Cognitive efficiency as a causal mechanism for social preferences

Mathematical sociology and neo-classical economic theory are predicated upon two heretofore irreconcilable views of human behavior. Sociology assumes the ontic primacy of structures composed of known patterns of behavior, diminishing the significance of subjective agency. Economics assumes the ontic primacy of rational self-interest, with scant attention paid to social drives. In this paper, we reconcile these divergent viewpoints using recent discoveries in cognitive science and theories of decision-making. Using our recent model of human choice behavior adapted from reinforcement learning, we show that an account of individually rational decision-making that takes processing costs into account reproduces multiple types of social behaviors with no prior common explanation. The natural emergence of these biases from our model provides evidence that, rather than being irrational, these patterns of behavior are rational adaptations to particular choice ecologies that predominate human social systems. Results from our computational experiments demonstrate an interesting adaptive interplay between agents driven by individually rational goals and the group structures that emerge from their choices.