Rational Emotions: An Evolutionary Perspective

Rojhat Avsar ()
Additional contact information
Rojhat Avsar: Columbia College Chicago

Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, 2021, vol. 2, issue 2, 297-314

Abstract: Abstract Despite the existence of a compelling literature that articulates the function of emotions from an evolutionary standpoint, the role of emotions in motivating economic behavior has not been systematically studied. In those rare instances in which emotions are invoked to explain large-scale economic phenomena (e.g., market euphoria), they are usually treated as a form of constraint on otherwise rational behavior. By integrating experimental findings scattered across various fields into coherent narrative, this paper offers an accessible framework for understanding the evolutionary origins of our emotions; their role in supporting higher-level cognitive faculties; and their constitutive function in facilitating impersonal exchange, and coordination at the organizational level on which the modern economy is built.

Keywords: Emotions; Evolutionary psychology; Impersonal exchange; Cooperation; Rationality; Market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s43253-020-00032-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:revepe:v:2:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s43253-020-00032-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/43253

DOI: 10.1007/s43253-020-00032-1

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Evolutionary Political Economy is currently edited by Wolfram Elsner

More articles in Review of Evolutionary Political Economy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().