another example Tocquevilles explanation of the stagnation of

French agriculture at the end of the eighteenth century [Tocqueville 1986 (1856)].The administrative centralization characteristic of eighteenth century Franceis the cause of the fact that there are many positions of civil servants available(statementa1) in France and that they aremore prestigious than inEngland (a2); thecauses expressed by statements a1 and a2 provoke a rate of landlord absenteeismmuch larger than in England (statement b); landlord absenteeism is the cause of alow rate of innovation (c); the low rate of innovation is the cause of the stagnation(d) (Figure 1).To eliminate all black boxes from this explanation, one has to explain further

why a1 and a2 are causes of b, why b is the cause of c, and why c is the causeof d. The answer takes the form of individualistic statements, namely, statementsexplaining why the ideal-typical individuals belonging to relevant categories be-haved the way they did.Why are a1 and a2 the causes of b? Because (1) landlordssee that they can easily buy a position of civil servant and that (2), by so doing,they increase their power, prestige, and possibly income. In England, there arefewer civil servants, and their positions are less accessible or rewarding, whereasthe gentleman-farmer is offered many opportunities for interesting social rewardsthrough local political life. Moreover, a good strategy for gentlemen farmers with

Figure 1 Tocquevilles explanation of the stagnation of French agriculture at the endof the eighteenth century. a1 (many positions of civil servants are available in France)and a2 (being a civil servant is more prestigious in France than in England) cause b(the rate of landlord absenteeism); b causes c (a low rate of innovation); c is the causeof d (agricultural stagnation). 1 (buying a position as a civil servant is easy) and 2(increasing power and prestige) describes the French landlords reasons for leavingtheir land; (landowners rent their land to farmers); (reasons for farmers to cultivatethe land in a noninnovative fashion).

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national political ambitions to get elected to Westminster is to appear active andinnovative locally. Thus, French landlords have reasons (described by 1 and 2)to leave their land and serve the king that their English counterparts do not haveto the same degree. Such statements deal with the question as to why the relevantcategory of landlords behaved the way they did. Why is b the cause of c? Why islandlord absenteeism inimmical to innovation? Because landowners rent their landto farmers (). Why is c the cause of d? Why do farmers not innovate? Becausethey do not have the capacity to do so. Hence, they have reasons ( ) to cultivate theland in a noninnovative fashion. The theory thus explains why the relevant socialcategories, landlords and farmers, behaved the way they did. Tocquevilles theorygives the impression of being final; first, because its empirical statements appearcongruent with observational data, and second, because its statements (those de-scribed by the Greek letters) on the reasons why farmers, landlords, etc., behavedthe way they did are evident, not in the logical but in the psychological sense.It would be easy to list many modern works that owe their scientific value to

the fact that they use this RCT model. The works of economists and sociologistssuch as Olson (1965), Oberschall (1973, 1994), Coleman (1990), Kuran (1995),Hardin (1995), among others, come to mind, as well as historians such as Root(1994) or political scientists such as Rothstein (2001). Without question, RCT hasindeed produced a substantial number of genuinely scientific contributions in thepast or more recently.

RCT: A POWERFULOR A GENERAL THEORY?

Although RCT is a powerful theory, it appears powerless when confronted withmanyphenomena.An impressive list canbe compiled of all the familiar phenomenait is unable to explain. This combination of success and failure is worth stressinginasmuch as the social sciences community seems to be divided into two parties:those who treat RCT as a new Gospel (Hoffman 2000) and those who do notbelieve in this gospel. Furthermore, this mixture of success and failure raises theimportant question as to its causes.

The Voting Paradox

The effect of a single vote on turnout for any election is so small, claims RCT, thatrational actors should actually refrain from voting: The costs of voting are alwayshigher than the benefits. As one of these voters, I should prefer resting, walking,writing an article, or operating my vacuum cleaner to voting. Nevertheless, likemany people, I vote.Many solutions to this paradox have been proposed, several of them even

brilliant, yet they fail to be really convincing. People like to vote, says a theory;people would feel such strong regret if their ballot would have made the differencethat they vote even though they know that the probability of this event occurring isinfinitesimally small, says another (Ferejohn&Fiorina 1974). If I do not vote, I run

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the risk of losing my reputation (Overbye 1995). Sometimes, RCT is made moreflexible by the notion of cognitive frames. Thus, Quattrone & Tversky (1987)propose considering that voters vote because they see their motivation to vote as asign that their party is going to win, in the same way that the Calvinists, accordingto Weber, are success-oriented because they think this attitude is a sign that theyare among the elected. Such a frame appears, however, not only as ad hoc, butas introducing a black box. Schuessler (2000) starts from the idea that the voterhas an expressive rather than an instrumental interest in voting.None of these solutions has been widely accepted. Some, like Ferejohns and

Fiorinas, display a high intellectual virtuosity. However, they have not eliminatedthe paradox.

Other Paradoxes

Other classical paradoxes beside voting can be mentioned. Allais paradoxesshow that, when they are proposed to bet in some types of lotteries, people donot make choices in conformity with the principle of maximizing expected utility(Allais & Hagen 1979, Hagen 1995). Frey (1997) has shown that people willoccasionally accept some disagreement more easily if there is no compensationoffered than when there is. As a case in point, a study conducted in Switzerlandand Germany showed that people accept the presence of nuclear waste on theircitys land more easily when they are not offered compensation than when theyare.Psychologists have devised many other experiments, for example, the classical

ultimatum game (Wilson 1993, pp. 6263; Hoffman & Spitzer 1985), that resistthe RCT. Sociology also has produced many observations that can be read aschallenges to the RCT. Thus, the negative reaction of social subjects against somegiven state of affairs has often nothing to do with the costs they are exposed toby this particular state of affairs. On the other hand, actions can frequently beobserved where the benefit to the actor is zero or even negative. In White Collar,C.W. Mills (1951) identified what could be called the overreaction paradox.He describes women clerks working in a firm where they all sit in a large roomdoing the same tasks, at the same kind of desk, in the same work environment.Violent conflicts frequently break out over minor issues such as being seated closerto a source of heat or light. An outside observer would normally consider suchconflicts as irrational because he or she would implicitly use RCT: Why such aviolent reaction? As the behavior of the women would appear to be strange interms of this model, he or she would turn to an irrational interpretation: childishbehavior. By so doing, he or she would be confessing that RCT cannot easilyexplain the overreaction paradox observed by Mills.Many observations would lead to the same conclusion: They can be inter-

preted satisfactorily in neither an irrational nor an RCT fashion. To mention justa few of them, corruption in normal conditionsby which I mean the condi-tions prevailing in most Western countriesis invisible to the common man or

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woman; he or she does not see or feel its effects. He or she nevertheless con-siders corruption to be unacceptable. Plagiarism is, in most instances, withoutconsequences. Indeed, in some circumstances it may even serve the interests ofthe person being plagiarized since it attracts public attention. It is looked on withapprobrium, however. On some issues like the death penalty, I can have strongopinions even though the likelihood that I might be personally affected is zero. Inother words, in many circumstances, people are guided by considerations that havenothing to dowith their own interests, nor with the consequences of their actions orreactions.On the whole, psychologists, sociologists, and economists have produced a

huge number of observations which cannot easily be explained within the RCTframe. This situation raises two questions. Why does the RCT fail so often? Isthere a model that would satisfy the scientific ambition underlying RCT, namelytrying to provide explanations without black boxes, and at the same time get ridof its defects?

The Sources of theWeaknesses of the RCT

It is not very hard to determine the reasons for RCTs failures. The social phe-nomena that RCT is incapable of accounting for share many features in common.Three types of phenomena that slip RCTs jurisdiction can be identified.The first type includes phenomena characterized by the fact that actors base their

choices on noncommonplace beliefs. All behavior involves beliefs. To maximizemy chances of survival, in accordance with RCT, I will look both ways beforecrossing the street. This behavior is dictated by a belief: I believe that if I dont lookboth ways Im taking a serious chance. Here, the belief involved is commonplace,not worth the analysts while to look at more closely. To account for other items ofbehavior, however, it is crucial to explain the beliefs upon which they rest. Now,RCT has nothing to tell us about beliefs, a weakness that is one of the main reasonsfor its failures.We can postulate that an actor holds a given belief because that belief is a conse-

quence of a theory he or she endorses.We can postulate furthermore that endorsingthe theory is a rational act. But here the rationality is cognitive, not instrumental:It consists of preferring the theory that allows one to account for given phenomenain the most satisfying possible way (in accordance with certain criteria). The actorendorses a theory because he or she believes that the theory is true. Conversely,it is precisely because RCT reduces rationality to instrumental rationality that itruns into trouble when confronted with a whole variety of paradoxes.Some sociologists have sought to reduce cognitive rationality to instrumental

reality. Radnitzky (1987) proposes that endorsing a scientific theory results froma cost-benefit analysis. A scientist stops believing in a theory, writes Radnitzky,as soon as the objections raised against it make defending it too costly. It isindeed difficult to explain why a boat hull disappears from the horizon before themast, why the moon takes the shape of a crescent, why a navigator who maintains

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constant direction returns to his starting point if we accept the theory that the earthis flat. But what does it get us to replace the word difficult with the word costly?Defending a given theory is more costly precisely because it is more difficult. Wemust then explain why this is so; and from instrumental rationality we come backto cognitive rationality.RCT is powerless before a second category of phenomena: those characterized

by the fact that actors are following nonconsequentialist prescriptive beliefs. RCTis comfortable with prescriptive beliefs as long as they are consequentialist. RCThas no trouble explaining, for example, why most people believe that traffic lightsare a good thing: Despite the inconvenience they represent to me, I accept thembecause they have consequences that I judge beneficial. Here, RCT effectivelyaccounts for both the belief and the attitudes and behavior inspired by that be-lief. But RCT is mute when it comes to normative beliefs that cannot readily beexplained in consequentialist terms (Boudon 2001a). The subject in the classicalsocio-psychological experiment ultimatum game acts against his or her own in-terest. The voter votes, even though that vote will have virtually no effect on theelection result. The citizen vehemently disapproves of corruption even though notaffected personally. The plagiarist gives rise to a feeling of disdain, even whenno one is hurt and the plagiarized writers renown is actually enhanced. We pointan accusing finger at imposters, though their machinations create problems for noone but themselves.RCT is powerless before a third category of phenomena, that involving behavior

by individuals whom we cannot in any sensible way assume to be dictated byself-interest. Regardless of whether Sophocles Antigone is being acted in Paris,Beijing, or Algiers, the viewer of the tragedy unhesitatingly condemns Creonand supports Antigone. The reason RCT cannot explain this universal reaction issimple: The spectators interests are in no way affected by the matter before them.We therefore cannot explain that reaction by any possible consequences on thempersonally; nor by any consequences at all because there are no such consequences.The spectator is not directly involved in the fate of Thebes; that fate belongs in thepast, and no one has any control over it anymore. Thus the consequentialism andself-interest postulates are disqualified ipso facto.Sociologists often find themselves confronted with this kind of phenomenon,

inasmuch as the social actors are regularly called upon to evaluate situations inwhich they are not personally implicated at all. Most people are not personallyimplicated in the death penalty; it touches neither them, their families, or friends.This hardly means they cannot have a strong opinion on the issue. How can a setof postulates that assumes them to be self-interested account for their reactions insituations where their interests are not at stake and there is no chance that theyever will be? These remarks lead to a crucial conclusion for the social sciences asa whole; namely, RCT has little if anything to tell us about opinion phenomena,which are a major social force and hence a crucial subject for sociologists.In sum, RCT is disarmed when it comes to (a) phenomena involving non-

commonplace beliefs, (b) phenomena involving nonconsequentialist prescriptive

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beliefs, and (c) phenomena that bring into play reactions that do not, by the verynature of things, spring from any consideration based on self-interest.

OPENING THE RCT AXIOMS

These considerations suggest that axiomsP4, P5, andP6 arewelcome in somecasesbut not in all. Reciprocally, the set of axioms P1, P2, and P3 appear to be moregeneral than the set P1 to P6. Now, P1 defines what is usually called methodologi-cal individualism (MI), whereas the set of postulates made up of P1 and P2 definesinterpretive sociology (inWebers sense). As to the set P1 to P3, it defines a versionof interpretive sociology where actions are supposed to be rational in the sense thatthey are grounded on reasons in the actorsmind. I identify the paradigm defined bypostulates P1 toP3 as the cognitivist theory of action (CTA). It assumes that any col-lective phenomenon is the effect of individual human actions (individualism); that,in principle, provided the observer has sufficient information, the action of an ob-served actor is always understandable (understanding); that the causes of the actorsaction are the reasons for him or her to undertake it (rationality) (Boudon 1996).RCTs failures are due to its move to reduce all rationality to the instrumental

variety and neglect cognitive rationality as it applies not only to descriptive butalso to prescriptive problems (axiological rationality). Conversely, it is essential forsociology as a discipline to be aware that many classical and modern sociologicalstudies owe their explanatory efficacy to the use of a cognitive version of MI, asopposed to the instrumental one, primarily represented by RCT.

A BROADERNOTIONOF RATIONALITY

CTA has the main advantage of RCT (i.e., offering explanations without blackboxes), but not its disadvantages, thanks to a broader notion of rationality thatis commonly accepted not only by philosophers but also by prominent socialscientists, such as Adam Smith indirectly or Max Weber directly.I do not see why sociologists should not pay attention to distinctions repeat-

edly recognized by philosophers as well as by classical sociologists. Thus, Rescher(1995, p. 26) states, rationality is in its very nature teleological and ends-oriented,making immediately clear that teleological should not bemade synonymouswithinstrumental or consequential. He goes on, Cognitive rationality is concernedwith achieving true beliefs. Evaluative rationality is concernedwithmaking correctevaluation. Practical rationality is concerned with the effective pursuit of appro-priate objectives. All these forms of rationality are goal-oriented, but the natureof the goals can be diverse.By creating his notion of axiological rationality or evaluative rationality

(Wertrationalitat) as complementary to, but essentially different from instru-mental rationality (Zweckrationalitat), Max Weber clearly supported the the-sis that rationality can be noninstrumental, in other words, that rationality is abroader concept than instrumental rationality and a fortiori than the special form ofinstrumental rationality (P1 to P6) postulated by RCT. As to Adam Smiths notion

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of the impartial spectator, it invites us to pay attention to the fact that on manyissues people may be unconcerned about their own interests, but can neverthelesshave strong opinions on these very same issues. Individual opinions can also beinspired by impersonal reasons.Theorists have recognized that instrumental rationality is only one form of

rationality.Moreover,many classical andmodern compelling sociological analysesimplicitly (as with Tocqueville) or explicitly (as with Weber) use the generalizedconception of rationality that characterizes the CTA model. A few examples willillustrate this point.

COGNITIVE RATIONALITY

Belief in Constructivism in France

An example, again taken from Tocqueville [1986 (1856)], illustrates how the rea-sons for actors beliefs and behavior are currently cognitive. He wondered whyFrench intellectuals on the eve of the Revolution firmly believed in the idea ofReason with a capital R, and why that notion had spread like wildfire among thepublic. It was an enigmatic phenomenon, not to be seen at the time in Britain,the United States, or the German states. And one with enormous macroscopicconsequences.Tocquevilles explanation consists in showing that Frenchmen at the end of

the eighteenth century had strong reasons to believe in Reason. In France at thattime, many traditional institutions seemed illegitimate. One was the idea that thenobility was superior to the third estate. Nobles did not participate either in localpolitical affairs or economic life; rather they spent their time at Versailles. Thosewho remained in the country held on all the more tightly to their privileges thepoorer they were. This explains why they were given the name of an unsightly littlebird of prey, the hobereau, a metaphor that spread quickly because it was perceivedto be so fitting. The following equation was established in many individual minds:Tradition=Dysfunction= Illegitimacy; and, by opposition, Reason= Progress=Legitimacy. It was because this line of argument was latent in peoples minds thatthe call by the philosophes to construct a society founded on Reason enjoyed suchimmediate success.The English, on the other hand, had good reasons not to believe in those ideas.

In England, the nobles played a crucial role: They ran local social, political, andeconomic life. The superiority attributed to them in customary thinking and byEnglish institutions was perceived as functional and therefore legitimate. Ingeneral, traditional English institutions were not perceived as dysfunctional.

Can False Beliefs Be Rational?

An objection to CTA is that action is often grounded on false ideas and thereforeit cannot be held to be rational. But to counter this received idea, false beliefs canbe grounded on strong reasons, and in that sense are rational, as familiar examplesshow.

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Pareto has said, with reason, that the history of science is the graveyard of all thefalse ideas that oncewere endorsed under the authority of scientists. In otherwords,science produces false ideas beside true ones.Now, nobodywould accept the notionthat these false ideas are endorsed by scientists under the effect of irrational causes,because their brains would have to have been wired in an inadequate fashion, orbecause their minds would have to have been obscured by inadequate cognitivebiases, frames, habitus, by class interests or by affective causesin otherwords, by the biological, psychological, or cultural forces evoked by Becker(1996). Scientists believe in statements that often turn out to be false because theyhave strong reasons for believing in them, given the cognitive context.The believers in phlogiston, in ether, or in the many other entities and mecha-

nisms that now appear purely imaginary to us had in their day, given the cognitivecontext, strong reasons to believe in them. It was not immediately recognized asimportant that when a piece of oxide of mercury is heated under an empty bell-glass, the drop of water that appears on the bells wall should be taken into account:That this drop of water appears regularly escaped immediate attention, nor was itclearly perceived that this result contradicts phlogiston theory.Why should the false beliefs produced by ordinary knowledge not be explained

in the same fashion as false scientific statements, namely based in the minds ofthe social subjects on reasons that they perceive to be strong, given the cognitivecontext in which they move?I am not saying that false beliefs should always be explained in this fashion.

Even scientists can hold false beliefs through passion or other irrational causes.What I am saying is that belief in false ideas can be caused by reasons in the mindof the actors, and that they are often caused by reasons in situations of interest tosociologists. Even though these reasons appear false to us, they may be perceivedto be right and strong by the actors themselves. To explain that what they perceiveas right is wrong, we do not have to assume that their minds are obscured bysome hypothetical mechanisms of the kind Marx (false consciousness), Freud(the unconscious), Levy-Bruhl (the mentalite primitive), and their many heirsimagined, nor by the more prosaic frames evoked by RCT. In most cases, expla-nations are more acceptable if we make the assumption that, given the cognitivecontext in which they move, actors have strong reasons for believing in falseideas.I have produced elsewhere several examples showing that the rational explana-

tion of beliefs that we consider normal in the case of false scientific beliefs can alsobe applied to ordinary knowledge. I have explored intensively instances of belief inmagic (Boudon 19982000) and false beliefs observed by cognitive psychologists(Boudon 1996).Here I limit myself to one example (inspired fromKahneman & Tversky, 1973)

from the second category. When psychiatrists are asked whether depression is acause of attempted suicide, they agree.When askedwhy, they answer that they havefrequently observed patients with both features: Many of their patients appearedto be depressed and they have attempted suicide. Of course, the answer indicatesthat the psychiatrists are using one piece of information in the contingency table

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TABLE 1 A causal presumption can be derived from the single piece of information a if a ismuch larger than exg/i

Suicide attempted Suicide not attempted Total

Depression symptoms a b e= a+ bNo depression symptoms c d f= c+ dTotal g= a+ c h= b+ d i= a+ b+ c+ d

above (Table 1): Their argument runs, a is high, hence depression is a cause ofattempted suicide.Now, any freshman in statistics would know that such an argument is wrong:

To conclude that there is a correlation between depression and suicide attempts,one has to consider not one, but four pieces of information, not only a, but thedifference a/ec/f.The psychiatrists answer shows that statistical intuition seems to follow rules

that have nothing to do with the valid rules of statistical inference. But it does notprove thatwe should assume, in aLevy-bruhlian fashion, that the physicians brainsare ill-wired. The physicians may very well have strong reasons for believing whatthey do. Their answers may even suggest that statistical intuition is less deficientthan it seems. Suppose, for instance, that e in the table below equals 20%, in otherwords that 20% of the patients of the physicians have depression symptoms, andthat g also equals 20% (20% of the patients have attempted suicide). Admittedly,higher figures would be unrealistic. With these assumptions, in the case where thepercentage a of people presenting the two characters is greater than 4, the twovariables would be correlated, and thus causality could plausibly be presumed. Aphysicianwhohas seen, say, 10people out of 100presentingwith the twocharacterswould have good reason to believe in the existence of a causal relationship betweenthe two features.In this example, the belief of the physicians is not really false. In other instances,

the beliefs produced by cognitive psychology appear to be unambiguously false.In most cases, however, I found that these beliefs could be explained as beinggrounded in reasons perceived by the subjects as strong, which the observer caneasily understand.Obviously, these reasons are not of the benefitminus cost type. They are rather

of the cognitive type. The aim pursued by the actor is not to maximize utility, butrather credibility, to determine whether something is likely, true, etc. In additionto its instrumental dimension, therefore, rationality has a cognitive dimension.

CAN RELIGIOUS BELIEFS BE ANALYZED AS RATIONAL?

Weber defined his Verstehende sociology as founded on MI: Interpretive so-ciology (as I conceive it) considers the isolated individual and his activity as itsbasic unit, I would say its atom (Weber 1922). In his view, sociology, like any

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science, has to bring the macroscopic phenomena it is interested in down to theirmicroscopic causes. He believed that the cause of an actors actions and beliefsconsists in the meaning they had for that actor. And he rejected the idea of reducingrationality to instrumental rationality. His whole sociology of religion is foundedon the methodological principle that the causes of religious beliefs and of the ac-tions inspired by these beliefs reside in the meaning attributed to them by theirsocial subjects, and more exactly, that the reasons those subjects had for adher-ing to those beliefs could not be reduced to RCT reasons. In other words, whereasWebers interpretive sociology is, strictly speaking, defined by postulates P1P2,in practice, Weber uses the set of postulates P1 to P3: the CTA. It excludes the sup-plementary postulates P4P6 that define RCT. On this point Webers theoreticaltexts are perfectly consistent with his empirical analyses.Why were functionaries, military personnel, and politicians in Ancient Rome

and modern Prussia attracted to such cults as Mithraism and Freemasonry, eachcharacterized by a vision of disembodied transcendence subject to superior lawsand a conception of the community of the faithful as a group to be organized hier-archically through initiation rituals? Because the articles of faith in such religionswere consistent with the social and political philosophy of these social categories.Their members believed that a social system could function only if under the con-trol of a legitimate central authority and that that authority must be moved byimpersonal rules. Their vision was of a functional, hierarchically organized soci-ety, and that hierarchy had to be founded on abilities and skills to be determinedin accordance with formalized proceduresas was the case in the Roman andPrussian states. Taken together, these principles for the political organization ofa bureaucratic state were, in their eyes, the reflection of a valid political phi-losophy. And they perceived the initiation rituals of Mithraism, in the case ofthe Roman officers and civil servants, or Freemasonry, in the case of Prussiancivil servants, as expressing those same principles in a metaphysical-religiousmode.To cite another example,Weber explained that peasants had difficulty accepting

monotheism because the uncertainty characteristic of natural phenomena did notseem to them to be at all compatible with the idea that the order of things could besubject to a single will, a notion that in and of itself implied a minimal degree ofcoherence and predictability.

Axiological Rationality

Webers axiological rationality is often understood as synonymous with valueconformity. I would propose rather that the expression identifies the case whereprescriptive beliefs are grounded in the mind of social actors on systems of rea-sons perceived by them as strong, in exactly the same way as descriptive beliefs(Boudon 2001a). This important intuition contained in Webers notion (thoughimplicitly rather than explicitly) was apparently already present in Adam Smithsmind.

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An Illustration from Adam Smith

Although it is recognized that Smiths Theory of Moral Sentiments does not reston RCT, it is sometimes held that his better-known work on theWealth of Nationsdoes. The following example shows, however, that this is not the case. Even in thisbook, which had a tremendous influence on economic theory, Smith does not useRCT, but rather the cognitive version of MI: CTA.Why, asks Smith, dowe (i.e., eighteenth centuryEnglishmen) consider it normal

that soldiers are paid less than miners? Smiths methodology in his answer couldbe applied to many similar questions today: Why do we feel it fair that such andsuch occupation is paid more or less than another [Smith 1976 (1776), book 1,chapter 10]? His answer is as follows:(a) A salary is the retribution of a contribution. (b) To equal contributions

should correspond equal retributions. (c) Several components enter into the valueof a contribution: the investment required to produce a given type of competence,the risks involved in the realization of the contribution, etc. (d ) The investment timeis comparable in the case of theminer and of the soldier. It takes about asmuch timeand effort to train a soldier as to produce aminer. The two jobs are characterized bysimilar risks. Both include the risk of death. (e) Nonetheless, there are importantdifferences between the two types of jobs. ( f ) The soldier serves a central functionin society. This function preserves the identity and the very existence of the nation.The miner fulfills an economic activity among others. He is not more central tothe society than, say, the textile worker. (g) Consequently, the death of the twomen has a different social meaning. The death of the miner will be identified asan accident, the death of the soldier on the battlefield as a sacrifice. (h) Becauseof this difference in the social meaning of their respective activities, the soldierwill be entitled to symbolic rewards, prestige, symbolic distinctions, includingfuneral honors in case of death on the battlefield. (i) The miner is not entitled tothe same symbolic rewards. ( j) As the contribution of the two categories in termsnotably of risk and investment is the same, the equilibrium between contributionand retribution can only be restored by making the salary of the mineworkershigher. (k) This system of reasons is responsible for our feeling that the minershould be paid a higher wage than the soldier.First, Smiths analysis does not use RCT. People do not believe what they

believe because this would maximize some difference between benefits and costs.They have strong reasons for believing what they believe, but these reasons are notof the cost-benefit type. They are not even of the consequential type. At no pointin the argument are the consequences that would eventually result from the minersnot being paid more than the soldiers evoked. Smiths argument takes rather theform of a deduction from principles. People have the feeling that it is fair to payhigher salaries to miners than soldiers because the feeling is grounded on strongreasons derived from strong principles, claims Smith. He does not say that thesereasons are explicitly present in everyones head, but clearly assumes that they arein an intuitive fashion responsible for their beliefs. If miners were not paid morethan soldiers this would perhaps generate consequences (a strike by miners, say);

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but these eventual consequences are not the reason why most people think theminers should be paid more; people do not believe in this statement out of fear ofthese eventual consequences.Weber probably had such cases in mind when he introduced his distinction

between instrumental and axiological rationality.A contemporary theorist of ethics proposes analyses of some of our moral

sentiments that are similar to Smiths (Walzer 1983). Why, for instance, do weconsider conscription to be a legitimate recruitment method for soldiers but notfor miners, he asks? The answer again is that the function of the former is vitalwhereas that of the latter is not. If conscriptionwere to be applied tominers, it couldbe applied to any and eventually to all kinds of occupations, hence it would leadto a regime incompatible with the principles of democracy. In the same fashion,it is readily accepted for soldiers to be used as garbage collectors in emergencies,although it would be considered illegitimate to use them for such tasks in normalsituations. In all these examples, as in Smiths example, collective moral feelingsare grounded on solid reasons, but not on reasons of the type considered in RCT.I am not saying of course that a notion such as fairness cannot be affected by

contextual parameters. Thus, it has been shown that in the ultimatum game the50/50 proposal is more frequent in societies where cooperation with ones neigh-bors is essential to current economic activity than in societies where competitionbetween neighbors prevails (Henrich et al. 2001). Such findings are not incompat-ible with a rational interpretation of moral beliefs. They rather show that a systemof reasons is more easily evoked in one context than in another. In summary,whereas contextual variation in moral beliefs is generally interpreted as validatinga cultural-irrational view of axiological feelings, the contextual-rational paradigmillustrated by the previous examples appears to be more satisfactory: offering self-sufficient explanations, i.e., explanations without black boxes.

The Validity of Reasons

Why does an actor consider a system of reasons to be good? Kant wrote thatlooking for general criteria of truth amounts to trying to milk a billy goat. Weshould recognize with Popper that there are no general criteria of truth, but also,against Poppers theory of science, that there are not even general criteria of falsity.A theory is considered false only from the moment when an alternative theoryis found that is definitely better. Priestley had strong reasons for believing thephlogiston theory was true. It became difficult to follow him only after Lavoisiershowed that all the phenomena that Priestley had explained in accordance withhis phlogiston could also be explained without it and with his own theory. Inother circumstances, the relative strength of alternative systems of reasons willcorrespond to other types of criteria. In other words, we hold a theory to be trueor false because we have strong reasons of considering it as such, but there areno general criteria of the strength of a system of reasons. More generally, let usassume for a moment that we would have been able to identify the general criteria

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of truth or rationality, then the next question would be: On which principles doyou ground the criteria, and so on ad infinitum.To sum up, a system of reasons can be stronger or weaker than another and we

can explainwhy; but it cannot be said to be strong orweak in an absolute sense. Likeall evaluative notions, truth and rationality are comparative, not absolute notions.A theory is never true or false, but truer or falser than another, if I may say so. Weconsider it true from the moment when we find it hard to imagine a better theory.The criteria used to decide that one system of reasons is stronger than another aredrawn from a huge reservoir and vary from one question to another.Borrowing examples from the history of science has the advantage of clarifying

the discussion about the criteria of rationality. But the conclusion to be drawn fromthe above example (that there are no general criteria of rationality) applies not onlyto scientific, but to ordinary beliefs as well. And they apply not only to descriptive,but also to prescriptive beliefs.This latter point often meets some resistance because of a wrong interpretation

of Humes uncontroversial theorem that no conclusion of the prescriptive typecan be drawn from a set of statements of the descriptive type. But a prescriptiveor normative conclusion can be derived from a set of descriptive statements thatare all descriptive, except one, so that the real formulation of Humes theoremshould be . . .a set of statements all of the descriptive type. I have developed thispoint more fully in Boudon (2003). It is an essential point since it shows that thegap between prescriptive and descriptive beliefs is not as wide as many peoplethink. It gives a clear meaning to Webers assertion that axiological rationality andinstrumental rationality are currently combined in social action, though they areentirely distinct from one another. As implied by the CTAmodel, cognitive reasonsground prescriptive as well as descriptive beliefs in the mind of individuals.

CONCLUSION

I have tried to make some crucial points: that social action generally depends onbeliefs; that as far as possible, beliefs, actions, and attitudes should be treated asrational, or more precisely, as the effect of reasons perceived by social actors asstrong; and that reasons dealing with costs and benefits should not be given moreattention than they deserve. Rationality is one thing, expected utility another.Why should we introduce this rationality postulate? Because social actors try

to act in congruence with strong reasons. This explains why their own behavioris normally meaningful to them. In some cases, the context demands that thesereasons are of the cost-benefit type. In other cases, they are not: Even if weaccept that the notions of cost and benefit are interpreted in the most extensivefashion, what are the costs and benefits to me of miners being better paid thansoldiers if I have no chance of ever becoming either a soldier or a miner?On the whole, to get a satisfactory theory of rationality, one has to accept the

idea that rationality is not exclusively instrumental. In other words, the reasonsmotivating an actor do not necessarily belong to the instrumental type. In the cases

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of interest to sociologists, peoples actions are understandable because they aremoved by reasons. But these reasons can be of several types. Action can rest onbeliefs or not; the beliefs can be commonplace or not; they can be descriptive orprescriptive. In all cases, the CTA model assumes that action has to be explainedby its meaning to the actor; it supposes hence that it is meaningful to the actor, or,in other words, that it is grounded in the actors eyes on a system of reasons thathe or she perceives to be strong.The CTA model is also more promising than the program-based behavior

model (PBBM)proposedbyevolutionary epistemologists, notablyVanberg (2002),for the latter model unavoidably generates black boxes. As the generalized ver-sion of RCT obtained by supposing that actors are guided by frames loses themain advantage of RCT itself (providing self-sufficient explanations), the PBBMgenerates further questions of the type where does the program come from?Whydo some actors endorse it while others do not? Because the CTA model has ananswer to such questions, it is capable of generating self-sufficient explanations.Considering RCT to be a special case of MI has the advantage of allowing the

main advantage of RCT (producing black-box-free explanations) to be extendedto a much wider set of social phenomena. But I must stress again that, if the CTA ismore general than RCT, it cannot be applied to all phenomena. Irrationality shouldbe given its right place. Traditional and affective actions also exist. Moreover, allactions rest on the basis of instincts. I look to my right and left before crossing astreet because I want to stay alive. Reason is the servant of passions, as Hume said.But passions need Reason: the magicians customers are motivated by the passionto survive, to see their crops grow; but nobody would consider that this passion initself is an adequate explanation for their magical beliefs.The theory of rationality that I have sketched raises some important questions

that I will content myself with mentioning. Does the fact that behavior and beliefsare normally inspired by strong reasons, even though these reasons might be false,mean that any behavior or belief can be justified? Certainly not. Priestley believedin phlogiston; Lavoisier did not. The two had strong reasons for believing whatthey believed, and they both saw their reasons as valid. The latter was right, theformer wrong, however. The strength of reasons is thus a function of the context.Today, our cognitive context is such that Priestleys reasons are now weak for usbecause we know that Lavoisiers reasons were stronger. But Lavoisiers reasonshad to be thought up and publicized before there could be any conclusion that hewas right. Then he became irreversibly right as opposed to Priestley. No relativismfollows from the contextuality of reasons.Just as with cognitive reasons, axiological reasons can become stronger or

weaker over time, mainly because new reasons are expounded.When it was shownthat the abolition of capital punishment could not be held responsible for any sig-nificant increase in crime rates, the argument capital punishment is good becauseit is an effective threat against crime becameweaker. This provoked a changeanirreversible onein our moral sensibility toward capital punishment. There are nomechanically applicable general criteria of the strength of the reasons on whicheither prescriptive or descriptive beliefs are grounded. Still, irreversible changes

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in prescriptive as well as descriptive beliefs are frequently observed because inthe normal course of events, a system of reasons R eventually appeared to bebetter than the system R, as in the descriptive case of Lavoisier and Priestley oras in the prescriptive case of Montesquieu (who defended the idea that politicalpower would be more efficient if it is not concentrated) and Bodin (who could notimagine that political power would be efficient without its being concentrated).Montesquieus and Bodins beliefs as to what a good political organization shouldbe were grounded on reasons that the two of them perceived to be strong. Clearly,Montesquieu was right.Finally, the paradoxes mentioned above can be easily solved. They have

no RCT solution but do have an easy CTA solution: plagiarism and corruptionprovoke a negative reaction not because of their consequences, but because theyare incompatible with systems of reasons that most people think of as strong.The same is true of the other paradoxes, to which it is unnecessary to come backin detail: People make their decisions because of a more or less conscious setof arguments that they feel strong reason to believe in. Thus, in the ultimatumgame, they pick the 50/50 solution because theywonderwhich solution is fair, andthey do their best to define fairness in this case. They do not ask what is good forthemselves. People reject corruption though its effect on them is neutral becausethey endorse a theory from which they conclude that it is unacceptable. In all thesecases, they display teleological behavior: They want to reach a goal. But only inparticular cases is the goal to maximize ones interests or the satisfaction of onespreferences; the goal may also be finding the true or fair answer to a question.Given these various goals, they are rational in the sense that they look for the bestor at least for a satisfactory system of reasons capable of grounding their answer.The reader may be puzzled by the fact that I have used many examples from

classical sociology in this paper. By so doing I wanted to suggest a thesis that Ican formulate but not demonstrate in a short space: that from the beginning of ourdiscipline, the most solid sociological explanations implicitly use the CTA modelor, when adequate, its restricted version: RCT.

The Annual Review of Sociology is online at http://soc.annualreviews.org

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