Behavioral economics founders rejected homo economicus yet belonged to the neoliberal research program.

Evidence

Schmölders claimed that he had been unaware of Simon and the efforts of the Ford Foundation before the publication of his programmatic piece in Ordo. Yet, afterwards he saw it as a boon to his position. Despite their differences in intellectual scope, theoretical ambition, and style, there were salient commonalities between Schmölders’s and Simon’s early attempts to establish a research program in behavioral economics. To begin with, both rejected the ideal of the homo economicus as inadequate, while advocating the empirical analysis of the decisions of real people in actual situations. Moreover, deviating from methodological individualism that focused on the individual choice act, they looked for patterns of choice or principles of behavior in larger groups that made individual actions predictable. In addition, they did not consider these behavioral patterns specific to human beings; some of them allegedly were also found in apes or, as Simon would suggest, construed in machines. Characteristically, Simon spoke of “choosing organisms.” Finally, both looked at neighboring disciplines for methodological help and theoretical inspiration in order to understand the principles of human behavior, demanding the interdisciplinary opening up of economics. In particular, they advocated the reintroduction of psychology into economics. In contrast to the earlier subjective value theory, however, psychological motives of economic behavior should not be determined by means of introspection but through the most advanced methods of the social and behavioral sciences. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 332

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader map of internal varieties within the neoliberal intellectual tradition — behavioral economics growing inside, not against, ordoliberal/neoliberal circles.
• DEFINE: Defines what ‘behavioral economics’ meant in its early ordoliberal context: pattern-seeking across groups, psychology without introspection, ‘choosing organisms.’