Self-interested rational-actor models cannot explain devotion-driven human behavior.

Evidence

A wide range of apparently irrational aspects of human behavior, such as falling in love, emotional attachments people have to objects and places, and why it is so easy for terror groups to recruit young men for suicide missions, defy rational actor models and make much more sense in a devoted actor framework. And many of today’s intractable conflicts would make little sense unless we look at them through the lens of sacred values held by devoted actors. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 545

Categorization

• XREF: Challenges the standard rational-choice economics the reader has studied (Milgrom, Greif); sacred value is the limit case of the trade-based models. — connects to: Ideal-type economic actor models are caricatures rarely found in pure form — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 50; Linear models would completely miss self-investment’s real effect on guilt — Torsten Masson and Markus Barth, The identification-guilt paradox…, 61; Devoted actor behavior resists instrumental cost-benefit reasoning. — Scott Atran, The Devoted Actor: Unconditional…, 23 (+1 more)