Voting like a human

The work of Vernon Smith and his collaborators that has come to be associated with the label “humanomics” offers both substantive and methodological amendments to economic theory. On the substantive level, humanomics offers a theory of human agency that is distinct from both neoclassical and behavioral economics. On the methodological level, humanomics cautions against blindly importing assumptions useful to economic theorists into the minds of the individuals whose behavior we seek to explain. Substantively, we argue that expressive voting is best understood as what political scientists call identity voting. Most voters do not have underlying policy preferences to which politicians cater. Rather, they have social identities that are constituted by synchronized moral sentiments. We apply both amendments to the public choice theory of voting, synthesizing empirical evidence showing that identity trumps issues. We argue that the public choice attachment to issue voting illustrates some of the methodological pitfalls that Smith identifies.