De l’homo oeconomicus empathique à l’homo sympathicus Les apports de la sympathie smithienne à la compréhension des comportements prosociaux

Vanessa Oltra
Additional contact information
Vanessa Oltra: BSE - Bordeaux Sciences Economiques - UB - Université de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: Modern economic approaches of empathy and sympathy aim at adding an altruistic dimension to the standard economic decision theory. The purpose of the introduction of another regarding dimension, in addition to the sole personal interest, is to try to explain prosocial preferences or behaviours. In this article, we show how and why the economic literature tries to grasp those concepts, but in a way that is very far from the original Smithian sympathy developed in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (TSM). We argue that, by remaining in the framework of methodological individualism and instrumental rationality, economic approaches, particularly in the field of experimental and behavioural economics, tend to reduce and to intrumentalize the concepts of sympathy and empathy. Such approaches seem to us not consistent with the Smithian social philosophy of human nature and interpersonal relationships.

Keywords: Smithian sympathy; Empathy; Theory of moral snetiments; behavioural economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-03-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-upt
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03623609
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-03623609/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03623609

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().