This is relevant to the thread on descriptive vs. prescriptive theories of decision making. -chris
-------------------------- Managerial and Decision Economics Early View (Articles online in advance of print) Copyright � 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Research Article The Savanna Principle Satoshi Kanazawa * Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand email: Satoshi Kanazawa ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) *Correspondence to Satoshi Kanazawa, Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand Abstract Why do microeconomic theories (such as decision theory and game theory) often fail to predict human behavior despite their mathematical elegance and deductive rigor? I suggest that such empirical failures stem from the theory's misconception of how the human brain functions. Drawing on evolutionary psychology, I propose the Savanna Principle, which posits that a hypothesis about human behavior fails to the extent that its scope conditions and assumptions are inconsistent with the ancestral environment, and its experimental corollary, that the Savanna Principle holds (and the hypothesis fails) to the extent that the conditions of the experiment resemble the ancestral environment. I suggest that the Savanna Principle and its corollary might together explain the relative empirical failure of noncooperative game theory and public choice theory, and the relative success of network exchange theory and competitive price theory tested in double auction markets in experimental economics. Copyright � 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Digital Object Identifier (DOI) 10.1002/mde.1130 http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/104537180/ABSTRACT
