As Boyer & Petersen (B&P) acknowledge, “evidence for folk-economic beliefs is still scattered and unsystematic” (sect. 2, para. 1); and they initially present their list of folk-economic beliefs (FEBs) as “a few examples of widespread beliefs” (sect. 2.1, para. 1). However, they then proceed to treat that list as an adequate explanandum for their list of specialized inference system forged by evolutionary pressures. The target article's conclusion about the viability of this research program to a great extent depends on the authors' very particular choice of FEBs. If relevant cognitive systems can explain the selected FEBs, the argument goes, then this research program is at the very least viable and possibly quite fruitful.
However, the universe of FEBs has been “scattered and unsystematic” for a reason – there are no clear criteria regarding what kind of beliefs should count as FEBs, nor is there a way to make an exhaustive list that could be filtered through such criteria. This naturally creates problems for the overall theoretical strategy of B&P (list FEBs, list mechanisms, explain listed FEBs by using listed mechanisms).
One obvious issue is the adequacy of coverage: Are all possible or at least most widespread and best-documented FEBs included? The answer appears to be “no.” For example, as the authors themselves acknowledge, Caplan (Reference Caplan2008) identified several widespread and well-documented biases such as “pessimistic bias” and “make-work bias.” Although B&P imply that explanations in bias-based research are circular, and propose a laudable goal of moving beyond “proximate causes,” they do not offer any explanation – proximate or ultimate – for some of these well-documented biases. Thus, one is left wondering: Which of the listed relevant cognitive systems would explain a widespread doom and gloom in times of unprecedented safety and prosperity, or a belief that more work leads to more wealth in times of Siri and self-driving cars? These biases are as good candidates for FEBs as anything is. In fact, the authors do, through several FIBs, cover anti-foreign bias – the one bias from Caplan's book which lends itself to easy, almost obvious, evolutionary explanation. While the authors repeatedly stress that their article is just a beginning of a research program, it could also be the case that the FEBs picked for this exploratory exercise were the low-hanging fruit and that this line of research, rather than being fruitful, will quickly hit diminishing returns.
In addition to coverage, another big problem with ascertaining the relevant universe of FEBs is finding the proper level of abstraction. In other words, many beliefs which could plausibly be FEBs could be narrower (or broader) than the kind of FEBs that are listed by B&P. For example, FEB 3, “immigrants abuse the welfare system,” likely depends on who the “immigrants” are – are they in the US legally or illegally; are they Mexicans, Asians, or Australians? At the same time, a large number of Americans believe that “third-world workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited” (Klein & Buturovic Reference Klein and Buturovic2011), thus seemingly siding with foreigners over Americans. One explanation for this effect would be that different segments of American society see different “others” as members of their in-group, so while conservatives might feel that Australians are a part of their coalition, progressives might see poor “third-world workers” as part of their coalition. However, this apparent flexibility of FEBs – to the point where final, politically relevant opinions can be diametrically opposed depending on one's ideology – suggests that the usefulness of FEBs for understanding economic beliefs and attitudes is limited. Beliefs acquired through self-reinforcing, local, partisan coalitions appear so powerful that they greatly diminish FEBs' significance overall and make the FEBs stated at B&P's level of generality to be of little practical significance.
Similarly, when discussing FEB 8 (“price regulation has the intended effect”) B&P postulate, plausibly enough, that the illusion that rent control doesn't affect housing affordability stems from a mind-set accustomed to the simple causality of small societies and therefore unable to grasp the numerous unintended consequences of a given regulation in a complex society. However, tremendous differences exist (Buturovic & Klein Reference Buturovic and Klein2010), depending on ideology, in degrees of beliefs in efficacy of an issue often related to rent controls: In this cited study, while 68% of progressive respondents disagreed with the view that “Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable,” only 18% of very conservative voters did so. This suggests that folk beliefs are either more granular than B&P's selection of FEBs (so they are not about price controls, or markets, or regulation in general, but a significantly narrower set of issues), or, even if they do start at the level of abstraction the authors are suggesting, they are easily overwhelmed by information coming from partisan political sources that direct participants' attention towards various facts and mechanisms. (It should be noted that at the time the housing development question was asked, it was not a hot political topic, so these do not seem to be fleeting effects.)
For whatever reason, economic beliefs, at least in the United States, are very strongly related to ideology – to the point that ideology largely overwhelms whatever end-beliefs folk-economic intuitions were supposed to land on. For example, very similar questions posed to the same respondents on the same questionnaire describing likely consequences of reduced supply (“Drug prohibition fails to reduce people's access to drugs” vs. “Gun-control laws fail to reduce people's access to guns”) produce significantly different responses depending on the participants' ideologies (Klein & Buturovic Reference Klein and Buturovic2011). Yet ideology is mentioned in the target article only a few times, and each time it is dismissed as an irrelevant variable. This dismissal appears to be based largely on two studies by Petersen (Aarøe & Petersen Reference Aarøe and Petersen2014; Petersen Reference Petersen2012). Given that both of these studies admit that their results go against large and robust empirical literature, this is not good enough. The authors need to explain more thoroughly why ideology is irrelevant for folk-economic beliefs or how it can be accounted for within their framework.
As Boyer & Petersen (B&P) acknowledge, “evidence for folk-economic beliefs is still scattered and unsystematic” (sect. 2, para. 1); and they initially present their list of folk-economic beliefs (FEBs) as “a few examples of widespread beliefs” (sect. 2.1, para. 1). However, they then proceed to treat that list as an adequate explanandum for their list of specialized inference system forged by evolutionary pressures. The target article's conclusion about the viability of this research program to a great extent depends on the authors' very particular choice of FEBs. If relevant cognitive systems can explain the selected FEBs, the argument goes, then this research program is at the very least viable and possibly quite fruitful.
However, the universe of FEBs has been “scattered and unsystematic” for a reason – there are no clear criteria regarding what kind of beliefs should count as FEBs, nor is there a way to make an exhaustive list that could be filtered through such criteria. This naturally creates problems for the overall theoretical strategy of B&P (list FEBs, list mechanisms, explain listed FEBs by using listed mechanisms).
One obvious issue is the adequacy of coverage: Are all possible or at least most widespread and best-documented FEBs included? The answer appears to be “no.” For example, as the authors themselves acknowledge, Caplan (Reference Caplan2008) identified several widespread and well-documented biases such as “pessimistic bias” and “make-work bias.” Although B&P imply that explanations in bias-based research are circular, and propose a laudable goal of moving beyond “proximate causes,” they do not offer any explanation – proximate or ultimate – for some of these well-documented biases. Thus, one is left wondering: Which of the listed relevant cognitive systems would explain a widespread doom and gloom in times of unprecedented safety and prosperity, or a belief that more work leads to more wealth in times of Siri and self-driving cars? These biases are as good candidates for FEBs as anything is. In fact, the authors do, through several FIBs, cover anti-foreign bias – the one bias from Caplan's book which lends itself to easy, almost obvious, evolutionary explanation. While the authors repeatedly stress that their article is just a beginning of a research program, it could also be the case that the FEBs picked for this exploratory exercise were the low-hanging fruit and that this line of research, rather than being fruitful, will quickly hit diminishing returns.
In addition to coverage, another big problem with ascertaining the relevant universe of FEBs is finding the proper level of abstraction. In other words, many beliefs which could plausibly be FEBs could be narrower (or broader) than the kind of FEBs that are listed by B&P. For example, FEB 3, “immigrants abuse the welfare system,” likely depends on who the “immigrants” are – are they in the US legally or illegally; are they Mexicans, Asians, or Australians? At the same time, a large number of Americans believe that “third-world workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited” (Klein & Buturovic Reference Klein and Buturovic2011), thus seemingly siding with foreigners over Americans. One explanation for this effect would be that different segments of American society see different “others” as members of their in-group, so while conservatives might feel that Australians are a part of their coalition, progressives might see poor “third-world workers” as part of their coalition. However, this apparent flexibility of FEBs – to the point where final, politically relevant opinions can be diametrically opposed depending on one's ideology – suggests that the usefulness of FEBs for understanding economic beliefs and attitudes is limited. Beliefs acquired through self-reinforcing, local, partisan coalitions appear so powerful that they greatly diminish FEBs' significance overall and make the FEBs stated at B&P's level of generality to be of little practical significance.
Similarly, when discussing FEB 8 (“price regulation has the intended effect”) B&P postulate, plausibly enough, that the illusion that rent control doesn't affect housing affordability stems from a mind-set accustomed to the simple causality of small societies and therefore unable to grasp the numerous unintended consequences of a given regulation in a complex society. However, tremendous differences exist (Buturovic & Klein Reference Buturovic and Klein2010), depending on ideology, in degrees of beliefs in efficacy of an issue often related to rent controls: In this cited study, while 68% of progressive respondents disagreed with the view that “Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable,” only 18% of very conservative voters did so. This suggests that folk beliefs are either more granular than B&P's selection of FEBs (so they are not about price controls, or markets, or regulation in general, but a significantly narrower set of issues), or, even if they do start at the level of abstraction the authors are suggesting, they are easily overwhelmed by information coming from partisan political sources that direct participants' attention towards various facts and mechanisms. (It should be noted that at the time the housing development question was asked, it was not a hot political topic, so these do not seem to be fleeting effects.)
For whatever reason, economic beliefs, at least in the United States, are very strongly related to ideology – to the point that ideology largely overwhelms whatever end-beliefs folk-economic intuitions were supposed to land on. For example, very similar questions posed to the same respondents on the same questionnaire describing likely consequences of reduced supply (“Drug prohibition fails to reduce people's access to drugs” vs. “Gun-control laws fail to reduce people's access to guns”) produce significantly different responses depending on the participants' ideologies (Klein & Buturovic Reference Klein and Buturovic2011). Yet ideology is mentioned in the target article only a few times, and each time it is dismissed as an irrelevant variable. This dismissal appears to be based largely on two studies by Petersen (Aarøe & Petersen Reference Aarøe and Petersen2014; Petersen Reference Petersen2012). Given that both of these studies admit that their results go against large and robust empirical literature, this is not good enough. The authors need to explain more thoroughly why ideology is irrelevant for folk-economic beliefs or how it can be accounted for within their framework.