caa a22 4500 46317450X CHVBK 20180406164822.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170326e20070201xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s00355-006-0169-0 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s00355-006-0169-0 Psychology Implies Paternalism? Bounded Rationality may Reduce the Rationale to Regulate Risk-Taking [Elektronische Daten] [Nathan Berg, Gerd Gigerenzer] Behavioral economists increasingly argue that violations of rationality axioms provide a new rationale for paternalism - to "de-bias” individuals who exhibit errors, biases and other allegedly pathological psychological regularities associated with Tversky and Kahneman's (in Science 185:1124-1131, 1974) heuristics-and-biases program. The argument is flawed, however, in neglecting to distinguish aggregate from individual rationality. The aggregate consequences of departures from normative decision-making axioms may be Pareto-inferior or superior. Without a well-specified theory of aggregation, individual-level biases do not necessarily imply losses in efficiency. This paper considers the problem of using a social-welfare function to decide whether to regulate risk-taking behavior in a population whose individual-level behavior may or may not be consistent with expected utility maximization. According to the social-welfare objective, unregulated aggregate risk distributions resulting from non-maximizing behavior are often more acceptable (i.e., lead to a weaker rationale for paternalism) than population distributions generated by behavior that conforms to the standard axioms. Thus, psychological theories that depart from axiomatic decision-making norms do not necessarily strengthen the case for paternalism, and conformity with such norms is generally not an appropriate policy-making objective in itself. Springer-Verlag, 2006 Berg Nathan School of Social Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, GR 31 211300, Box 830688, 75083-0688, Richardson, TX, USA aut Gigerenzer Gerd School of Social Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, GR 31 211300, Box 830688, 75083-0688, Richardson, TX, USA aut Social Choice and Welfare Springer-Verlag 28/2(2007-02-01), 337-359 0176-1714 28:2<337 2007 28 355 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-006-0169-0 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-006-0169-0 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Berg Nathan School of Social Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, GR 31 211300, Box 830688, 75083-0688, Richardson, TX, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Gigerenzer Gerd School of Social Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, GR 31 211300, Box 830688, 75083-0688, Richardson, TX, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Social Choice and Welfare Springer-Verlag 28/2(2007-02-01), 337-359 0176-1714 28:2<337 2007 28 355 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer