Rational Expectations and Rational Expressive Behavior

How to understand human activities and behavior, or, more generally, the ethical nature of human existence itself, is a question that has long been a subject of debate among sociologists and economists alike. It is the question that has divided the two camps while guiding us toward a deeper understanding of our activities as agents of multiple orientations. This book presents my work on two themes about the ethical nature of human existence as spontaneous activities in relation to the environing world that this existence reveals to itself. Our first theme deals with human existence as socio-cultural agents who seek symbolic profits under a system of cultural symbolism and value patterns/norms, and the other deals with human existence as economic agents who seek economic profits under a system of relations that define the market equilibrium.There is a close affinity between these two facets. Our activities as socio-cultural agents are anchored in a system of cultural symbolism and value patterns that are internalized in our institutionalized dispositions. As such agents, we seek symbolic profits by expressing our choices systematically in reference to this system. The rationality of such expressive behavior should, therefore, be as dictating and sensible as the rationality of seeking economic profits. The point we make is that expressive behavior would not be possible in a vacuum, that is, without some externally given sources of value patterns and symbolism with which to express our choices. This entails that socio-cultural choice behavior is intertwined with these sources that we discover in an environing world through our own existence as socio-cultural agents. Specifically, the behavior expresses itself as a consistent norm-guided behavior that helps reproduce the same norms and value patterns and maintain the symbolic nature of our activities. Furthermore, such norm-guided behavior is not independent of the conditions of the bounded rationality in the sense that it helps reduce the cost of decision making and problem-solving, thereby serving as powerful heuristics that simplify otherwise complex problem-solving and lead to the attainment of symbolic profits at the same time. It is equally an important source of predictive and predictable behavior.