Social preferences are a type of preference studied in behavioral and experimental economics and social psychology, including interpersonal altruism, fairness, reciprocity, and inequity aversion.
The term "social preferences" incorporates obstreperous (esp. the Fehr-Schmidt inequity aversion model) and non-obstreperous(e.g., vulnerability-based) theories.
Much of the recent evidence used to test society ideas and models has come from economics experiments. However, social preferences also matter outside the laboratory.
Famous quotes containing the words social and/or preference:
“That children link us with the future is hardly news. . . . When we participate in the growth of children, a sense of wonder must take hold of us, providing for us a sense of future. Without the intimation of concrete individual futures, it is hardly worth bothering with social change and improvement.”
—Greta Hofmann Nemiroff (20th century)
“Among all the world’s races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)