Frijters, Paul and Foster, Gigi (2025) The love principle. In: Chuah, Swee-Hoon, Hoffmann, Robert and Neelim, Ananta, (eds.) Elgar Encyclopedia of Behavioural and Experimental Economics. Elgar Encyclopedias in Economics and Finance series. Edward Elgar, 291 - 294. ISBN 9781802207729
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Humans have a huge capacity to fall in love and celebrate that capacity in poetry and song. Yet, how does one understand the evolutionary function and stylised psychological mechanism of love? In this entry, we describe a general principle of love as juxtaposed with greed: we propose that while greed is an attempt at grabbing what we want from a position of dominance, love is an attempt at getting what we want via submission. Humans choose dominance when they perceive they can and love when they perceive they must. We formalise these ideas into a ‘Love Principle’ that offers social scientists a means of studying that most mysterious of motive forces, the counterpoint of greed, the greatest joy in our souls, and the most glaring omission in economists’ models of people: our capacity to love.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | © 2025 The Editors |
| Divisions: | LSE |
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) |
| Date Deposited: | 10 Jul 2025 13:54 |
| Last Modified: | 10 Jul 2025 16:03 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/128780 |
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