IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v106y2016i5p415-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

"We Thinking" and Its Consequences

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Akerlof

Abstract

Increasingly, economists are drawing on concepts from outside economics--such as "norms," "esteem," and "identity"--to model agents' social natures. A key reason for studying such social motivation is to shed light on the conditions that facilitate--or deter--collective action. It has been widely observed, for instance, that groups are more able to engage in collective action when they have a common, group identity. This paper gives one explanation for such a link. The paper develops a new concept, "we thinking"; and it also provides a deeper understanding of the concepts of norms, identity, and esteem.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Akerlof, 2016. ""We Thinking" and Its Consequences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 415-419, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:106:y:2016:i:5:p:415-19
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20161040
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20161040
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/aer/ds/10605/P2016_1040_ds.zip
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gerrans, Paul & Moulang, Carly & Feng, Jun & Strydom, Maria, 2018. "Individual and peer effects in retirement savings investment choices," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 150-165.
    2. Arnaud Wolff, 2022. "The Signaling Value of Social Identity," Working Papers of BETA 2022-15, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    3. Bagues, Manuel & Roth, Christopher, 2020. "Interregional Contact and National Identity," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 526, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    4. Adnan, Wifag & Arin, K. Peren & Charness, Gary & Lacomba, Juan A. & Lagos, Francisco, 2022. "Which social categories matter to people: An experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 125-145.
    5. Lia Q. Flores & Miguel A. Fonseca, 2021. "Do in-group biases lead to overconfidence in performance? Experimental evidence," Discussion Papers 2103, University of Exeter, Department of Economics.
    6. Donna Harris & Oana Borcan & Danila Serra & Henry Telli & Bruno Schettini & Stefan Dercon, 2022. "Proud to belong: The impact of ethics training on police officers," CSAE Working Paper Series 2022-05, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    7. Song, Fenghua & Thakor, Anjan V., 2019. "Bank culture," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 59-79.
    8. Bartke, Simon & Gelhaar, Felix, 2018. "When does team remuneration work? An experimental study on interactions between workplace contexts," Kiel Working Papers 2105, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    9. Roger Sapsford & Gerasimos Tsourapas & Pamela Abbott & Andrea Teti, 2019. "Corruption, Trust, Inclusion and Cohesion in North Africa and the Middle East," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 14(1), pages 1-21, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:106:y:2016:i:5:p:415-19. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.