Field Theory and Rational Choice: A Lewinian Approach to Modeling Motivation

Abstract

Economically based rational choice theories, which have been highly influential in the social sciences, are in various respects inferior to field theory, and have advanced farthest precisely when they have adopted field‐theoretical assumptions. Through its underlying model of the fully specified motivational calculus, field theory proposes that psychological forces are commensurate and expressed in affective terms, and its recognition of the importance of salience anticipates recent developments in decision theory. Field theory corrects the unwarranted assumptions of economic rational choice models when applied to social policy, and counters the biased and misleading implications of such theories.

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