Page 138 - The Social Animal

120 The Social Animal

attempts to do his or her best to be right and to hold correct opin-
ions and beliefs. One of the primary proponents of this view of
human thought was the 18th-century utilitarian philosopher Jeremy
Bentham. According to Bentham, we engage in a felicific calculus, or
happiness calculation, to determine what is good and what is bad. 5
To take a mundane example, suppose I wanted to purchase a new car.
In determining the make and model to buy, I would add up the
pleasures each brand would bring(sporty design, comfortable inte-
rior, powerful engine)and subtract the pain(the monthly payments
that will mortgage my future, the high cost of frequent fill-ups at the
pump, and so on). I then select the car that brings me the most pleas-
ure with the least amount of pain. For Bentham, it was the role of
governments and economic systems to ensure “the greatest happiness
for the greatest number.” Others agreed, for Bentham’s concept of fe-
licific calculus became a fundamental assumption underlying mod-
ern capitalism.
More recently, the social psychologist Harold Kelley has ad-
vanced a slightly more complex view of the rationality of human
6
thought: People think like naive scientists. To arrive at the best ex-
planation for a given event or phenomenon, scientists look for cer-
tain relationships in their data—that is, they attempt to find cases in
which “X came before Y and always varied with Y and only with Y
to conclude that X caused Y.” So, for example, if a scientist wanted
to determine if smoking causes lung cancer, she might consider all
the people who smoke and get lung cancer, all the people who smoke
and don’t get lung cancer, all the people who don’t smoke and get
lung cancer, and all the people who don’t smoke and don’t get lung
cancer. In this way, a scientist can consider the role of smoking in
producing lung cancer. When a person attempts to explain someone
else’s behavior, Kelley suggest a similar process. Specifically the naive
scientist looks for three pieces of information: the consistency of the
person’s action (Does he or she always behave in this manner in other
situations and at other times?), consensus (Do others behave in the
same way in the same situation?), and/or the distinctiveness of the ac-
tion (Is he or she the only one to behave in this manner?).
For example, suppose Beth kisses Scott and someone asks you
why. According to Kelley, before you could give a reasonable answer
to that question, you would want to know a bit more about the situ-
ation: Does Beth go around kissing almost everyone at the drop of a