A German economist rejected homo economicus in favor of a culturally embedded homo institutionalis

Evidence

The first victim of such a “realistic” approach to economic phenomena was the figure of the homo economicus. It was not only modern psychology that rendered it implausible for Schmölders. Ethnographic research also suggested that the variety of economic exchanges in different cultures could be captured more adequately with the assumption of a “homo institutionalis” governed by unwritten customary laws of morality. … Rather, Schmölders suggested that economists should use the means of the neighboring social sciences in order to empirically scrutinize the “predictable, regular, and to a certain degree evocable behavior that may be called quasi-instinctive or quasi-automatic.” — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 329

Categorization

• XREF: This is a notable divergence from Hayek within the same ordoliberal family — shows the internal variety the reader is mapping. Also resonates with behavioral-economics critiques of rational choice decades later. — connects to: German economists ignored Schmölders’s behavioral-research program — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 330; German financial psychology rejected the assumption that citizens are malleable material for state designs — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 334; Adam Smith’s homo economicus was culturally specific, not a natural universal type — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 86 (+1 more)
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the broader demolition of homo economicus as a strawman in the reader’s interest in fracturing the cartoon — that critique was made from within the German ordoliberal camp itself.