Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

From Individual Rationality to Socially Embedded Self‐Regulation

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From Individual Rationality to Socially Embedded Self‐Regulation

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From Individual Rationality to
Socially Embedded Self-Regulation
SIEGWART LINDENBERG

Abstract
The emerging trend is that we let go of the idea that humans are naturally endowed
with “rationality” (especially in the sense of consistency and utility maximization,
as in microeconomic) in favor of an evolutionary view in which the brain evolved
together with the affordances and problems offered by living in larger groups.
Rather than seeing humans as having evolved to pursue their self-interest in a utility
maximizing way, what is emerging is to see humans as having evolved to draw
adaptive advantage from living in larger groups by a set of self-regulatory abilities
(some of which are more or less automatic and can be overridden by less automatic
capabilities). The self-regulatory abilities, in turn, can vary and are much dependent
on the social environment. For example, having significant others is vital for one’s
self-regulatory ability, as is the capacity to change one’s environment in order to
strengthen one’s self-regulatory capacity. The sociologically interesting part of all
this is exactly this social dependence of self-regulatory capacity. Rationality, if that
term would still be used, is thus thoroughly a matter of person by environment
interaction. This has fundamental consequences for how social science is done.

THE INTUITIVE IDEA OF RATIONALITY AND SELF-REGULATION
Imagine you live in a country in which freedom of expression is suppressed,
in which supernatural forces are said to provide the right to govern, and in
which women or certain races or lower classes are seen as inherently cognitively inferior, even by leading scholars. In such a society, the idea that all
human beings are rational (in the sense of being equally endowed with reason) and that this rationality would guide them if only they were free to act
as they see fit, is revolutionary, emancipatory, and scientifically progressive.
This is basically what happened in the age of enlightenment. When human
Motto:
“The argument that natural selection shaped human nature specifically for participation in culture...holds that self-regulation is one of the most important factors in making it possible for human
beings to live as they do” (Vohs & Baumeister, 2004, p. 3). “Crucially, it appears amenable to improvement”
(Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007).
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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rationality is claimed to be inherently innate only in people of a certain gender, or certain race or class, it is, from what we know now, a scientific advance
to proffer an ideal typical counter claim that all human beings are equally
rational.
Much has happened since the dawn of the age of enlightenment. By now,
the cultural achievements of the enlightenment themselves created the space
for scientific advances that deviate from the conceptions of rationality that
were born in the enlightenment. The new trend described in this essay is
that the priorities are seriously changing and thereby what is desirable as
microfoundation in the social sciences: ideal-typical conceptions of human
capacities and simplifications made for the sake of the formalism should not
have priority over realism. Instead, the realism of the theory should have
priority over working with ideal types and over tractability in formal models, be that in economics or in sociology. The main drivers of advances that
show the way to go are, in my opinion, cognitive psychology and cognitive
sociology on the one hand, and evolutionary anthropology and evolutionary
psychology on the other, both aided by social neuroscience (Cacioppo, Visser,
& Pickett, 2006). The trend is toward a greater integration of social, cognitive,
and biological levels of analysis. In the following, I present what I consider
to be the most important developments in this regard. These developments
have important consequences for virtually all fields in which behavioral theories are applied to social contexts, importantly including institutional design.
I argue later that we would advance our theories in the behavioral and
socioeconomic sciences if we would think about human rationality in terms
of human self-regulatory ability rather than in terms of decision making and
consistency concerning ordered preferences and constraints (economics) or
values and behavior (sociology).
To make things not too complicated, I dichotomize a continuum of
self-regulatory processes into two orders: a lower and a higher order. An
example of the lower order is falling asleep when one is very tired. An
example of the higher order is the suppression of outward signs of anger.
If there were only lower order self-regulatory processes, they would have
much to do with functionality (e.g., for the survival of the organism) but
not with rationality (in the widest intuitive sense of involving purposeful
action). However, as we will see, higher order self-regulatory processes
involve the dynamics of overarching goals (not just plain functionality) and
these goals are subject to considerable social influence.
What is so different by taking this turn and replace “rationality” by
self-regulation? Some forms of behavior that look irrational have more
recently been analyzed with regard to the possibility that they make evolutionary sense (Gigerenzer, 2002). This is certainly an important advance.
However, more to the point of this essay, a great deal of behavior that looks

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irrational is actually a failure of self-regulation (e.g., in terms of choosing
inferior short-term options at the expense of better long-term options, or
letting oneself be influenced by seemingly trivial cues in the situation).
Self-regulatory ability varies and has coevolved with social and cultural
developments, and because it is thoroughly dependent on social supports,
one can also speak of “social rationality” (Lindenberg, 2013a).
Much of human self-regulatory capacity is dedicated to making humans
able to take care of themselves, and to establish and maintain the conditions
for being able to take care of themselves (such as the ability to elicit the cooperation of others, and to be able to adequately cooperate with others). This
implies that part of self-regulatory ability is to seek out conditions that help
maintain this ability. Not everybody succeeds equally in this effort, so that,
contrary to the concept of rationality in rational choice theory, self-regulatory
ability as conceived here is assumed to vary among human beings not just
as a trait but also as a state that is heavily dependent on social factors. For
example, if somebody is surrounded by others with low self-control, his own
self-regulatory ability will suffer (Christakis & Fowler, 2007).
Considering this dependency explicitly opens up a new perspective on
institutional analysis. Institutions have much to do with the way people
deal with conflicting goals (e.g., short-term vs long-term). The concept of
“rationality as consistency” does not only neglect such conflicts but rules
them out if they cannot be conceptualized as trade-offs.
The evidence that self-regulatory capacity differs among people and that
it matters for income, status, health, crime, and many other important outcomes of behavior that would possibly be covered by an intuitive idea of
acting rationally is overwhelming (see, e.g., Moffitt et al., 2011; Steverink &
Lindenberg, 2008).
THE SOCIAL BRAIN
My point of departure for thinking about self-regulation is human evolution. This vantage point allows us to draw on a wide variety of research that
directly impacts self-regulation and its antecedents. Human evolution is a
coevolution of genes and culture in the sense that genetic predispositions
affect culture (including social norms and the way people interact), and when
culture is adaptive, genetic selection will code improved cognitive processes
to absorb and transmit culture (Richerson & Boyd, 2005). Nested in this process is the coevolution of the brain and the size of the social group (Dunbar,
2003). The importance of this finding is that it allows us to integrate a great
variety of results from evolutionary anthropology and psychology, from cognitive psychology and sociology, and from (social) neuroscience around the

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social aspects of the brain, prominently including the capacity to self-regulate
(Lindenberg, 2013a, 2014).
Pair bonding and cooperative breeding are likely to have been the main
initial driving forces behind the development of the social brain (Dunbar &
Shultz, 2007; Hrdy, 2009). However, the gene-culture coevolution is likely to
have driven the process further and further by pushing the sophisticated correlated brain and culture adaptation to such heights that human beings can
draw huge adaptive advantages from living in larger groups because they can
equip these groups with sophisticated collective goods (Lindenberg & Foss,
2011; Sebanz, Bekkering, & Knoblich, 2006; Tomasello & Carpenter, 2007). In
other words, the better humans can jointly create collective goods, the higher
the individual advantage from being part of such a group. In this light, looking for “altruistic” preferences in humans is only a small step in the right
direction because it does not even come close to finding (let alone searching
for) the “social brain” conditions that govern the joint creation of collective
goods. As I argue, these conditions have much to do with self-regulatory
capabilities and the elaborate cognitive and motivational brain power they
require (Lieberman, 2007).
SELF-REGULATION AND DYNAMICS OF OVERARCHING GOALS
Human beings are equipped with many lower order self-regulatory capacities, such as generating emotions, reflexes that are mostly regulated by
the “old” brain (e.g., brain stem, basal ganglia, and thalamus). The higher
order regulatory processes, such as emotion regulation, involve virtually all
regions of the brain, but they prominently include the “new” brain (the neocortex, especially the frontal lobes). In contrast to the lower order processes,
higher order self-regulation very much involves consideration of context
(such as the presence of conflicting lower order processes, appropriateness
of a (re)action; expectations of others, longer term consequences of one’s
(re)action, and norm-oriented behavior (Goldberg, 2009). For understanding
both lower and higher order self-regulatory processes, we have to look at the
dynamics of overarching goals. Roughly, the idea is that overarching goals
are crucial for the balance between lower and higher order self-regulatory
processes. In turn, by and large, it is the social environment and not the
individual that determines the salience of a particular overarching goal
and thereby behavior. Self-regulation thus consists, to a large degree, of the
anticipation of these saliency effects and of a choice of environments.
Even though the concepts of “goals” and “preferences” are often used
interchangeably, goals represent a whole mental architecture, whereas preferences to not. Goal pursuit involves our most sophisticated brain power
and it is not necessarily conscious (Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar,

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& Trötschel, 2001). Goals are mental constructs that rely on a considerable
number of mental capacities: the capacity to cognitively represent desired
states; to monitor the degree to which a goal that is presently activated has
been achieved; to detect errors; and to react to this information in such a way
that, when the goal is realized, one turns to another goal, or, when progress
is not satisfying, to take action for improvement; to respond emotionally to
success and failure in goal pursuit and to quickly determine the direction of
action (approach or avoidance); and to inhibit incompatible goals (Carver &
Scheier, 1998). Concrete goals are nested in overarching goals or “mindsets”
(Lindenberg & Steg, 2007). To some degree, overarching goals are chronically
activated, thus making “mixed motives” the “normal” situation. However,
in most situations, one overarching goal is more strongly activated than
the others and it “frames” the entire situation, largely governing what we
attend to; what information we are sensitive to; what we expect others to
do; what we like and dislike; and what criteria we use for success of failure
of goal achievement. The more strongly one overarching goal is activated,
the more the other overarching goals are inhibited. Related to this is the
fact that overarching goals can make effects spread from an episode with
one subgoal to an episode with a possibly completely different subgoal by
a so-called cross-episode effect. The first episode (e.g., eating chocolate)
can increase or decreases the activation of a particular overarching goal
(in this case, it increases one that is related to indulgence) which, in turn,
can change the relative balance between overarching goals and thereby
influences the next episode (e.g., shifting channels on TV to watch—against
one’s original plan—a low-brow erotic film). Overarching goals can capture
the entire mind and frame the perception of and reaction to the world. In
that sense, such goals can make us act very differently when changing social
contexts activate different overarching goals. How they differ is described
in an emerging perspective called goal-framing theory (Lindenberg & Steg,
2007), a perspective that relates directly to a goal-related conception of
self-regulation. As a first step in the analysis of self-regulation, I present the
overarching goals.
HEDONIC, NORMATIVE, AND GAIN GOALS
THE HEDONIC GOAL
The most basic overarching goal is related to the satisfaction of fundamental needs (consummatory behavior). The state of need satisfaction is indicated by the way one feels. For example, if the body needs food, one feels
hungry. The link of need state to feelings is itself a lower (albeit imperfect)
self-regulatory device. Focusing on improving (or maintaining) the way one

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feels is a basic overarching goal, called hedonic goal. Its level of activation
can be increased by cues in the environment. For example, seeing food can
trigger an urge to eat and thereby increase the focus on improving the way
one feels. This hedonic goal is characterized by a focus on feelings here and
now, with considerations of context (such as decorum, or health, future consequences) playing a subordinate role. The cross-episode effect has been well
demonstrated for the hedonic goal. For example, being exposed to the picture
of an attractive woman in an advertisement for loans increased loan demand
by about as much as a 25% reduction in the interest rate (Bertrand, Karlan,
Mullainathan, Shafir, & Zinman, 2010).
THE NORMATIVE GOAL
The ability to put oneself in the shoes of others is not unique to humans but
in humans it has evolved to unprecedented heights, with cognitive (theory
of mind), emotional (empathy), and mirror neuron capacities (Blair, 2005).
This mentalizing virtuosity probably evolved in the context of pairbonding
and cooperative breeding (Dunbar & Shultz, 2007; Hrdy, 2009), and it is the
basis for the possibly most important mental change in human evolution:
the development of both a normative overarching goal and a gain-oriented
overarching goal. First, the normative goal. Living with others and also
encountering other and potentially competing groups very likely created
selective pressure on being able to put oneself in the shoes of the whole
group, adopting group goals as one’s own (Lindenberg, 2014; Tomasello,
Melis, Tennie, Wyman, & Herrmann, 2012). The overarching goal is to do
what is socially expected, what is appropriate; what furthers the realization
of group goals (norm-oriented behavior). One can hardly overestimate the
importance of such an overarching goal for the possibilities that group have
adaptive advantages for individuals within them.
Group goals are often codified in terms of norms, hence the name normative
goal. When this goal is salient, people are especially sensitive to information about social expectations and to others’ (dis)respect for norms. Even
though the positive effects for the group of following a norm may lie in the
future, the feeling of obligation created by a salient normative goal is “here
and now,” making future discounting effects unlikely. In a normative goal
frame, people cooperate even if they do not consider the consequences of
their prosocial action (Burton-Chellew & West, 2013). The cross-episode effect
that characterizes an overarching goal has been amply demonstrated for the
normative goal. For example, when people see others disrespect norm A, this
will weaken their normative goal and they are more likely to disrespect an
unrelated norm B. We demonstrated this with a number of simple field experiments (Keizer, Lindenberg, & Steg, 2008). For example, graffiti (compared to

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no graffiti) on a mailbox doubled the percentage of passersby who stole an
envelope hanging from the mailbox and showing a 5 Euro bill as content. We
could show that this effect was not due to the idea that where there is graffiti,
sanctions are unlikely and thus I may steal with impunity. Observing disrespect for the norm “not to disfigure others’ property” decreased the salience
of the normative goal and thus increased in the observer the likelihood of disrespect for a completely different (and in general highly internalized) norm
“not to steal.” True to the hypothesized cross-episode effect of overarching
goals, we also found the converse: observing respect for norm A increased
respect for norm B in the observer (Keizer, Lindenberg, & Steg, 2013).
THE GAIN GOAL
The very same ability to put oneself in the shoes of others was also the basis
for the development of the ability to put oneself in one’s own shoes projected
into the future. This is the basis for planning, investing, and quite generally for resource-oriented behavior. People are by no means always good
at considering the future (Gilbert & Wilson, 2000), but the ability to have
a future-oriented overarching goal is there and can be trained. The overarching goal that is linked to this future orientation is “to increase (or keep
from decreasing) your resources,” called a gain goal. It has a longer term orientation and makes people highly sensitive to changes in resources (such as
winning opportunities, possible losses, and out-of-pocket costs). This sensitivity combined with the ability to put oneself in the shoes of others and
of oneself in the future is also the basis for cheating and exploitation (Epley,
Caruso, & Bazerman, 2006). Thus, the same ability that supports a truly social
overarching goal (to realize group goals) also allows a quite selfish overarching goal that relates to the improvement of one’s resources (be that in
terms of valuable goods, status or money). The cross-episode effects that
belong to overarching goals have also been demonstrated for the gain goal.
For example, Caruso, Vohs, Baxter, and Waytz (2012) found that the mere
exposure to money (strengthening the gain goal) increased the willingness to
rationalize social injustice through strategies of blaming the poor and unfortunate for their fate, that is, it decreased the normative concern about social
injustice. Other examples are the many investigations of a “crowding out”
effect (Frey & Jegen, 2001). For example, Falk and Szech (2013) conducted
experiments on markets (bilateral and multilateral double auctions) and concluded that “markets erode moral values.” People are by no means always
good at considering the future (Gilbert & Wilson, 2000) and the salience of the
gain goal is highly dependent on the social environment. Even though both
hedonic and gain goals can be said to be linked to rewards, they are linked

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to different kinds of rewards and to different time perspectives, even in the
neural systems (McClure, Laibson, Loewenstein, & Cohen, 2004).
For behavior, it is thus important which of the three overarching goals is the
most salient. This depends to a large extent on cues that influence the interpretation of the situation. For example, Liberman, Samuels, and Ross (2004)
found that labeling one and the same social dilemma as either a “Community
Game” or a “Wallstreet Game” made cooperation rates differ markedly.
RELATION OF OVERARCHING GOALS TO SELF-MANAGEMENT
There are at least three important links of overarching goals to self-regulation.
First, each of the three overarching goals is all by itself a form of
self-regulation in the sense that when it is salient, it helps realize important
aspects of adaptive behavior. The hedonic goal helps regulate the satisfaction
of fundamental needs, the normative goal helps regulate contributions to
collective goods, and the gain goal helps realize resources that are necessary
for both the satisfaction of fundamental needs and the ability to contribute
to collective goods.
Secondly, “effortful” self-regulation involves dominance relationships
between the overarching goals, because the a priori strength of the overarching goals is not equal. In terms of lower and higher level self-regulatory
processes, there is an important difference. When the hedonic goal is salient,
lower level processes (not much sensitive to context) are highly active. By
contrast, the other two overarching goals are mainly instruments of higher
order self-regulation, that is, of processes that involve much attention to
context. In addition, they involve inhibiting lower order self-regulatory
processes, such as falling asleep, giving in to inappropriate urges, giving
priority to short-term benefits, and help regulate emotions.
Both, attention to context and inhibitions, require much mental energy and
thus the gain and normative goal need extra support to be strong enough to
inhibit the hedonic goal. For this very reason, the most prominent example of
“effortful” self-regulation is impulse control, that is, the tendency to counteract or override a prepotent response (often called self-control). In most cases
this involves the gain- or the normative goal inhibiting the hedonic goal.
Effortful self-regulation also entails the normative goal inhibiting the gain
goal. An example is finding a wallet with a sizable amount of money, being
tempted to keep the money, and deciding nonetheless to turn it in to the lost
and found without removing all or some of the money.
Third, because each overarching goal is important for achieving important
aspects of adaptive behavior, self-regulation also entails finding a balance
between the three goals. What it involves to achieve a balance depends, however, on the supports for overarching goals that are present. For example,

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resisting temptations is very important when the hedonic goal is relatively
strong. However, when the support for the normative goal is very strong, one
may even have to plan one’s “fun” and other hedonic experiences (Kivetz &
Simonson, 2002). We thus have to look at the supports (and lack of supports)
of overarching goals that are present in a culture (macro level), in the group
and organizational contexts (meso level) and in relationships and individual
differences (micro level). I briefly discuss each of these levels.
SUPPORTS FOR THE OVERARCHING GOALS
THE MACRO CONTEXT
Institutions can influence the conditions for self-regulatory capacity in a variety of ways, but mostly importantly via their supports (or lack of supports) of
overarching goals (2006). If you lived in a society in which the institutional
context strongly supports, say, the normative goal, as in Victorian society,
self-regulation would meet different challenges than if you lived in a society in which institutions strongly support the gain or hedonic goal. Classical
sociologists have shown time and again that institutions can push a society
in one of the three directions of the overarching goals. For example, against
economists who assume the gain goal to be the human default orientation,
Max Weber has spent much of his career showing that it takes considerable
institutional changes in law (e.g., due process and property rights), religion
(e.g., methodical life conduct), governance (e.g., technically expert bureaucrats and predictability) to make the gain goal as prominent in society as it
is in Western societies (see, e.g., Weber, 1961 [German original 1923]). Similarly, Durkheim went to great lengths to show that religious institutions and
educational institutions are important supports for the normative goal and
that institutions that favor individualization are likely to weaken the normative goal [Durkheim, 1951 (French original 1897); Durkheim, 1961 (French
original 1925)]. More recently, social critics have focused on aspects of dehierarchisizing market societies with their institutional emphasis on both the gain
and the hedonic goal (Lindenberg, 2006). The gain goal is vital for the effort of
entrepreneurs, for the competitive nature of market transactions, and for the
earning power of consumers. The more market institutions become prominent, the more support the gain goal gets in market settings, and the more
domains will be treated as market settings. Thus, self-regulatory problems
are likely to occur with regard to the normative goal frame (such as fraud
and corruption) and with regard to the balance between overarching goals
(e.g., burnouts and work–home interference in the context of career striving).
Many social critics have described what they consider an excessive salience
of the gain goal. For example, in his book “What Money Can’t Buy. The Moral

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Limits of Markets” (Sandel, 2012), the social philosopher Sandel criticizes
that what he calls “market values” (i.e., a salient gain goal) crowd out “none
market norms” (i.e., the normative goal) in virtually every aspect of life. At
the same time, the more market institutions become prominent, the more
salient the hedonic goal will become in consumption settings, because in a
market economy, consumption needs to be kept on a high level. For example,
Galbraith (1958) observed that in affluent societies many wants are created
by the very processes that satisfy them. Dangers include overspending and
overeating.
THE MESO CONTEXT
Influences of institutions on overarching goals also play a major role inside
organizations. There, the governance structure can support a particular overarching goal, with pronounced consequences for behavior. For example, a
governance structure that is mainly based on incentive alignment between
the organization and each employee will make the gain goal very prominent. To the degree that the governance system works, the self-regulatory
problems of employees will mainly lie in keeping to the rules when monitoring is low and rules are in the way of personal advancement. By contrast, a governance structure that mainly focuses on teamwork and jointness
of production or on a common cause appeals mostly to the normative goal
(Lindenberg, 2013b). In such organizations, the self-regulatory failures will
be mainly linked to the difficulty of combining following rules with intelligent effort concerning the organizational goals (Birkinshaw, Foss, & Lindenberg, 2014). If organizations try to motivate employees by emphasizing
hedonic aspects of work (such as fun at work, fancy offices, and cafeterias),
the self-regulatory failures will be related to the difficulty of keeping to the
rules and doing unpleasant but necessary tasks, and self-regulatory balance
failure by many will lead to an organizational culture of procrastination and
last-minute efforts, with hero status for those who can get things done in the
face of disaster (Perlow, 1999).
The relation between groups also affects the relative strength of the overarching goals. For example, group competition increases the relative strength
of the gain goal for interactions between groups and of the normative goal
for interactions within groups (Lindenberg, 1998; McCallun, Harring, &
Gilmore, 1985).
THE MICRO CONTEXT
Self-regulation presupposes a fairly stable sense of self. In the relational
sphere, factors that affect the strength of the self negatively (such as social

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exclusion) will lower the self-regulatory ability (Baumeister, DeWall, Ciarocco, & Twenge, 2005). Because self-regulatory ability needs to be socially
embedded, there are also strong contagion effects. For example, being related
to others with low self-control negatively affects one’s own self-regulatory
ability (Evans & Kutcher, 2011).
This holds prominently for the important role of the normative goal in
self-regulation. Because this overarching goal needs so much extra support to
be able to dominate the hedonic (and also the gain) goal, relational supports
are of crucial importance, especially when neither the culture nor the organizational context provide strong supports. In the relational sphere, this support consists mainly of positive (and lack of negative) cross-episode effects
(as described earlier). Significant others have potentially an especially strong
impact on the strength of the normative goal (Lindenberg, 2013a), so that failures of secure attachment to significant others (e.g., because the ethnic group
of one’s immigrant parents is despised) is likely to be associated with lowered
self-regulatory ability.
Lastly, there are trait-like individual differences in self-regulatory ability. Such differences make it important that people can self-select into
environments that best fit their self-regulatory capacities and associated
personality traits (Dohmen & Falk, 2011; Lindenberg, 2013a). This also
creates interaction effects between the macro, meso, and micro levels. Yet,
the costs of changing environments can be prohibitive (such as changing
countries, or moving from inner city slums; or breaking out of criminal
networks) and that means that people may be stuck with negative influences
on their self-regulatory capacity and seemingly behave more “irrational”
than others. When self-regulatory ability is low and cannot be improved,
the government would do well to provide default contracts that protect
people with regard to important decisions concerning mortgages, marriages,
partnerships, and so on, and other “nudge” devices (Thaler & Sunstein,
2008).
CONCLUSION
Rationality, as it is conceived of in economics, is linked to a highly stylized theory of self-regulation that misses out on the behavioral roots of
self-regulation in the dynamics of overarching goals and on the strong
dependence of self-regulation on factors of the social environment. Human
self-regulatory capacity developed in a process of gen–-culture coevolution
for making humans better able to take care of themselves in the context of
larger groups, and to establish and maintain the conditions for being able
to take care of themselves (such as the ability to elicit the cooperation of
others, and to be able to adequately cooperate with others). The basis for

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the self-regulatory capacity is the mental architecture of overarching goals
(mindsets): the hedonic goal directed at improving the way one feels, the
gain goal directed at improving one’s resources, and the normative goal
directed at the realization of collective goals. Self-control consists of the
domination of the normative and gain goals over the hedonic goal, and of
the normative goal over the gain goal. But self-regulation is more than self
control: it is also seeking a balance between the three overarching goals, each
of which governs important aspects of adaptive behavior. The crucial point
is that the relative strength of these overarching goals depends on social
factors on the macro, meso, and micro levels. If somebody seems to behave
irrationally, say because he buys things he cannot afford, or lashes out at
people on whose support he depends, it can be interpreted as a failure of
self-regulation. But because the ability to self-regulate depends crucially on
factors in the social and institutional environments, it can be influenced in
either direction. This changes how we should look at institutions (including
norms). Their power to channel behavior via incentives is only a small part
of what they do. The way they affect self-regulatory ability itself (including
the ability to respond to incentives) is centrally important.
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SIEGWART LINDENBERG SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Siegwart Lindenberg, PhD (Harvard), is Professor of Cognitive Sociology
in the Department of Sociology and the Interuniversity Center for Social
Science Theory and Methodology (ICS), University of Groningen, and at the
Tilburg Institute for Behavioral Economics Research (TIBER), Tilburg University (Netherlands). He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of
Arts and Sciences. His interests lie in the development, test, and application
of theories of joint production and governance based on social rationality with
a focus on the influence of the social environment on norms, cooperative
behavior, and self-regulation. For more information, see his homepage at
www.gmw.rug.nl/∼lindenb.
RELATED ESSAYS
Models of Revealed Preference (Economics), Abi Adams and Ian Crawford
Coevolution of Decision-Making and Social Environments (Sociology), Elizabeth Bruch et al.
Choice Architecture (Psychology), Adrian R. Camilleri and Rick P. Larrick
Emerging Trends: Asset Pricing (Economics), John Y. Campbell
Behavioral Economics (Sociology), Guy Hochman and Dan Ariely
Emotion and Decision Making (Psychology), Jeff R. Huntsinger and Cara Ray
Against Game Theory (Political Science), Gale M. Lucas et al.
Event Processing as an Executive Enterprise (Psychology), Robbie A. Ross and
Dare A. Baldwin



From Individual Rationality to
Socially Embedded Self-Regulation
SIEGWART LINDENBERG

Abstract
The emerging trend is that we let go of the idea that humans are naturally endowed
with “rationality” (especially in the sense of consistency and utility maximization,
as in microeconomic) in favor of an evolutionary view in which the brain evolved
together with the affordances and problems offered by living in larger groups.
Rather than seeing humans as having evolved to pursue their self-interest in a utility
maximizing way, what is emerging is to see humans as having evolved to draw
adaptive advantage from living in larger groups by a set of self-regulatory abilities
(some of which are more or less automatic and can be overridden by less automatic
capabilities). The self-regulatory abilities, in turn, can vary and are much dependent
on the social environment. For example, having significant others is vital for one’s
self-regulatory ability, as is the capacity to change one’s environment in order to
strengthen one’s self-regulatory capacity. The sociologically interesting part of all
this is exactly this social dependence of self-regulatory capacity. Rationality, if that
term would still be used, is thus thoroughly a matter of person by environment
interaction. This has fundamental consequences for how social science is done.

THE INTUITIVE IDEA OF RATIONALITY AND SELF-REGULATION
Imagine you live in a country in which freedom of expression is suppressed,
in which supernatural forces are said to provide the right to govern, and in
which women or certain races or lower classes are seen as inherently cognitively inferior, even by leading scholars. In such a society, the idea that all
human beings are rational (in the sense of being equally endowed with reason) and that this rationality would guide them if only they were free to act
as they see fit, is revolutionary, emancipatory, and scientifically progressive.
This is basically what happened in the age of enlightenment. When human
Motto:
“The argument that natural selection shaped human nature specifically for participation in culture...holds that self-regulation is one of the most important factors in making it possible for human
beings to live as they do” (Vohs & Baumeister, 2004, p. 3). “Crucially, it appears amenable to improvement”
(Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007).
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

rationality is claimed to be inherently innate only in people of a certain gender, or certain race or class, it is, from what we know now, a scientific advance
to proffer an ideal typical counter claim that all human beings are equally
rational.
Much has happened since the dawn of the age of enlightenment. By now,
the cultural achievements of the enlightenment themselves created the space
for scientific advances that deviate from the conceptions of rationality that
were born in the enlightenment. The new trend described in this essay is
that the priorities are seriously changing and thereby what is desirable as
microfoundation in the social sciences: ideal-typical conceptions of human
capacities and simplifications made for the sake of the formalism should not
have priority over realism. Instead, the realism of the theory should have
priority over working with ideal types and over tractability in formal models, be that in economics or in sociology. The main drivers of advances that
show the way to go are, in my opinion, cognitive psychology and cognitive
sociology on the one hand, and evolutionary anthropology and evolutionary
psychology on the other, both aided by social neuroscience (Cacioppo, Visser,
& Pickett, 2006). The trend is toward a greater integration of social, cognitive,
and biological levels of analysis. In the following, I present what I consider
to be the most important developments in this regard. These developments
have important consequences for virtually all fields in which behavioral theories are applied to social contexts, importantly including institutional design.
I argue later that we would advance our theories in the behavioral and
socioeconomic sciences if we would think about human rationality in terms
of human self-regulatory ability rather than in terms of decision making and
consistency concerning ordered preferences and constraints (economics) or
values and behavior (sociology).
To make things not too complicated, I dichotomize a continuum of
self-regulatory processes into two orders: a lower and a higher order. An
example of the lower order is falling asleep when one is very tired. An
example of the higher order is the suppression of outward signs of anger.
If there were only lower order self-regulatory processes, they would have
much to do with functionality (e.g., for the survival of the organism) but
not with rationality (in the widest intuitive sense of involving purposeful
action). However, as we will see, higher order self-regulatory processes
involve the dynamics of overarching goals (not just plain functionality) and
these goals are subject to considerable social influence.
What is so different by taking this turn and replace “rationality” by
self-regulation? Some forms of behavior that look irrational have more
recently been analyzed with regard to the possibility that they make evolutionary sense (Gigerenzer, 2002). This is certainly an important advance.
However, more to the point of this essay, a great deal of behavior that looks

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3

irrational is actually a failure of self-regulation (e.g., in terms of choosing
inferior short-term options at the expense of better long-term options, or
letting oneself be influenced by seemingly trivial cues in the situation).
Self-regulatory ability varies and has coevolved with social and cultural
developments, and because it is thoroughly dependent on social supports,
one can also speak of “social rationality” (Lindenberg, 2013a).
Much of human self-regulatory capacity is dedicated to making humans
able to take care of themselves, and to establish and maintain the conditions
for being able to take care of themselves (such as the ability to elicit the cooperation of others, and to be able to adequately cooperate with others). This
implies that part of self-regulatory ability is to seek out conditions that help
maintain this ability. Not everybody succeeds equally in this effort, so that,
contrary to the concept of rationality in rational choice theory, self-regulatory
ability as conceived here is assumed to vary among human beings not just
as a trait but also as a state that is heavily dependent on social factors. For
example, if somebody is surrounded by others with low self-control, his own
self-regulatory ability will suffer (Christakis & Fowler, 2007).
Considering this dependency explicitly opens up a new perspective on
institutional analysis. Institutions have much to do with the way people
deal with conflicting goals (e.g., short-term vs long-term). The concept of
“rationality as consistency” does not only neglect such conflicts but rules
them out if they cannot be conceptualized as trade-offs.
The evidence that self-regulatory capacity differs among people and that
it matters for income, status, health, crime, and many other important outcomes of behavior that would possibly be covered by an intuitive idea of
acting rationally is overwhelming (see, e.g., Moffitt et al., 2011; Steverink &
Lindenberg, 2008).
THE SOCIAL BRAIN
My point of departure for thinking about self-regulation is human evolution. This vantage point allows us to draw on a wide variety of research that
directly impacts self-regulation and its antecedents. Human evolution is a
coevolution of genes and culture in the sense that genetic predispositions
affect culture (including social norms and the way people interact), and when
culture is adaptive, genetic selection will code improved cognitive processes
to absorb and transmit culture (Richerson & Boyd, 2005). Nested in this process is the coevolution of the brain and the size of the social group (Dunbar,
2003). The importance of this finding is that it allows us to integrate a great
variety of results from evolutionary anthropology and psychology, from cognitive psychology and sociology, and from (social) neuroscience around the

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social aspects of the brain, prominently including the capacity to self-regulate
(Lindenberg, 2013a, 2014).
Pair bonding and cooperative breeding are likely to have been the main
initial driving forces behind the development of the social brain (Dunbar &
Shultz, 2007; Hrdy, 2009). However, the gene-culture coevolution is likely to
have driven the process further and further by pushing the sophisticated correlated brain and culture adaptation to such heights that human beings can
draw huge adaptive advantages from living in larger groups because they can
equip these groups with sophisticated collective goods (Lindenberg & Foss,
2011; Sebanz, Bekkering, & Knoblich, 2006; Tomasello & Carpenter, 2007). In
other words, the better humans can jointly create collective goods, the higher
the individual advantage from being part of such a group. In this light, looking for “altruistic” preferences in humans is only a small step in the right
direction because it does not even come close to finding (let alone searching
for) the “social brain” conditions that govern the joint creation of collective
goods. As I argue, these conditions have much to do with self-regulatory
capabilities and the elaborate cognitive and motivational brain power they
require (Lieberman, 2007).
SELF-REGULATION AND DYNAMICS OF OVERARCHING GOALS
Human beings are equipped with many lower order self-regulatory capacities, such as generating emotions, reflexes that are mostly regulated by
the “old” brain (e.g., brain stem, basal ganglia, and thalamus). The higher
order regulatory processes, such as emotion regulation, involve virtually all
regions of the brain, but they prominently include the “new” brain (the neocortex, especially the frontal lobes). In contrast to the lower order processes,
higher order self-regulation very much involves consideration of context
(such as the presence of conflicting lower order processes, appropriateness
of a (re)action; expectations of others, longer term consequences of one’s
(re)action, and norm-oriented behavior (Goldberg, 2009). For understanding
both lower and higher order self-regulatory processes, we have to look at the
dynamics of overarching goals. Roughly, the idea is that overarching goals
are crucial for the balance between lower and higher order self-regulatory
processes. In turn, by and large, it is the social environment and not the
individual that determines the salience of a particular overarching goal
and thereby behavior. Self-regulation thus consists, to a large degree, of the
anticipation of these saliency effects and of a choice of environments.
Even though the concepts of “goals” and “preferences” are often used
interchangeably, goals represent a whole mental architecture, whereas preferences to not. Goal pursuit involves our most sophisticated brain power
and it is not necessarily conscious (Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar,

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5

& Trötschel, 2001). Goals are mental constructs that rely on a considerable
number of mental capacities: the capacity to cognitively represent desired
states; to monitor the degree to which a goal that is presently activated has
been achieved; to detect errors; and to react to this information in such a way
that, when the goal is realized, one turns to another goal, or, when progress
is not satisfying, to take action for improvement; to respond emotionally to
success and failure in goal pursuit and to quickly determine the direction of
action (approach or avoidance); and to inhibit incompatible goals (Carver &
Scheier, 1998). Concrete goals are nested in overarching goals or “mindsets”
(Lindenberg & Steg, 2007). To some degree, overarching goals are chronically
activated, thus making “mixed motives” the “normal” situation. However,
in most situations, one overarching goal is more strongly activated than
the others and it “frames” the entire situation, largely governing what we
attend to; what information we are sensitive to; what we expect others to
do; what we like and dislike; and what criteria we use for success of failure
of goal achievement. The more strongly one overarching goal is activated,
the more the other overarching goals are inhibited. Related to this is the
fact that overarching goals can make effects spread from an episode with
one subgoal to an episode with a possibly completely different subgoal by
a so-called cross-episode effect. The first episode (e.g., eating chocolate)
can increase or decreases the activation of a particular overarching goal
(in this case, it increases one that is related to indulgence) which, in turn,
can change the relative balance between overarching goals and thereby
influences the next episode (e.g., shifting channels on TV to watch—against
one’s original plan—a low-brow erotic film). Overarching goals can capture
the entire mind and frame the perception of and reaction to the world. In
that sense, such goals can make us act very differently when changing social
contexts activate different overarching goals. How they differ is described
in an emerging perspective called goal-framing theory (Lindenberg & Steg,
2007), a perspective that relates directly to a goal-related conception of
self-regulation. As a first step in the analysis of self-regulation, I present the
overarching goals.
HEDONIC, NORMATIVE, AND GAIN GOALS
THE HEDONIC GOAL
The most basic overarching goal is related to the satisfaction of fundamental needs (consummatory behavior). The state of need satisfaction is indicated by the way one feels. For example, if the body needs food, one feels
hungry. The link of need state to feelings is itself a lower (albeit imperfect)
self-regulatory device. Focusing on improving (or maintaining) the way one

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

feels is a basic overarching goal, called hedonic goal. Its level of activation
can be increased by cues in the environment. For example, seeing food can
trigger an urge to eat and thereby increase the focus on improving the way
one feels. This hedonic goal is characterized by a focus on feelings here and
now, with considerations of context (such as decorum, or health, future consequences) playing a subordinate role. The cross-episode effect has been well
demonstrated for the hedonic goal. For example, being exposed to the picture
of an attractive woman in an advertisement for loans increased loan demand
by about as much as a 25% reduction in the interest rate (Bertrand, Karlan,
Mullainathan, Shafir, & Zinman, 2010).
THE NORMATIVE GOAL
The ability to put oneself in the shoes of others is not unique to humans but
in humans it has evolved to unprecedented heights, with cognitive (theory
of mind), emotional (empathy), and mirror neuron capacities (Blair, 2005).
This mentalizing virtuosity probably evolved in the context of pairbonding
and cooperative breeding (Dunbar & Shultz, 2007; Hrdy, 2009), and it is the
basis for the possibly most important mental change in human evolution:
the development of both a normative overarching goal and a gain-oriented
overarching goal. First, the normative goal. Living with others and also
encountering other and potentially competing groups very likely created
selective pressure on being able to put oneself in the shoes of the whole
group, adopting group goals as one’s own (Lindenberg, 2014; Tomasello,
Melis, Tennie, Wyman, & Herrmann, 2012). The overarching goal is to do
what is socially expected, what is appropriate; what furthers the realization
of group goals (norm-oriented behavior). One can hardly overestimate the
importance of such an overarching goal for the possibilities that group have
adaptive advantages for individuals within them.
Group goals are often codified in terms of norms, hence the name normative
goal. When this goal is salient, people are especially sensitive to information about social expectations and to others’ (dis)respect for norms. Even
though the positive effects for the group of following a norm may lie in the
future, the feeling of obligation created by a salient normative goal is “here
and now,” making future discounting effects unlikely. In a normative goal
frame, people cooperate even if they do not consider the consequences of
their prosocial action (Burton-Chellew & West, 2013). The cross-episode effect
that characterizes an overarching goal has been amply demonstrated for the
normative goal. For example, when people see others disrespect norm A, this
will weaken their normative goal and they are more likely to disrespect an
unrelated norm B. We demonstrated this with a number of simple field experiments (Keizer, Lindenberg, & Steg, 2008). For example, graffiti (compared to

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7

no graffiti) on a mailbox doubled the percentage of passersby who stole an
envelope hanging from the mailbox and showing a 5 Euro bill as content. We
could show that this effect was not due to the idea that where there is graffiti,
sanctions are unlikely and thus I may steal with impunity. Observing disrespect for the norm “not to disfigure others’ property” decreased the salience
of the normative goal and thus increased in the observer the likelihood of disrespect for a completely different (and in general highly internalized) norm
“not to steal.” True to the hypothesized cross-episode effect of overarching
goals, we also found the converse: observing respect for norm A increased
respect for norm B in the observer (Keizer, Lindenberg, & Steg, 2013).
THE GAIN GOAL
The very same ability to put oneself in the shoes of others was also the basis
for the development of the ability to put oneself in one’s own shoes projected
into the future. This is the basis for planning, investing, and quite generally for resource-oriented behavior. People are by no means always good
at considering the future (Gilbert & Wilson, 2000), but the ability to have
a future-oriented overarching goal is there and can be trained. The overarching goal that is linked to this future orientation is “to increase (or keep
from decreasing) your resources,” called a gain goal. It has a longer term orientation and makes people highly sensitive to changes in resources (such as
winning opportunities, possible losses, and out-of-pocket costs). This sensitivity combined with the ability to put oneself in the shoes of others and
of oneself in the future is also the basis for cheating and exploitation (Epley,
Caruso, & Bazerman, 2006). Thus, the same ability that supports a truly social
overarching goal (to realize group goals) also allows a quite selfish overarching goal that relates to the improvement of one’s resources (be that in
terms of valuable goods, status or money). The cross-episode effects that
belong to overarching goals have also been demonstrated for the gain goal.
For example, Caruso, Vohs, Baxter, and Waytz (2012) found that the mere
exposure to money (strengthening the gain goal) increased the willingness to
rationalize social injustice through strategies of blaming the poor and unfortunate for their fate, that is, it decreased the normative concern about social
injustice. Other examples are the many investigations of a “crowding out”
effect (Frey & Jegen, 2001). For example, Falk and Szech (2013) conducted
experiments on markets (bilateral and multilateral double auctions) and concluded that “markets erode moral values.” People are by no means always
good at considering the future (Gilbert & Wilson, 2000) and the salience of the
gain goal is highly dependent on the social environment. Even though both
hedonic and gain goals can be said to be linked to rewards, they are linked

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to different kinds of rewards and to different time perspectives, even in the
neural systems (McClure, Laibson, Loewenstein, & Cohen, 2004).
For behavior, it is thus important which of the three overarching goals is the
most salient. This depends to a large extent on cues that influence the interpretation of the situation. For example, Liberman, Samuels, and Ross (2004)
found that labeling one and the same social dilemma as either a “Community
Game” or a “Wallstreet Game” made cooperation rates differ markedly.
RELATION OF OVERARCHING GOALS TO SELF-MANAGEMENT
There are at least three important links of overarching goals to self-regulation.
First, each of the three overarching goals is all by itself a form of
self-regulation in the sense that when it is salient, it helps realize important
aspects of adaptive behavior. The hedonic goal helps regulate the satisfaction
of fundamental needs, the normative goal helps regulate contributions to
collective goods, and the gain goal helps realize resources that are necessary
for both the satisfaction of fundamental needs and the ability to contribute
to collective goods.
Secondly, “effortful” self-regulation involves dominance relationships
between the overarching goals, because the a priori strength of the overarching goals is not equal. In terms of lower and higher level self-regulatory
processes, there is an important difference. When the hedonic goal is salient,
lower level processes (not much sensitive to context) are highly active. By
contrast, the other two overarching goals are mainly instruments of higher
order self-regulation, that is, of processes that involve much attention to
context. In addition, they involve inhibiting lower order self-regulatory
processes, such as falling asleep, giving in to inappropriate urges, giving
priority to short-term benefits, and help regulate emotions.
Both, attention to context and inhibitions, require much mental energy and
thus the gain and normative goal need extra support to be strong enough to
inhibit the hedonic goal. For this very reason, the most prominent example of
“effortful” self-regulation is impulse control, that is, the tendency to counteract or override a prepotent response (often called self-control). In most cases
this involves the gain- or the normative goal inhibiting the hedonic goal.
Effortful self-regulation also entails the normative goal inhibiting the gain
goal. An example is finding a wallet with a sizable amount of money, being
tempted to keep the money, and deciding nonetheless to turn it in to the lost
and found without removing all or some of the money.
Third, because each overarching goal is important for achieving important
aspects of adaptive behavior, self-regulation also entails finding a balance
between the three goals. What it involves to achieve a balance depends, however, on the supports for overarching goals that are present. For example,

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resisting temptations is very important when the hedonic goal is relatively
strong. However, when the support for the normative goal is very strong, one
may even have to plan one’s “fun” and other hedonic experiences (Kivetz &
Simonson, 2002). We thus have to look at the supports (and lack of supports)
of overarching goals that are present in a culture (macro level), in the group
and organizational contexts (meso level) and in relationships and individual
differences (micro level). I briefly discuss each of these levels.
SUPPORTS FOR THE OVERARCHING GOALS
THE MACRO CONTEXT
Institutions can influence the conditions for self-regulatory capacity in a variety of ways, but mostly importantly via their supports (or lack of supports) of
overarching goals (2006). If you lived in a society in which the institutional
context strongly supports, say, the normative goal, as in Victorian society,
self-regulation would meet different challenges than if you lived in a society in which institutions strongly support the gain or hedonic goal. Classical
sociologists have shown time and again that institutions can push a society
in one of the three directions of the overarching goals. For example, against
economists who assume the gain goal to be the human default orientation,
Max Weber has spent much of his career showing that it takes considerable
institutional changes in law (e.g., due process and property rights), religion
(e.g., methodical life conduct), governance (e.g., technically expert bureaucrats and predictability) to make the gain goal as prominent in society as it
is in Western societies (see, e.g., Weber, 1961 [German original 1923]). Similarly, Durkheim went to great lengths to show that religious institutions and
educational institutions are important supports for the normative goal and
that institutions that favor individualization are likely to weaken the normative goal [Durkheim, 1951 (French original 1897); Durkheim, 1961 (French
original 1925)]. More recently, social critics have focused on aspects of dehierarchisizing market societies with their institutional emphasis on both the gain
and the hedonic goal (Lindenberg, 2006). The gain goal is vital for the effort of
entrepreneurs, for the competitive nature of market transactions, and for the
earning power of consumers. The more market institutions become prominent, the more support the gain goal gets in market settings, and the more
domains will be treated as market settings. Thus, self-regulatory problems
are likely to occur with regard to the normative goal frame (such as fraud
and corruption) and with regard to the balance between overarching goals
(e.g., burnouts and work–home interference in the context of career striving).
Many social critics have described what they consider an excessive salience
of the gain goal. For example, in his book “What Money Can’t Buy. The Moral

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Limits of Markets” (Sandel, 2012), the social philosopher Sandel criticizes
that what he calls “market values” (i.e., a salient gain goal) crowd out “none
market norms” (i.e., the normative goal) in virtually every aspect of life. At
the same time, the more market institutions become prominent, the more
salient the hedonic goal will become in consumption settings, because in a
market economy, consumption needs to be kept on a high level. For example,
Galbraith (1958) observed that in affluent societies many wants are created
by the very processes that satisfy them. Dangers include overspending and
overeating.
THE MESO CONTEXT
Influences of institutions on overarching goals also play a major role inside
organizations. There, the governance structure can support a particular overarching goal, with pronounced consequences for behavior. For example, a
governance structure that is mainly based on incentive alignment between
the organization and each employee will make the gain goal very prominent. To the degree that the governance system works, the self-regulatory
problems of employees will mainly lie in keeping to the rules when monitoring is low and rules are in the way of personal advancement. By contrast, a governance structure that mainly focuses on teamwork and jointness
of production or on a common cause appeals mostly to the normative goal
(Lindenberg, 2013b). In such organizations, the self-regulatory failures will
be mainly linked to the difficulty of combining following rules with intelligent effort concerning the organizational goals (Birkinshaw, Foss, & Lindenberg, 2014). If organizations try to motivate employees by emphasizing
hedonic aspects of work (such as fun at work, fancy offices, and cafeterias),
the self-regulatory failures will be related to the difficulty of keeping to the
rules and doing unpleasant but necessary tasks, and self-regulatory balance
failure by many will lead to an organizational culture of procrastination and
last-minute efforts, with hero status for those who can get things done in the
face of disaster (Perlow, 1999).
The relation between groups also affects the relative strength of the overarching goals. For example, group competition increases the relative strength
of the gain goal for interactions between groups and of the normative goal
for interactions within groups (Lindenberg, 1998; McCallun, Harring, &
Gilmore, 1985).
THE MICRO CONTEXT
Self-regulation presupposes a fairly stable sense of self. In the relational
sphere, factors that affect the strength of the self negatively (such as social

From Individual Rationality to Socially Embedded Self-Regulation

11

exclusion) will lower the self-regulatory ability (Baumeister, DeWall, Ciarocco, & Twenge, 2005). Because self-regulatory ability needs to be socially
embedded, there are also strong contagion effects. For example, being related
to others with low self-control negatively affects one’s own self-regulatory
ability (Evans & Kutcher, 2011).
This holds prominently for the important role of the normative goal in
self-regulation. Because this overarching goal needs so much extra support to
be able to dominate the hedonic (and also the gain) goal, relational supports
are of crucial importance, especially when neither the culture nor the organizational context provide strong supports. In the relational sphere, this support consists mainly of positive (and lack of negative) cross-episode effects
(as described earlier). Significant others have potentially an especially strong
impact on the strength of the normative goal (Lindenberg, 2013a), so that failures of secure attachment to significant others (e.g., because the ethnic group
of one’s immigrant parents is despised) is likely to be associated with lowered
self-regulatory ability.
Lastly, there are trait-like individual differences in self-regulatory ability. Such differences make it important that people can self-select into
environments that best fit their self-regulatory capacities and associated
personality traits (Dohmen & Falk, 2011; Lindenberg, 2013a). This also
creates interaction effects between the macro, meso, and micro levels. Yet,
the costs of changing environments can be prohibitive (such as changing
countries, or moving from inner city slums; or breaking out of criminal
networks) and that means that people may be stuck with negative influences
on their self-regulatory capacity and seemingly behave more “irrational”
than others. When self-regulatory ability is low and cannot be improved,
the government would do well to provide default contracts that protect
people with regard to important decisions concerning mortgages, marriages,
partnerships, and so on, and other “nudge” devices (Thaler & Sunstein,
2008).
CONCLUSION
Rationality, as it is conceived of in economics, is linked to a highly stylized theory of self-regulation that misses out on the behavioral roots of
self-regulation in the dynamics of overarching goals and on the strong
dependence of self-regulation on factors of the social environment. Human
self-regulatory capacity developed in a process of gen–-culture coevolution
for making humans better able to take care of themselves in the context of
larger groups, and to establish and maintain the conditions for being able
to take care of themselves (such as the ability to elicit the cooperation of
others, and to be able to adequately cooperate with others). The basis for

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

the self-regulatory capacity is the mental architecture of overarching goals
(mindsets): the hedonic goal directed at improving the way one feels, the
gain goal directed at improving one’s resources, and the normative goal
directed at the realization of collective goals. Self-control consists of the
domination of the normative and gain goals over the hedonic goal, and of
the normative goal over the gain goal. But self-regulation is more than self
control: it is also seeking a balance between the three overarching goals, each
of which governs important aspects of adaptive behavior. The crucial point
is that the relative strength of these overarching goals depends on social
factors on the macro, meso, and micro levels. If somebody seems to behave
irrationally, say because he buys things he cannot afford, or lashes out at
people on whose support he depends, it can be interpreted as a failure of
self-regulation. But because the ability to self-regulate depends crucially on
factors in the social and institutional environments, it can be influenced in
either direction. This changes how we should look at institutions (including
norms). Their power to channel behavior via incentives is only a small part
of what they do. The way they affect self-regulatory ability itself (including
the ability to respond to incentives) is centrally important.
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SIEGWART LINDENBERG SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Siegwart Lindenberg, PhD (Harvard), is Professor of Cognitive Sociology
in the Department of Sociology and the Interuniversity Center for Social
Science Theory and Methodology (ICS), University of Groningen, and at the
Tilburg Institute for Behavioral Economics Research (TIBER), Tilburg University (Netherlands). He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of
Arts and Sciences. His interests lie in the development, test, and application
of theories of joint production and governance based on social rationality with
a focus on the influence of the social environment on norms, cooperative
behavior, and self-regulation. For more information, see his homepage at
www.gmw.rug.nl/∼lindenb.
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