IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v77y2011i1p86-96.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The mirror neuron paradox: How far is understanding from mimicking?

Author

Listed:
  • Khalil, Elias L.

Abstract

The same mirror neuron system (MNS) is behind both understanding and mimicking. Mirroring per se is the spectator's simulation of the emotion/action of the principal. While the understanding process usually involves the attenuation of original emotions, the mimicking process often leads to escalation and mob psychology. What is paradoxical is how the same primitive, mirroring, gives rise to divergent processes. To solve the paradox, this paper distinguishes between two kinds of evaluations: rationality and niyya. The rationality axis evaluates whether the action is proper (rational) or improper (irrational), while the niyya (an Arabic word for "faith" or "trustworthiness") axis evaluates whether the motive is virtuous (wellbeing-supporting) or malicious (wellbeing-threatening). The interplay of the two-axes promises also to explain the differences among four kinds of fellow-feeling.

Suggested Citation

  • Khalil, Elias L., 2011. "The mirror neuron paradox: How far is understanding from mimicking?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 86-96, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:77:y:2011:i:1:p:86-96
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-2681(10)00179-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Elias L. Khalil, 2005. "An anatomy of authority: Adam Smith as political theorist," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 29(1), pages 57-71, January.
    2. Leonardo Fogassi, 2010. "The mirror neuron system: How cognitive functions emerge from motor organization," Post-Print hal-00921186, HAL.
    3. Charness, Gary & Rabin, Matthew, 2002. "Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt3d04q5sm, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    4. Philippe Fontaine, 2001. "The Changing Place of Empathy in Welfare Economics," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 33(3), pages 387-410, Fall.
    5. Elias L. Khalil, 2010. "Adam Smith’S Concept Of Self‐Command As A Solution To Dynamic Inconsistency And The Commitment Problem," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(1), pages 177-191, January.
    6. Khalil, Elias L., 2004. "What is altruism?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 97-123, February.
    7. Khalil, Elias L., 1996. "Respect, admiration, aggrandizement: Adam Smith as economic psychologist," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 555-577, November.
    8. Rabin, Matthew, 1993. "Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1281-1302, December.
    9. Stigler, George J & Becker, Gary S, 1977. "De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(2), pages 76-90, March.
    10. Charness, Gary & Rabin, Matthew, 2001. "Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt4qz9k8vg, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    11. Elias L. Khalil, 2002. "Is Adam Smith Liberal?," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 158(4), pages 664-664, December.
    12. Khalil, Elias L., 2004. "What is altruism? A reply to critics," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 141-143, February.
    13. Gary Charness & Matthew Rabin, 2002. "Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(3), pages 817-869.
    14. Rustichini, Aldo, 2005. "Neuroeconomics: Present and future," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 201-212, August.
    15. Elias L. Khalil, 1997. "The Red Queen Paradox: A Proper Name for a Popular Game - Note," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 153(2), pages 411-415, June.
    16. Jean-Pierre Dupuy, 2004. "Intersubjectivity and Embodiment," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 275-294, September.
    17. Khalil, Elias L., 1990. "Beyond Self-Interest and Altruism: A Reconstruction of Adam Smith's Theory of Human Conduct," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(2), pages 255-273, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Elias L. Khalil, 2013. "Egotism: making sense of social preferences," Chapters, in: Luigino Bruni & Stefano Zamagni (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Reciprocity and Social Enterprise, chapter 12, pages 121-133, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Elias L. Khalil, 2024. "The cost of love: Solving the gift anomaly," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 77(1), pages 22-39, February.
    3. Fogassi, Leonardo, 2011. "The mirror neuron system: How cognitive functions emerge from motor organization," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 66-75, January.
    4. Elias L. Khalil, 2012. "Temptations: A General Theory of Over-eating, Under-saving, Favoritism, Certainty Effect, Spoiling of Children, Pornography-Viewing, and Regretting," Monash Economics Working Papers 26-12, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    5. Paganelli, Maria Pia, 2011. "The same face of the two Smiths: Adam Smith and Vernon Smith," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 78(3), pages 246-255, May.
    6. Leonardo Fogassi, 2010. "The mirror neuron system: How cognitive functions emerge from motor organization," Post-Print hal-00921186, HAL.
    7. Khalil, Elias L., 2017. "Socialized view of man vs. rational choice theory: What does smith’s sympathy have to say?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 223-240.
    8. Fazekas, Károly, 2016. "Tisztesség, empátia, közgazdaságtan [Honour, empathy and economics]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(10), pages 1120-1141.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Elias L. Khalil, 2010. "Adam Smith’S Concept Of Self‐Command As A Solution To Dynamic Inconsistency And The Commitment Problem," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(1), pages 177-191, January.
    2. Khalil, Elias L., 2017. "Socialized view of man vs. rational choice theory: What does smith’s sympathy have to say?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 223-240.
    3. Jacobs Martin, 2016. "Accounting for Changing Tastes: Approaches to Explaining Unstable Individual Preferences," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 67(2), pages 121-183, August.
    4. Bosworth, Steven J. & Singer, Tania & Snower, Dennis J., 2016. "Cooperation, motivation and social balance," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 126(PB), pages 72-94.
    5. Bosworth, Steven J. & Singer, Tania & Snower, Dennis J., 2016. "Cooperation, motivation and social balance," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 126(PB), pages 72-94.
    6. Ellingsen, Tore & Johannesson, Magnus & Mollerstrom, Johanna & Munkhammar, Sara, 2012. "Social framing effects: Preferences or beliefs?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 117-130.
    7. Edmund H. Mantell, 2018. "An economic theory of altruism based on rankings in a stable social hierarchy," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 65(4), pages 421-447, December.
    8. Kirchsteiger, Georg & Rigotti, Luca & Rustichini, Aldo, 2006. "Your morals might be your moods," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 155-172, February.
    9. Ellingsen, Tore & Johannesson, Magnus, 2009. "Time is not money," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 96-102, October.
    10. Anne Corcos & Yorgos Rizopoulos, 2011. "Is prosocial behavior egocentric? The “invisible hand” of emotions," Post-Print halshs-01968213, HAL.
    11. Fanghella, Valeria & Ibanez, Lisette & Thøgersen, John, 2025. "What you don't know, can't hurt you: Avoiding donation requests for environmental causes," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 233(C).
    12. Adrian Bruhin & Ernst Fehr & Daniel Schunk, 2019. "Correction to: The Many Faces of Human Sociality: Uncovering the Distribution and Stability of Social Preferences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 1335-1335.
    13. Hoffmann, Magnus & Kolmar, Martin, 2017. "Distributional preferences in probabilistic and share contests," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 120-139.
    14. Antonides, Gerrit & Kroft, Maaike, 2005. "Fairness judgments in household decision making," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 902-913, December.
    15. Ghosal, Sayantan & Dalton, Patricio, 2013. "Characterizing Behavioral Decisions with Choice Data," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 107, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    16. Ubeda, Paloma, 2014. "The consistency of fairness rules: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 88-100.
    17. Fabian Kosse & Thomas Deckers & Pia Pinger & Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch & Armin Falk, 2020. "The Formation of Prosociality: Causal Evidence on the Role of Social Environment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(2), pages 434-467.
    18. Jiabin Wu, 2018. "Indirect higher order beliefs and cooperation," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 21(4), pages 858-876, December.
    19. Quement, Mark T. Le & Marcin, Isabel, 2020. "Communication and voting in heterogeneous committees: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 449-468.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    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:eee:jeborg:v:77:y:2011:i:1:p:86-96. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    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.