The mind of the market: Lay beliefs about the economy as a willful, goal-oriented agent

Matthias Forstmann, Pascal Burgmer
2018 Behavioral and Brain Sciences  
We propose an extension to Boyer & Petersen's (B&P's) framework for folk-economic beliefs, suggesting that certain evolutionarily acquired cognitive inference systems can cause modern humans to perceive abstract systems such as the economy as willful, goal-oriented agents. Such an anthropomorphized view, we argue, can have meaningful effects on people's moral evaluations of these agents, as well as on their political and economic behavior.
doi:10.1017/s0140525x18000353 fatcat:qhxganpc3vbgflzyzeq77xhnx4