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:
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)