La explicación del comportamiento social. Más tuercas y tornillos para las ciencias sociales

by Jon Elster

Este libro es una versión ampliada, revisada y autocrítica de Tuercas y tornillos: una introducción a los conceptos básicos de las ciencias sociales, obra con la que Jon Elster conquistó la aclamación de la crítica.

En veintiséis sucintos capítulos, el autor describe la naturaleza de la explicación en las ciencias sociales; analiza los estados mentales -creencias, deseos y emociones- que son precursores de la acción; hace una comparación sistemática de los modelos de comportamiento basados en la elección racional con explicaciones alternativas; examina las posibles enseñanzas que las ciencias sociales pueden extraer de la neurociencia y la biología evolutiva, y revisa los mecanismos de la interacción social, desde el comportamiento estratégico hasta la toma colectiva de decisiones. Nos ofrece un panorama general de los mecanismos explicativos claves de las ciencias sociales, sobre la base de numerosos ejemplos y el recurso a una amplia variedad de fuentes: psicología, economía comportamental, biología, ciencias políticas, escritos históricos, filosofía y ficción.

En un lenguaje accesible y liberado de toda jerga, Elster aspira a la exactitud y la claridad, a la vez que elude los modelos formales. En una provocativa conclusión, defiende el carácter central de la ciencia social cualitativa en una guerra de dos frentes contra las formas blandas (literarias) y duras (matemáticas) de oscurantismo.

Genres: Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Science, Social Science, Economics

506 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Jon Elster ، born 22 February 1940, Oslo) is a Norwegian social and political theorist who has authored works in the philosophy of social science and rational choice theory. He is also a notable proponent of analytical Marxism, and a critic of neoclassical economics and public choice theory, largely on behavioral and psychological grounds.

In 2016, he was awarded the 22nd Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science for his contributions to political science.

Reviews

[Nikola Todorić · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a place to start (and to always come back) for every social scientist. Lots of biology, psychology, economics, rational choice and behavioral science (and no post-structuralism, cultural theory and deconstruction at all), which makes this book a really useful guide to the concepts and mechanisms in explaining social phenomena in a scientific and sensible way.

[Enrique · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s not your typical introductory book to y or x topic. Explaining social behavior delivers what it promise: an introduction of how to explain social behavior.

And the honest remarks of the author are very insightful: Jon accepts when he doesn’t know, not before show all the options and explanations available.

The process to explain paradoxes of human behavior it’s not easy, Jon take a chance and give you some tentative answers.

I appreciate the great erudition (Montaigne, Tocqueville, Bentham, Cicero, Marx, Veyne, etc.) of Jon Elster, and he totally knows how to use the classics to make his points (is not a fake erudition for the sake of being perceived as a smart guy)

You need to re read this book, it’s not a one sitting book, a lot to think and a lot to learn.

[Alex Zakharov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yep, easily the most thorough and attention-demanding book I’ve read this year on any subject and certainly the best book bar none on human behavior. Elster has the guts to systematically show that we know more about human behavior than is generally believed but not nearly as much as most professionals in the field claim. The book is an incredible example of applying clear rigorous thinking to show the limits of how far that rigor can take you, and without resorting to throwing up your hands in the end to claim ignorance. Along the way the quotes from the likes of Tocqueville, Montaigne and Proust add an a intellectual aesthetic like no other.

Notes to self:

- Explanation vs prediction. Need mechanism for explanation. Beware of functionalism.
- Intelligibility vs rationality. Adhering to the classically rational behavior tends to make it unintelligible. Good novels sport intelligible characters, mediocre novels stick with rational ones.
- “desire-belief-information action” framework for rational behavior can somewhat reasonably withstand the influence of emotions and biases when it comes to explaining individual behavior, but is in practice pretty hopeless for explaining group behavior (all sorts of problems with aggregating collective preferences, beliefs and expectations)
- Freud and culture of suspicion, too tempting to obscure everything by delegating into sub consciousness.
- Hard and soft obscurantism. Hard is insufficient beyond basic boring cases, soft is much more entertaining but is absolutely hopeless when it comes to providing insight into human nature. Thank you, Foucault.
- It takes Elster 2 pages to calmly explain mechanics of pluralistic ignorance, while Zizek spends a documentary and a couple of books manically vocalizing his theory of “structure of belief” which amounts to the same thing.

[Yann Roshdy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnifique bouquin a ranger au même niveau que "Thinking Fast and Slow" de Daniel Kahneman et "Behave" de Robert Sapolsky. Trois ouvrages magistraux qui exploitent trois perspectives différentes, certes, mais qui 1) sont transversales, 2) ancrées dans l'état des sciences actuelles, et 3) critiquent de front l'état des sciences humaines et sociales dans academia. En effet, Kahneman est un psychologue qui a gagné le Nobel d'économie pour avoir "découvert" le mécanisme de "loss aversion" (crainte du risque irrationnelle) dans une discipline guidée par la théorie du choix rationnel et ses corollaires, Sapolsky est un neurobiologiste traitant de sociologie et psychologie évolutive, et Jon Elster un philosophe utilisant Jane Austen, Proust, Pascal, Tocqueville et Montaigne avec une grosse dose de théorie des jeux pour développer non pas un système théorique (les nietzschéen nous nous méfions de tous les systèmes de pensée), mais une description de l'humain et de la société qui révèle une suite stochastique de traits qui dépendent de beaucoup d'autres variables pour être généralisés en dehors des contextes étudiés.

[Milovan Dekic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fundamental red for anyone who wants to engage in explaining human behavior. Gives a nice direction about how to think straight about it.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ignorance is bliss. Elster knows how to twist words to make him sound deeper than he is. And on this magic trick is based his entire life. Somehow that qualifies him to any field of knowledge, just like any other prophet coming out from the desert after fasting a few weeks.

[Jen Watkins · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a dense book and I made it through the whole thing, but I am afraid I don't remember much. I do not feel changed by the book, nor do I feel any closer to understanding social behavior. However, I must give credit to any author who is willing to write a tome with his name on it promising that he will explain it.

[szymborskalyte · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought-provoking, occasionally tendentious, but never boring. The bibliographies are worth a read in themselves. Elster is something -- pellucid and fearless, the kind of thinker I want to be some day.

[aarjav]

Recommendations from aaron sw

[Fabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

On par with the works on Kahneman when it comes to sheer content on human nature. Really really enjoyed it.

[An Nguyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Explaining Social Behavior is Jon Elster’s ambitious attempt to answer a deceptively simple question: why do people do what they do? Elster, a leading social theorist, argues that understanding human behavior requires more than grand theories or statistics—it requires identifying the actual mechanisms that drive individual choice and collective outcomes.

This book is dense, analytical, and rigorous. It’s not popular science. Instead, it’s a foundational work for anyone serious about understanding human motivation, rationality, emotion, norms, and social interaction.

⸻

Core Argument

Elster’s central claim is that social phenomena must be explained by individual-level mechanisms, not vague structural forces or sweeping theories. He emphasizes causal explanations over correlations and rejects explanations that rely on “because society says so.”

Social outcomes = individuals + motives + constraints + interactions

⸻

Key Concepts & Takeaways

1. Mechanisms, Not Just Laws

Elster criticizes social science theories that rely on abstract “laws.”
Instead, he focuses on mechanisms—recurring patterns of cause and effect such as:
• incentives
• emotions
• beliefs
• norms
• biases

A good explanation shows how something happens, not just that it happens.

⸻

2. Rationality Is Limited

People often act rationally—but:
• with imperfect information
• under cognitive biases
• influenced by emotions

Elster distinguishes between:
• instrumental rationality (choosing effective means)
• belief rationality (holding justified beliefs)

Many social outcomes arise from systematic irrationality, not stupidity.

⸻

3. The Role of Emotions

Emotions are not noise—they are central drivers of behavior:
• anger
• envy
• shame
• guilt
• pride

Elster shows how emotions:
• override rational calculation
• enforce social norms
• explain revenge, punishment, and cooperation

⸻

4. Social Norms

Norms influence behavior even when they conflict with self-interest.
People follow norms because of:
• internalized values
• fear of shame
• desire for approval

Norms explain phenomena like fairness, punishment, honor, and moral outrage.

⸻

5. Weakness of Purely Economic Models

Elster critiques overly simplistic economic assumptions that humans always maximize utility.
Real humans are:
• inconsistent
• emotional
• norm-driven
• prone to self-deception

Markets and institutions work not because people are perfectly rational—but because systems constrain irrationality.

⸻

6. Collective Action and Cooperation

Elster analyzes classic problems like:
• free-riding
• trust
• cooperation
• punishment of defectors

He shows how cooperation often emerges through reputation, norms, and emotions, not pure self-interest.

⸻

7. Methodological Individualism

All social phenomena must ultimately be explained by individual behavior—even institutions, culture, and politics.
This doesn’t deny social structures—it explains how they arise.

⸻

Why This Book Matters

✅ One of the most rigorous frameworks for explaining social behavior
✅ Deep integration of philosophy, economics, psychology, and sociology
✅ Teaches how to think about social explanations, not just accept them
✅ Influential across political science, behavioral economics, and social theory

⸻

Challenges / Critiques

❗ Very dense and academic
❗ Requires patience and careful reading
❗ Few narratives or anecdotes—this is conceptual, not storytelling

This is a book to study, not skim.

⸻

Final Verdict

Explaining Social Behavior is a foundational, intellectually demanding work that teaches you how to reason clearly about human action and social outcomes. Elster replaces vague social explanations with precise, mechanism-based thinking. If you want to truly understand why people cooperate, rebel, conform, or punish—this book gives you the analytical tools to do so.

“Social science should explain, not mystify.”

[Dio Mavroyannis · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a very good read, with a lot of nice literature or religious references. My favorite thing I learned was about the Torah saying that sacrificing a specific person for a greater good is only okay if the community isn't the one selecting who that person is. The book is great for its scope, it should be the first thing that is consulted when thinking about various social science topics such as beliefs, motivations, etc. It is sometimes rather short on actually giving a meaningful analysis but what it lacks in depth it makes up in scope.

There are some minor mistakes in the fields I am familiar with, for instance, the "law of demand"isn't really a neoclassical concept, so the examples given as counter-examples are not really so. This is because Austrians treat goods as subjective while Neoclassicals treat them as physical. You can only have counterexamples if you treat them as physical.

[Andrew]

So I read the un-expanded version. Mea culpa.

So this is an attempt to provide a codified language for sociology, with a heavy emphasis on concepts taken from game theory and psychology. One wonders why, in this era in which Kahneman, Thaler, et al are praised for similar approaches, Jon Elster isn't more widely read. I'm still a bit iffy on some of his proclamations, but this was an interesting attempt at a sort of primer.

[Yanick Punter]

From Taleb

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not being an economist this book was dense for me in many places but my daughter, studying social economics in grad school, encouraged me to complete it. After many starts and stops I'm glad I persevered. I might even re-read parts of it and just skip over the graphs and charts!

[Alex Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing, difficult, exhausting and significant book. Probably beyond my puny capabilities to review. But I'll give it a shot, anyway.

Explaining Social Behaviour is a very erudite, very intelligent scholar's attempt to translate the mind boggling complexities of social interaction, myriad of behaviours and infinite motivations into a logical structure with mathematical underpinnings, a sort of sociological calculus.

It encompasses an astonishing, hypothetical wonderverse of assumptions that are brought to their logical conclusion in one stupendous effort of coordinated intention.

We are all aware of the criticism the 'hard' scientists level against social scientists (that sociology is not a real science), the author courageously attempts to address this contemptuous point of view.

One tends to approach the foundational concept of rational behaviourism like a Jesuit monk, who accepting as an act of faith the existence of God, goes on to propose the number of angels that are able to dance on the head of a pin.

[Madeline]

This mostly served to prime me for in-class discussions and lend some context to the professor's lectures, or suggest examples. So I didn't really engage with it. Part of me feels like it's mostly just a chance for Elster to show off his erudition: "Look at all the pertinent historical trivia I know!"

[عمرو عبدالحميد · Rating 3 out of 5]

هو دراسة أكتر منه كتاب محدد موضوعه.

الكتاب كبير جداً أكتر من 700 صفحة فالحكم عليه بشكل عام هيقلل من قيمة فصول ويعلي قيمة فصول, فيه فصول كانت بسيطة جداً وممتازة والكاتب قدر يوصل المعلومة والفكرة, وفصول تانية مستفدتش منها أي حاجه.

طلعت منه بأفكار كتير محتاجه تفصيل أكتر عشان ابدأ اطبقها في أي تواصل مع المجتمع سواء توعية أو حملات إنتخابية في المستقبل.

[Zdravko · Rating 5 out of 5]

i'm finally done with this one. elster has a gift for explaining, but still much of it flew above my head. i wish i were a bit smarter and a bit less lazy.

[Nick Short · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is social science possible? An underlying premise here is that near the entirety of social science can be found in the annals of the less prestigious 'subject' of history.

A jewel.

[Mohamed basha · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب الدارسين في علم الاجتماع و ليس للهواة

[hassan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every (aspiring) social scientist should read this.