Humanomics and Rational Irrationality: Why Moral Sentiments May Make Voting Biases Worse

The growing literature in “humanomics” provides a nuanced way to understand and predict human behavior by including both self-interest and other-regarding sentiments. Recent literature has begun to connect humanomics with public choice economics, but the concept of “rational irrationality” is underexplored from the humanomics perspective. In the theory of rational irrationality, voters rationally hold systematically biased beliefs because (1) their vote is highly unlikely to be decisive and (2) the feedback mechanisms from voting ineffectively discipline the biased views. Thus, voters widely accept mistaken ideas, such as underestimating the benefits of the market system, overlooking the economic benefits of interacting with foreigners, misunderstanding the nature of conserving labor, and being overly pessimistic about current economic conditions. This paper makes a novel theoretical argument that the combination of humanomics and public choice theory implies that the pathologies of rational irrationality are—or are likely to be—even more socially detrimental than the standard theory would predict. In other words, the assumptions of humanomics exacerbate the biases of rational irrationality in voting. Future research should examine the empirical reality of these theoretical claims.

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