The qualitative outcome of rational, self interested behaviour under a voluntary vaccination policy can vary substantially depending on interactions between social contact structure, perceived vaccine and disease risks, and the way that individual vaccination decision-making is modelled.
In other words, a rational, self-interested person would always betray his fellow prisoner.
Rather than reject mainstream theory, behaviorists embrace its emphasis on rational, self-interested behavior.
In her controversial philosophy of objectivism, she argued that capitalism was innately superior to other socioeconomic systems, such as feudalism and socialism, because it was based on voluntary exchange on the part of rational, self-interested individuals.
These include supposedly simplistic models of individual human behaviour (rational, self-interested, utility-maximising homo economicus) and of corporate behaviour (the notion that the goal of a firm should be to maximise shareholder value).
We imagine an economy consisting of rational, self-interested players, and suppose that economic outcomes reflect a situation in which each player is doing the best he, she, or it can given the actions of all the other players.
Rational, self-interested behavior -- a world in which people responded to changes in prices and wages but not to emotion or one another's actions -- most easily fit into these new equations.
Neuroscientists have shown that these almond-shaped clusters of neurons deep inside the medial temporal lobes play a key role in the formation of emotional responses such as fear.These new neuroeconomists saw that it might be possible to move economics away from its simplified model of rational, self-interested, utility-maximising decision-making.
Instead of recommending traditional welfare-state liberalism as a solvent for socioeconomic inequalities and dislocations, Goolsbee promotes programmes to essentially democratise the market, protecting and where possible expanding freedom of choice, while simultaneously creating rational, self-interested incentives for individuals to participate in solving collective problems.
Since the late 18th century, tradition and religion have been steadily discarded, in the hope that rational, self-interested individuals can form a liberal political community that defines its shared laws, ensuring dignity and equal rights for each citizen, irrespective of ethnicity, race, religion and gender.
