Cognition and Extended Rational Choice

Howard Margolis is a Professor in the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies and the College. He has taught at the University of California-Irvine, and has held research positions at the Institute for Advanced Study, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Margolis' major research interest is in social theory, particularly the underpinnings of individual choice and judgment, which shape aggregate social outcomes. The principal results of this work have been five books: Selfishness, Altruism and Rationality (Cambridge University Press, 1982, University of Chicago Press, 1984); Patterns, Thinking and Cognition (University of Chicago Press, 1987), Paradigms and Barriers (University of Chicago Press, 1993), Dealing with Risk: Why the Public and the Experts Disagree on Environmental Issues (University of Chicago Press, 1996) and It Started with Copernicus: How Turning the World Inside Out Led to the Scientific Revolution (McGraw-Hill 2002).

"Twenty-five years ago I strongly recommended Margolis’s Selfishness, Altruism, and Rationality. Now, five books later, it is exciting to see how much farther he's taken that theory, supported it with an extensive review of laboratory experiments, and applied it to groups, large and small, resolving numerous puzzles along the way." - Thomas C. Schelling , 2005 Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics

• Introduction. 1. The NSNX Model. 2. Dual-utilities. 3. Norms. 4. The Schelling Diagram. 5. Using the Schelling Diagram. 6. Adverse Defaults. 7. The NSNX Cascade. 8. Public Goods Experiments. 9. Reciprocity Puzzles. 10. Social Illusions. 11. What We See in the World that Looks Like What We See in this Theory: The Case of Terrorism. Appendix: The Data Template.