Q&A
Evolutionarily speaking, the focus for Homo sapiens is on the here and now. Describe how the focus of Homo Economicus differs.
As the name implies, Homo Economicus is an invention of economists. The assumption is that, as information processors and decision-makers, human beings are rational: We base our decisions on evidence; we evaluate risk and time in appropriate ways; and we combine all inputs in rational ways. The problem with that framework—which is certainly something to aspire to — is that human beings simply don’t work that way, at least most of the time.
Because of the way we evolved, we had to make decisions in a timely fashion in order to survive to see tomorrow; and the result is a focus on the here and now. The problem is, early in our evolution, we were avoiding threats like predators on a daily basis; but today, the threats we face are things like climate change. These are very different kinds of threats, and an approach that served us well in the past does not serve us quite so well now.
In a world where we make choices every day, why is it so important which option we consider first?
In my time at Columbia, I worked for many on Query Theory, a framework that explains how people actually make decisions across different contexts. One key thing we found is, because humans are finite information processors, we think about things .
