Book Review: Jon Elster Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences

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Book Review
Philosophy of the Social Sciences
40(1) 178 –185
© The Author(s) 2010
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Jon Elster
Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for
the Social Sciences Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2007. 484 pp. $90.00 (cloth).
Reviewed by: Andreas Pickel, Trent University,
Ontario, Canada
DOI: 10.1177/0048393109352781
Originally conceived as a revision of Elster’s 1989 book, Nuts and Bolts
for the Social Sciences, the work under review became, in the author’s own
words, a “different and more ambitious book,” growing from roughly 200
pages into a tome of just under 500. Both are designed as introductory
textbooks of sorts, though in the case of Explaining Social Behavior with “a
methodological and philosophical slant not usual in introductory-level pre-
sentations.” (p. ix) The book documents the evolution and in some respects
fundamental changes in Elster’s views over the two intervening decades. For
those who associate the author with the rational choice crowd, the book con-
tains a few surprises.
The internationally most well-known Norwegian social scientist today,
Elster has spent most of his career in France and the United States. He studied
in Paris in the 1960s and wrote his dissertation, a fundamental and irreverent
critique of Marx, under the supervision of Raymond Aron. Being out of step
with the prevailing ideological currents of the time, his critique was not
published for another thirteen years (Elster 1985). Fleeing from the dominant
linguistic turn of postmodern approaches, which around that time were making
their own way across the Atlantic, Elster’s intellectual home was with Anglo-
Saxon analytical philosophy. At the University of Chicago, where he started
teaching in 1979 while still at the University of Oslo (1975-1985), he was
professor of political science and philosophy from 1984-1995. Chicago was
the center of the new rational choice movement, home to eminent scholars
such as neoclassical economists and Nobel Laureates Gary Becker and
George Stigler, sociologist James Coleman, and jurist Richard Posner. Elster
was never an orthodox rational choice practitioner, yet he took the problem
formulation of this approach to be fundamental for the social sciences.
Searching for rational choice explanations of individual behavior, he was
also willing to confront the many “nonrational” sources of individual
action, in particular norms, values, and feelings. Logic and Society (1978)
and Ulysses and the Sirens (1979) established Elster as a formidable critic of

Book Review 179
the methodological holism inherent in much functionalist and structuralist
explanation. With Nuts and Bolts (1989), he offered a concise statement of
his own version of methodological individualism, which might be charact-
erized as a sophisticated rational choice approach. It is not without irony that
Elster occupied the Robert K. Merton Chair in Social Science at Columbia
University from 1995 to 2005, given Merton’s own functionalist leanings.
Disillusioned with “a crippling narrowness and a self-defeating obsession
with the ranking of one’s department” (p. 464) in U.S. academe, Elster has
been a Professor at the Collège de France in Paris since 2006.
Following an introductory chapter, Explaining Social Behavior is divided
into five main sections: I. Explanation and Mechanisms; II. The Mind; III.
Action; IV. Lessons from the Natural Sciences, and V. Interaction—followed
by a particularly interesting and revealing Conclusion: Is Social Science
Possible. Each of the 26 chapters comes with a bibliographical note in which
Elster suggests some further literature. This way of referencing in a textbook
is useful for the novice student looking for direction. From a scholarly pers-
pective, however, it is unfortunate that the author does not engage with a
broader range of literature and approaches in the social sciences. Instead of
standard footnotes citing recent scholarly literature, the text refers extensively
to political philosophers, especially Aristotle and Tocqueville as well as,
more unusually, classical French writers like Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld,
Stendhal, and Proust, whose works he considers rich sources for the student
of the mechanisms of human motivation. While rational choice theorists do
not generally spend any time discussing philosophers, let alone writers of
fiction, Elster is sending a somewhat confusing message when he pro-
claims Thomas Schelling (a game theorist), Kenneth Arrow (a public choice
theorist), and Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (psychologists famous for
their empirical critique of rational choice assumptions) to be “responsible for
what were arguably the most decisive advances in social science over the last
fifty years” (p. 454). For clearly the main target of his criticisms in the book
are not functionalists or postmodernists, but rational choice theorists.
Early in the book Elster confesses: “I now believe that rational-choice
theory has less explanatory power than I used to think” (p. 5). While this
statement does not indicate the extent to which his thinking on rational
choice has changed, the serious nature of his misgivings emerges with full
force in the conclusion where he reflects more widely on fundamental
questions in the philosophy of social science. His provocative answer to the
question whether rational choice modeling should be considered scienti-
fic is that it tends to be a “form of science fiction” driven by an “aesthetic
motivation” (p. 461). “[W]hat rational choice practitioners do is often so

180 Philosophy of the Social Sciences 40(1)
removed from reality that it is hard to take seriously their claims that they
are engaged with the real world.” “Come on! Get real!” a clearly impassioned
Elster exclaims (p. 462). In line with his critique of the “soft obscurantism”
of much social theory, on which he touches only very briefly, he refers to
the rational choice way of doing science as a form of “hard obscurantism,”
a charge he also levels against those social scientists preoccupied with
measurement or data analysis as the true hallmarks of a scientific approach.
He proceeds to finish up his case against rational choice theory with a set of
10 major criticisms (pp. 462-63), most of which, though around for decades,
were rarely taken seriously by its followers, including sophisticated rational
choice theorists like Elster himself.
His form of methodological individualism would probably now be sum-
marily rejected by more orthodox practitioners of rational choice, and not
only because of Elster’s extensive use of Aristotle and Proust, or his focus
on the role of norms, values, and emotions in individual decision making.
Elster’s conception removes the hard core of rational choice theory by pre-
senting convincingly and at length its fatal flaws and the untenability of the
orthodox economic rationality assumption for an empirically oriented social
science. Elster’s conception, it should be noted, also differs fundamentally
from Karl Popper’s “situational logic” (Matzner and Swedberg, 1998).
Whereas Popper and his followers among methodological individualists try
to empty or de-psychologize the rationality assumption by placing as much
of the explanatory burden on external factors of “situation” and “context,”
Elster heads in the opposite direction. “Even though I’m critical of many
rational-choice exp lanations, I believe the concept of choice is fundamental
[and] that the subjective factor of choice has greater explanatory power than
the objective factors of constraint and selection” (p. 6).
Elster, as he outlines in section 1 (chapters 1-3), is a proponent of the
hypothetico-deductive method, but he believes that in contrast to the natural
sciences, there are few solid laws to be had in the social sciences. His focus
is therefore on explanation by mechanisms rather than laws. This means that
identifying causal variables is not enough; rather, “the causal mechanism
must also be provided, or at least suggested” (p. 21). This disqualifies approa-
ches based on correlations, statistical explanations, instrumentalist “as-if”
fictions, or prediction as their central mode of explanation. Mechanisms are
“frequently occurring and easily recognizable causal patterns that are triggered
under generally unknown conditions or with indeterminate consequen-
ces” (p. 36). The basic elements of explanation are in terms of “atomic”
mechanisms—“elementary psychological reactions that cannot be reduced to
other mechanisms at the same level” (p. 42). Atomic mechanisms, in turn, can

Book Review 181
be used as “building blocks in more complex “molecular” mechanisms” (p. 43).
To continue Elster’s analogy for a moment, he believes there are no “cellular”
mechanisms in the social world that could not be reduced to the molecular
and ultimately atomic level. “Interpreting an action requires us to explain it in
terms of antecedent beliefs and desires (motivations) of the agent. Moreover,
we should explain these mental states themselves in a way that makes sense
of them, by locating them within the full desire-belief complex” (p. 53) or the
“belief-desire system of the agent” (p. 55)—presumably the “molecular”
level of the social. Surprisingly, Elster argues that “compulsive and phobic
behavior is unintelligible because it is not part of an interconnected system of
beliefs and desires” (p. 55). However, he does not further elucidate the status
of such systems. Are we dealing here with ideologies, symbolic or semiotic
systems, discursive systems, personality systems, or neurobiological systems?
Given the explanatory centrality of these systems, how do they emerge in the
first place? And how can we determine their shape and content?
Let us now briefly look at the substantive contributions and claims of
the book. In the introduction, the author sets out the major puzzles he tries
to resolve in the body of the analysis under the four headings of: “The Mind,”
“Action,” “Lessons from the Natural Sciences,” and “Interaction.” The
conclusion identifies resolutions to the puzzles posed at the beginning and
worked out in the body of the book. He offers almost 50 more or less general
mechanisms to do the explanatory work. Two initial mechanisms emerge from
game theory: the “availability heuristic” and the “representativeness heuristic”
are typical cognitive mechanisms leading gamblers to deal irrationally
with probability problems such as, is black or red more likely to come up
next time, thus avoiding the unwelcome fact that the objective probability
will always be 50-50. A third mechanism is called “hyperbolic discounting,”
referring to the fact that preferences change over time because the emotions
that originally generated them have subsided over time. Further cognitive
mechanisms include magical thinking, false pride, surprise as magnifier of
both positive and negative emotions, “blame-the-victim” attitudes, and cog-
nitive dissonance. All of these mechanisms contradict in one way or another
the rationality assumption of rational choice theory—they are mechanisms
held responsible for systematically irrational behavior on the part of indi-
viduals. We are unlikely to find directly relevant work from psychologists on
most of these mechanisms, and the reason, I believe, is simple. There are few
rational choice psychologists that would take the homo oeconomicus model
seriously in the first place. But without that model, Elster’s mechanisms lose
much of their explanatory edge. It is only against the background of sim-
plistic assumptions about maximizing behavior that many of the puzzles

182 Philosophy of the Social Sciences 40(1)
Elster tries to resolve emerge in the first place. In other words, his puzzles for
the most part do not represent widely recognized profound questions about
society.
Note that the major mechanisms he presents under the heading of “Action”
are also cognitive or psychological rather than of a more clearly social nature.
These include the counterproductive effects of excessively harsh punishments,
loss aversion, decision myopia, individually felt shame, being risk averse, and
weakness of will. This is not to say that these mechanisms are nonexisting or
irrelevant. They are important for explaining individual action in a variety of
contexts, and thus parts of social outcomes. But they don’t seem to be social
explanations of individual action in the sense that structural factors such as
civil war, repressive regimes, economic collapse, democratic participation,
propaganda, or high rates of economic growth are generally considered
equally relevant social factors. But perhaps social mechanisms of this sort
are discussed under the heading of “Interaction.” Before moving on to mech-
anisms of interaction, let us briefly consider the mechanisms Elster proposes
under “Lessons from the Natural Sciences.”
All five mechanisms identified here are of the same kind, or variations of a
presumed basic mechanism of evolution: genes that have been favored by
group or natural selection produce/explain certain social behaviors, such as a
mechanism inhibiting sexual desire for same-age members of the opposite
sex in the same household, a tendency to cooperate and a tendency to punish
noncooperators even if this means incurring material costs, and the basic
cognitive mechanism of pattern seeking. These mechanisms are reminiscent
of explanations proposed by the ultimately unsuccessful research program of
sociobiology (Wilson 1975) according to which social behavior could be
explained directly or exclusively through biological and ultimately genetic
factors. But assuming that Elster has in mind nonreductive biosocial mech-
anisms, we might still ask: why these and not other biosocial mechanisms of
individual perception, attention, consciousness, and memory as proposed in
recent work in social neuroscience (e.g., Cacioppo et al. [2002])? The answer
was already suggested above: the mechanisms identified by Elster gain most
of their traction against the background of rational choice assumptions.
The mechanisms proposed under “Interaction,” one would expect, are
the more specifically social—as opposed to psychological and biological—
mechanisms. Several mechanisms here, however, are variations on individuals’
systematic failure to take into account the actual beliefs of other actors
and their effects for the outcome of their own particular action (“younger
sibling syndrome,” “older sibling syndrome”), in other words: failures of
individual rationality. Another mechanism explains a social outcome in

Book Review 183
standard rational choice terms as the aggregate result of individually rational
action. Thus former colonies with many languages are said to retain the
colonizer’s language because this is “everybody’s second-ranked option”
(p. 452). An abstract psychological mechanisms of this kind is of limited
help in identifying the actual social mechanisms explaining the highly varied
postcolonial language histories and permutations (see, e.g., Simpson [2007],
[2008]). The mechanisms explaining why individual voters vote even though
their “vote is virtually certain to have no effect on the outcome” (p. 452) are
said to be twofold: first, magical thinking (already listed under mechanisms
of the mind); second, acting on the categorical imperative. The mechanism
explaining why people tip taxi drivers and waiters is that “the thought that
others think badly about them is painful” (p. 453). Whatever their merit
as causal mechanisms, all of them are further instances of psychological
mechanisms.
A small number of mechanisms discussed under “Interaction” might des-
erve the label “social mechanisms.” For example, “people are more averse
to open displays of economic inequality than to hidden ones” (p. 453). Being
averse is of course once again a psychological mechanism, but we might
shift our emphasis on the structural aspect of the mechanism, that is, eco-
nomic inequality and its display. To what extent and how this mechanism
may be at work would seem to depend on other—sociocultural—mechanisms,
such as a society’s status system, dominant ideology, and legitimation pro-
cesses in this respect (cf. the United States versus Sweden). Another
mechanism Elster identifies is the well-known tit-for-tat behaviour based on
ongoing interaction over longer periods of time. Cooperation is undoubtedly
a fundamental social mechanism on par with conflict. But in such general
terms, such mechanisms are of little explanatory value unless combined with
other social mechanisms such as the working of particular organizational
structures and collective belief systems under specific historical conditions.
Social scientists are not usually considered experts in the working of the
human mind/brain. They tend to hold assumptions about the human mind,
simplistic or sophisticated, which may or may not be informed by the disci-
pline of psychology. It is a sign of the high degree of disciplinary insulation
that social scientists tend to adopt a set of assumptions about the mind
without any explicit reference to the work of psychologists. (Conversely,
most approaches in psychology rest on assumptions about social factors—
“they can be ignored”—that are never spelled out, let alone checked against
social science research.) Social scientists with a structuralist orientation
(methodological holists) have a strong, though not unproblematic argument
that individual subjectivity matters very little in explaining larger social
phenomena. Thus there is really no point in conceptualizing what is assumed

184 Philosophy of the Social Sciences 40(1)
to have little or no causal significance. Methodological individualists like
Elster, on the other hand, cannot take this route to justify their lack of interest
in psychology for their own work on the human mind and individual action.
So the question is: how do the cognitive mechanisms identified by Elster
relate to the results of psychological research? He doesn’t say, even though
he is committed in principle to draw lessons from other sciences.
If a student were to ask me how Elster’s toolbox could be used to explain
rising class inequality in the twenty-first century, the breakdown of states in the
periphery, social effects of the internet, the exportability of Western institutions
to the rest of the world, the causes of the Iraq War, or the actual functioning
of political institutions in the United States, my answer would be: follow
Elster’s general advice to look for causal mechanisms, but don’t spend too
much time on the largely psychological mechanisms contained in Elster’s
toolbox. Your questions call above all for identifying a variety of social
mechanisms—economic, political, cultural—as well as knowledge of historically
specific structures and systems. Unfortunately, our toolbox of social mechanisms
is neither well organized nor sufficiently explicit at this point to be easily
picked up and put to use (Mayntz 2004). Elster’s book is a partial, but
valuable contribution in the larger effort to advance this agenda.a
References
Bunge, Mario. 2004. How does it work? The search for explanatory mechanisms.
Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34 (2): 182-210.
Cacioppo, John T., Gary Berntson, Shelley Taylor, and Daniel Schacter, eds. 2002.
Foundations in social neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Elster, Jon. 1978. Logic and society. Chichester, UK: John Wiley.
Elster, Jon. 1979. Ulysses and the sirens. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Elster, Jon. 1985. Making sense of Marx. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Elster, Jon. 1989. Nuts and bolts. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Hedström, Peter. 2005. Dissecting the social: On the principles of analytical sociol-
ogy. Cambridge University Press.
aIt is regrettable that Explaining Social Behavior does not even mention, let
alone engage, the literature on mechanism-based explanation produced over the
last two decades. The only exception is Hedström’s (2005) Dissecting the Social:
On the Principles of Analytical Sociology, an author who shares Elster’s view that
social mechanisms are really psychological mechanisms. The alternative view of
social mechanisms, in addition to psychological mechanisms, includes relational or
structural and environmental mechanisms (see, e.g., Bunge [2004]; McAdam, Tar-
row, and Tilly [2001]; Pickel [2006]; Tilly [2001]; two special issues on “systems
and mechanisms” in this journal [Matzner and Swedberg 1998; Pickel 2004]).

Book Review 185
Matzner, Egon and Richard Swedberg. 1998. Introduction to the special issues on
situational analysis. Philosophy of the social sciences 28(3): 333-338.
Matzner, Egon, and Richard Swedberg. 1998. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 28
(3-4). Special issues: Situational analysis.
Mayntz, Renate. 2004. Mechanisms in the analysis of social macro-phenomena. Phil-
osophy of the Social Sciences 34 (2): 237-59.
McAdam, Doug, Sidney G. Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. 2001. Dynamics of contention.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Pickel, Andreas, ed. 2004. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34 (2-3). Special issues:
Systems and mechanisms: A symposium on Mario Bunge’s philosophy of social
science.
Pickel, Andreas. 2006. The problem of order in the global age: Systems and mecha-
nisms. New York: Palgrave.
Simpson, Andrew. 2007. Language and national identity in Asia. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Simpson, Andrew. 2008. Language and national identity in Africa. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Tilly, Charles. 2001. Mechanisms in political processes. Annual Review of Political
Science 4:21-41.
Wilson, E. O. 1975. Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Press of Harvard University.