This paper is based on a long-term research program with Rachel Kranton on the implications of identity

2

This section is especially based on previously published articles written with Rachel Kranton (Akerlof and

Kranton (2000), (2002), (2005)).  The rendition here is taken from our joint manuscript explaining the role of norms

in economics.  I am especially grateful to her for allowing me to present this joint work as motivation for this lecture.

3

See Pareto (1920).  Homans and Curtis (1934) give an excellent summary of Pareto that is fully consistent

upon the emphasis here.  Elster (1989) also presents a similar conception of norms.    

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Manicka (2002).

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Miller it depends only on the discounted real return to shareholders.

2

 

But as early as the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Vilfredo Pareto pointed out that

such characterizations of utility missed important aspects of motivation.

3

  According to Pareto

people typically have opinions as to how they should, or how they should not, behave.  They also

have views on how others should, or should not, behave.  Accordingly, they lose utility insofar

as they, or others, fail to live up to these standards.   Such notions are central to motivation in

sociology, but they are absent from economists’ representations of utility.  People’s views of 

how they, and others, should or should not behave, are called norms.  Even though these views

may be held with great conviction, they are usually not moral or ethical views.  For example,

there is no great ethical principle that women should wear a hat in a church and men should not

(a leading example in Homans’ Introduction to Pareto).  Nor are these views always social.  For 

example the protagonist of Rice Mother thought she should not wear red with black.

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It is useful to understand why sociologists have considered norms to be central to

motivation.  People tend to be happy when they live up to how they think they should be; they

tend to be unhappy when they fail to live up to those views.  George Loewenstein (1999) has

illustrated this principle by asking why climbers pursue mountaineering.  There are few tasks

that are as distant from the conventional view of utility as mountaineering.  It may be very

costly.  It is extremely arduous.  And it is dangerous.  People pursue it nonetheless.  One of the

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5

See especially Akerlof and Kranton (2005).

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Akerlof and Kranton (2005) illustrate such motivation by the behavior of Mike, a Chicago steelworker

who is interviewed by Studs Terkel (1972).  Mike is extremely alienated from his routine job and takes it out by

getting into tavern brawls after work.  

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primary motivations for the mountaineer is the pleasure of framing a view of who he is, and then

having the pleasure of living up to those standards.

Mountaineering is of course an extreme activity.  But sociologists think that similar

motivation applies to a wide variety of every-day activities.  Sociologists view people engaged in

these activities as having an ideal for how they should behave and then obtaining pleasure from

living up to that ideal.

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  Sociologists also think people often conceive of that ideal in human

terms.  The ideal may correspond to the performance of someone they know, of someone they do

not know, or even of some fictional character in their imagination.  

Teaching provides a mundane example that is familiar to all of us.  A teacher usually has

a clear view of what it means to be a good teacher.  If she lives up to that standard, she feels

good about herself; if she falls short she may even feel quite miserable.  The same feelings apply

to most any activity, from playing golf to being a parent.  It applies to the conduct of most jobs. 

Randy Hodson (2001), who surveyed ethnographies of the US workplace, found that most

employees care about their dignity at work.  They want to conceive of what they do as useful. 

And they feel a lack of dignity if they are thwarted, either by their own actions or the actions of

others.  Those who are unable to get such satisfaction are likely to show their displeasure by

acting up in some way or other.

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The sociologist Erving Goffman (1961) has illustrated the pleasure derived from pursuing

an appropriate activity with the delight of toddlers in riding the merry-go-round.   In contrast, for

older children, there is a gap between their conception of how they should behave and riding the

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Goffman (1961) observed the behavior of such students in medical operations.  

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merry-go-round.  For them the merry-go-round is age-inappropriate.  They show their discomfort

by playing the clown.  But such misbehavior is not just the stuff of kids.  In surgical operations,

because of their inexperience, medical students are given tasks that are ridiculously easy.

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  They

respond in the same way as the older children at the merry-go-round: they act the clown.   These

examples are illustrative of behavior that is pervasive.  Sociology is dense in examples of

people’s views as to how they and others should behave, their joy when they live up to those

standards, and their discomfort and reactions when they fail to do so.

 The Milgram experiment (1963, 1965) has many different interpretations; but one valid

interpretation, which is especially popular among sociologists and social identity theorists,

suggests the strength of people’s motivation to do what they think they should do.  Recall the

experiment.  The experiment begins as the subject is told by the white-coated experimenter that

he will participate in a study of learning.  He draws straws with a third person, who also seems to

be another subject, to decide who will play the role of learner and who will play the role of

teacher.  Unbeknown to the subject, however, the third person is a trained actor and a

confederate of the experimenter.  Also the drawing is rigged to assign him automatically to be

the teacher.  He is then instructed on what he should do as the teacher.  He is told that the learner

is wired (another deception) to a machine that allows the teacher to give him electric shocks. 

Whenever the learner makes a mistake, the teacher is told that he should administer electric

shocks of escalating voltage.  There are many different versions, but all give a surprising fraction

of subjects who escalate their shocks to a lethal dose of 450 volts.  For example in the trial where

the confederate grunts and moans at 75 volts; asks to be let out of the experiment at 150 volts;

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