Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences (Paperback)

by Jon Elster (Author)
Key Phrases: trust game, ultimatum game, assurance game, New York, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
All manners of professional obfuscators - enthusiasts of grand syntheses, invokers of 'the context', zealots of the quantitative, and those who cannot write two sentences without resorting to the word 'discourse' - should gang up and set fire to this book. By contrast, those who, whether by profession or by obsession, work hard to explain social phenomena by identifying their causal mechanisms and take no analytical shortcuts to satisfy their craving for generalisations should reach for the fire extinguisher. For them this book is an indispensable instrument to navigate rigorously and intelligently the maze of puzzling social behaviours - a summa, rich with riveting examples, of the social scientific knowledge we have so far achieved that can help us make cogent sense of the social world. Diego Gambetta, Nuffield College, University of Oxford Professor of Sociology and Official Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford "This latest book in Elster's continuing quest of the essence of the social sciences is not only provocative, it is fun to read. His versatility keeps producing surprises and puzzles that hold one's attention from the first pages. The book's appeal is to an audience wider than the whole of social science." Thomas Schelling, University of Maryland "Elster's book is an intellectual pleasure, full of exciting insights and examples about the nature of explanation in the social sciences. It is thought provoking and offers a structure for assessing the "scientificness" of different approaches. The book is essential reading for social scientists and helps us to separate the wheat from the chaff." Ernest Fehr, Director of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
"...contains many interesting puzzles and examples, and excellent elementary discussions of the major concepts of the social sciences...a treasure trove of suitable and interesting case-studies and examples..." --Dean Rickles, University of Sydney: Philosophy in Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 484 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (April 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521777445
• ISBN-13: 978-0521777445
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #35,238 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply the best: read it at least twice, November 23, 2007

By	meno "meno" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

I read this book twice. The first time, I thought that it was excellent, the best compendium of ideas of social science by arguably the best thinker in the field. I took copious notes, etc. I agreed with its patchwork-style approach to rational decision making. I knew that it had huge insights applicable to my refusal of general theories [they don't work], rather limit ourselves to nuts and bolts [they work].
Then I started reading it again, as the book tends to locate itself by my bedside and sneaks itself in my suitcase when I go on a trip. It is as if the book wanted me to read it. It is what literature does to you when it is at its best. So I realized why: it had another layer of depth --and the author distilled ideas from the works of Proust, La Rochefoucault, Tocqueville, Montaigne, people with the kind of insights that extend beyond the ideas, and that makes you feel that a reductionist academic treatment of the subject will necessary distort it [& somehow Elster managed to combine Montaigne and Kahneman-Tversky]. So as an anti-Platonist I finally found a rigorous treatment of human nature that is not Platonistic --not academic (in the bad sense of the word).
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing vision of the whole of social science, December 21, 2007

By	Aaron Swartz - See all my reviews

For the past forty years, Jon Elster has attempted to explain things ranging from the emotions to technological change. The result is dozens of books (and even more papers) in three languages across four universities. And throughout, his work has not just been exemplary social science, but has always struggled with the question of what social science _should be_ -- what kinds of explanations are legitimate, which techniques should be used, and so on.

As he reaches his late sixties, it is understandable if he begins to think of his legacy. That certainly would help explain his latest book, _Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences_ (Cambridge University Press, 2007), a 500-page masterpiece that I expect will be seen as the summation of a brilliant career.

It's a book unlike any other and, as a result, unless read from start to finish can seem bizarre, if only because one has little sense of what the book is trying to do. It is not a guidebook, or a textbook, or a piece of social science in itself. In short, it is nothing less than an attempt to summarize an idealized vision of the whole of social science in simple language.

The book's foundational assumption (as implied by its title) is that the goal of social science is to discover explanations for social phenomena. It begins by describing what explanations are and discussing their different forms. But the bulk of the book consists of tools that can be used in explanations: emotions, norms, time discounting, weakness of will, magical thinking, cognitive dissonance, heuristics and biases, rationality, irrationality, neuroscience, evolution, externalities, game theory, pluralistic ignorance, informational cascades, collective action, cyclical preferences, institutions, etc. -- in short, the entire toolkit of the social sciences.

Just as amazing as the breadth topics is the way in which they're covered. Elster explains each phenomenon clearly and concisely, so that any educated reader can understand them with little effort, without ever sacrificing intellectual depth. His explanations are peppered with examples from an amazing variety of sources: ancient history, recent history, personal experience, the classics of social science (e.g. Tocqueville), the great philosophers (Montaigne, Pascal, Mill), and classic novelists (e.g. Proust). The result is a book which not just introduces readers to the discoveries of the social sciences but to the intellectual world as a whole. Bibliographical notes following each chapter as well as the conclusion provide a rich guide for further exploration.

And yet it's not simply a compendium of interesting results in the social sciences, but attempts to defend a particular conception of what the social sciences should be. In the conclusion, Elster defends his notion of social science as the attempt to discover particular explanations for particular phenomena against the "soft obscurantism" of the literary theorists and the "hard obscurantism" of the economists. As part of this, he turns his back on the notion of rational-choice models being an explanation in themselves, noting that their many assumptions are in desperate need of empirical defense.

In response to an earlier draft of this review, Elster wrote "I'm glad you appreciate the details in my book, but you're missing the big picture, which is that there isn't any." Instead of trying to build a Grand Theory which explains all of social life, we should try to build explanations of particular phenomena from the nuts and bolts we have lying around. And "even if a dominant explanation of a given event or episode is discarded and then resurrected, the building blocks or mechanisms at work in the discarding and resurrection remain. The repertory, or the size of the toolbox, does not shrink."

For anyone who cares about social science, Elster has done an amazing service in clearly describing the toolbox's contents and defending its importance.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A well-written summary of Elster's main themes., November 20, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences (Paperback)

A very cogent summary of Elster's main themes: rationality and how one departs from it, especially from the static notion common in current rational choice theory. Anyone interested in rationality and departures from rationality--a topic much-ignored in current thinking and applications of rational choice theory-- should read this book. While I don't find that I agree with every conclusion Elster makes, he does make me think hard, which is about the best I ever expect.