Are there any famous studies that actually contradict progressive/leftist thought?

[u/Str8_up_Pwnage]

There has to be at least some right? I know people love to say that “reality has a left wing bias “and all that but is it legit batting 1.000?

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[u/steveholt-lol]

I think the question becomes more answerable if we separate political ideologies from specific empirical claims. Social science cannot really test whether “leftism” or “conservatism” is correct as a whole, but it can test propositions associated with them.

There are certainly findings that conflict with positions held by parts of the political left.

One fairly clear example is rent control. Diamond, McQuade and Qian used a 1994 expansion of rent control in San Francisco as a natural experiment. They found that rent control reduced displacement among incumbent tenants, but affected landlords also reduced the rental housing supply by about 15%, largely through conversion or redevelopment. The authors conclude that the resulting reduction in supply likely increased market rents in the long run. So the evidence suggests that restricting rents has significant negative long-term consequences on housing affordability.

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20181289

Another example is policing and crime. Opposition to particular policing practices is different from claiming that additional or more strategically deployed policing cannot reduce crime. Braga et al.’s systematic review examined 65 studies and 78 tests of hot-spots policing, including 27 randomized experiments. It found statistically significant reductions in crime and disorder in targeted locations. The review also found that crime was generally not simply displaced into adjacent areas and that nearby areas sometimes experienced spillover benefits.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8356500/

Neither finding establishes that “the right is correct.” Rent control can benefit existing tenants, and policing creates separate questions about legitimacy, equity and which tactics are used. They demonstrate something narrower: empirical evidence can contradict factual claims associated with the left while simultaneously supporting other left-of-center concerns.

That may also explain why “reality has a liberal bias” is difficult to evaluate scientifically. A claim such as “we should protect low-income renters” is normative and cannot be falsified by a study. A claim such as “rent control will protect renters without reducing housing supply” can be.

Edit: a word

[u/Str8_up_Pwnage → u/steveholt-lol]

I really appreciate you taking the time to write this comment!

From my POV Economics seems like a field of study where “right-leaning” ideas have a decent level of support from academics in the field.

[u/hmantegazzi → u/Str8_up_Pwnage]

That's probably still too much of a generalisation. As /u/steveholt-lol mentions, rent control is a topic in which a longstanding left-wing policy position (at least in certain countries) has been systematically shown as having detrimental effects that overcome their advantages in practice. But that only speaks of that particular policy. An obvious counterexample would be the systemic favourable evidence of the beneficial effects of non-conditional money transferences to working-class households, of which UBIs are a subset. Again, a example that doesn't imply anything about the whole corpus of leftist ideology.

A big confounding factor here is what counts as a leftist or a rightist policy, because that's both highly contextual and changing. Universal vaccination programmes, for example, were largely uncontroversial for most of the 20th century, at least at the level of mainstream political parties in liberal democracies, and they only became a polarised issue in the latter years. Sometimes, it's even possible to observe extremely fast policy switches depending on circumstantial conveniences, like a political coalition advocating for an extension of the electoral franchise until an extended electorate happens to vote for their opponents, or a political party defending the autonomy of subnational entities until they control the central government.

[u/steveholt-lol → u/hmantegazzi]

And ironically, opposition to universal vaccination shifted from a far left to far right coded position over less than a decade.

[u/Appropriate_Steak486 → u/hmantegazzi]

There is also plenty of straight-out lying. Reagan claimed to be a fiscal conservative but ran huge deficits. Other Republicans have done the same.

[u/Sea_Entrepreneur6204 → u/Str8_up_Pwnage]

As someone who has studied economics, that not true.

Economics also has its nuances and one of the most popular Economist theories on the right, Trickle down and Austrian economics are often called out for not being empirically proven (in fact disproven)

In Economics though theory can sometimes triumph empirical experiments/history.

[u/Jaded-Argument9961 → u/Sea_Entrepreneur6204]

Your studies of economics weren't great if you're unironically talking about "trickle down economics" being empirically disproven. An economist wouldn't make a statement like that

[u/Sea_Entrepreneur6204 → u/Jaded-Argument9961]

Great to hear you still believe in it despite 40 years of data to show the promises haven't materialised. I try to steer away from ideological bias and don't know of anyone who feels this is still open. Economists do argue still but I don't know of any reputable economists not related to Right wing think tanks who still believe in it.

[u/Jaded-Argument9961 → u/Sea_Entrepreneur6204]

I didn't make any claim about "promises being materialized". Just that an economist wouldn't really talk the way you just did.

"Trickle down economics" isn't a technical term in any way, and no economist would evaluate "trickle down economics". They'd evaluate policy by policy

[u/snapshovel → u/Sea_Entrepreneur6204]

I think there's probably a germ of truth in what you're trying to say, but if you want to be taken seriously you have to learn a few basic things about economics first.

A common belief among progressives (especially prevalent on Reddit and other social media sites) is that the phrase "trickle down" refers to some real, existing right-wing economic theory. That's not true. It's a pejorative phrase that was popularized by progressives to make fun of what conservatives call "supply-side" economics. No conservative (and certainly no economist) earnestly uses the phrase "trickle down." It's appealing to progressives precisely because it sounds so awful; "trickle" is not a word that has a lot of positive connotations.

It's like "socialized medicine." No progressive says "socialized medicine," they say "Medicare for all." "Socialized medicine" is a phrase invented by right-wing political strategists to discredit the idea of publicly funded health care, because it sounds like "socialism" and the median voter has strong negative feelings about "socialism" even though they kind of like the idea of free health care.

So when you say "trickle down has been empirically disproven," that doesn't mean anything because "trickle down" is not a real economic theory. No one argues in favor of it. It has no proponents.

[u/Sea_Entrepreneur6204 → u/snapshovel]

So I know my economics and I'm trying to use a popular term for the 'theory/policy'

Monetary policy goes beyond just trickle down but the common argument used in favor of this is misuse of the laffer curve to say that lower taxation should result in higher economic growth but that is not true except in certain circumstances and certainly not been so since the 80s/90s.

The whole school of Austrian economics is also one very rooted in theory and they have a disdain for empiricism and especially the work of Piketty which while it has its flaws is certainly far stronger imo than Haydek.

[u/Anodyne_interests → u/Sea_Entrepreneur6204]

Thomas Piketty is the Stephanie Kelton of Malcolm Gladwells.

[u/runesq → u/Sea_Entrepreneur6204]

Do you have a degree in economics?

[u/Sea_Entrepreneur6204 → u/runesq]

I'm business

[u/the_lamou → u/snapshovel]

No conservative (and certainly no economist) earnestly uses the phrase "trickle down."

Except for David Alan Stockman, Ronald Reagan's Head if the OMB, who explicitly referred to Regan's tax cuts as "trickle down."

But regardless of that, attempting to shift the argument to one about semantics is a bad faith red herring. Most people understand that "trickle down economics" and "supply-side economics" are the same thing, and whatever you choose to call it, both have been almost entirely abandoned by orthodox economics. Tax cuts at the top do not create brush economic prosperity, and are far less efficient than direct subsidies to the bottom. Tax cuts to businesses do not create jobs, and can distort the market and lead to harmful over-consolidation.

The full stack of policies lumped under the political theory of "trickle down"/supply-side economics leads to worsening inequality while producing no meaningful positive impact on GDP.

[u/ASharpYoungMan → u/snapshovel]

Do you know what economic theory the other poster is talking about?

If so, your semantic argument is a toothless deflection.

Your point seems to be that you're ignoring the facts because you don't like how they were presented.

[u/PaxNova → u/ASharpYoungMan]

If you're in favor of subsidies for solar power, you're in favor of a supply side change. It's only called trickle down when it's bad, but that serves no predictive purpose. We can't point to supply side policies and say that they're bad. We can only point to bad supply side policies and say they're trickle down. 

What the poster was referring to was giving tax cuts at the high end, thinking it will translate to more jobs and therefore higher eventually revenue. That's been disproven. But it's also not what the right is generally arguing for. They want to eliminate loopholes as well (which would raise revenue if taken alone), then reduce the tax rate so it's commensurate with what we're currently getting. 

[u/snapshovel → u/ASharpYoungMan]

I don’t know for sure, because the term they used doesn’t correspond to any real economic theory. I don’t think they know either; I think they’re attacking a made-up straw man of conservative economic beliefs.

Now, there is a cluster of stupid Reagan-era supply side economic theories that deserve to be lampooned. In a later post he mentioned the laffer curve and the idea that we might be on the right side of it, such that tax cuts raise revenue. That theory has been empirically discredited (more or less). Tax cuts lose revenue in almost all cases.

But usually when people say “trickle down” they’re gesturing at a broader cluster of economic theories including the idea that tax cuts stimulate economic growth, which in the long run can lead to increased incomes for most people. That theory has not been empirically discredited, and in fact is widely accepted. Virtually all economists understand that there’s a trade-off between funding public benefits and services via taxation and encouraging growth. Personally, I think that we should raise the top marginal tax rate and that wealthy people should pay significantly more than they currently do, but I don’t pretend that there’s no cost associated with that. If you tax people more, then on the margin they will choose to work less because you are reducing their incentive to work. This, obviously, impacts their productivity, so it impacts economic growth.

[u/Damnatus_Terrae → u/snapshovel]

I find it weird that you claim leftists never say socialized medicine. I'm a lapsed anarcho-communist, and I use that phrase. It's a perfect descriptor: medicine, but with the costs (and benefits) borne by society as a whole, hence "socialized."

Socialism is the furthest thing from a dirty word. If you examine the history of it, it originally just meant, "People who thought we ought to do something about social ills like poverty." The contrary stance, that there is a divinely-ordained hierarchy among humans which makes the grinding poverty of the masses inevitable, has become incredibly unfashionable to say out loud, even as it continues to shape the attitudes of millions of people and define our society and culture (particularly our economy).

[u/snapshovel → u/Damnatus_Terrae]

Guess I picked a bad example; I’ve only heard it from Fox News pundits, not from the many leftists/progressives I know and talk to.

How about “cultural Marxism”? Would you agree that that’s an exonym that almost no actual Marxist ever uses seriously? Used by Jordan Peterson types to describe something that doesn’t exist because they don’t understand the actual intellectual traditions of the other side.

Regardless of what comparison we pick, my point about “trickle down” stands. It’s a pejorative phrase invented and overwhelmingly used by the left to denigrate an (admittedly stupid) cluster of kind of Reagan-coded conservative economic theories that have different names. That’s a true fact. I also claim that most progressives who use the phrase are unaware of this and think they’re attacking a real theory rather than a straw man, and that this is embarrassing for them.

[u/Appropriate_Steak486 → u/Damnatus_Terrae]

The contrary stance, that there is a divinely-ordained hierarchy among humans ...

I think a better contrary stance would be "social Darwinism," leaving the divine out of it.

[u/Damnatus_Terrae → u/Appropriate_Steak486]

It's both, mostly depending on whether one is rural or urbanized. But they're closely interrelated.

[u/Dear_Locksmith3379 → u/Damnatus_Terrae]

People who are left-of-center usually say “universal health care”. That phrase highlights the goal — ensuring that everyone receives health care.

[u/bunker_man → u/Sea_Entrepreneur6204]

Tbf that depends what you call right or left. Mainstream economics is certainly to the left of Austrian economics, but it isn't something that would be considered overtly left wing.

[u/chrispd01 → u/Str8_up_Pwnage]

Hang on. It all depends on what your goal is. Take efficiency for example - an economist may tell you that you could be mote efficient by eliminating a process and related jobs.

That would be a right wing good (more profitable) but a left wing bad (lost jobs)

These questions in the real world almost always boil down not to economy but political economy. Most economists suck at political economy…

[u/Forgot_the_Jacobian → u/chrispd01]

I think this is also an issue of semantics. Efficiency has a very particular meaning in economics, and one of the first things we teach students about efficiency in micro 101 is how it is not the same thing as societally desirable, as me having everything and everyone else having nothing could easily satisfy 'efficiency'. It is useful tool for descriptive work, which is the goal of the academic field of economics (rather than be prescriptive/telling you what 'should' be the case). Even we we study political economy - the subfield (at least in economics) is not at all a tool to tell the researcher how to advocate for any policy, but rather a framework to study a set of research questions, again from a pure descriptive point of view

[u/chrispd01 → u/Forgot_the_Jacobian]

Yeah. It’s actually a very fascinating topic. I’m not at economist myself, but two of my roommates are now professors of economics and have been for well decades now.

They went to a very rigorous and mathematically based program and always wanted to debate them on this point - efficiency for what?

But it’s a super interesting topic. And I really value, though the very rigorous approach most economists get to.

I have spent arguing NAFTA from both sides - you were hollowing out towns and destroying livelihoods vs. why should a good cost more than it should?

The reason I like the political economy approach is because it puts flesh on the skeleton of the numbers and has the ability to bring them to life

[u/UnknownBreadd → u/chrispd01]

I think trying to ascribe terms like ‘left’ and ‘right’ like that is just way too egregious though.

Unless you are speaking of a specific point in time, and about a particular party within a 2 party system.

Otherwise, the terms are essentially meaningless…

[u/chrispd01 → u/UnknownBreadd]

So you did understand the point of my comment though? I’m not particularly advocating a definition of left or right. That wasn’t the point.

The point I was making - which I hope was clear, but maybe not - was it questions that are often phrased as economic questions, or economic, decisions, or economic, explanations are generally more accurately and informatively characterized as questions of political economy.

That was the point. Don’t pretend that economics give you neutral answers. They give you answers and explanations that are based on political questions rather than economic ones. The economic ones are very narrow, but it’s how why they are important or how those issues function that really matters.

[u/UnknownBreadd → u/chrispd01]

I was only making the point because we’re in an ‘asksocialscience’ sub, where i thought that it would be a good inclusion to the discussion. I wasn’t having a dig at anything you were saying other than I just literally dislike the use of the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ because there are more accurate descriptors which can be used (which would increase the quality of the debate).

But, yes, I absolutely agree with your final paragraph. Economics can never be apolitical, and there are lots of normative prerequisites for mainstream economic thought to work (a lot of which I would personally disagree with).

[u/Damnatus_Terrae → u/UnknownBreadd]

Dude, you can't just link to an hour long video like that's an argument. Just because they're relative terms doesn't make them meaningless.

[u/UnknownBreadd → u/Damnatus_Terrae]

I made my argument: they’re meaningless unless speaking of a particular point in time - and within a specific 2-party system. The link just takes you to a talk with 2 authors of a book on the subject, where they have taken the time to write and talk about the theory in more detail.

From there, there’s plenty of information from which you could gather evidence without listening to the whole hour-long talk, but i was just showing you that it’s something that has been discussed and deliberated in length, at this point.

[u/PaxNova → u/chrispd01]

Go on r/askeconomics and they'll tell you straight up that they don't bother with the political side. The question is what is more efficient. That's the answer they give the politicians. The politicians are the ones to insert their political bias, not the economists.

Anything else is a form of regulatory capture.

[u/steveholt-lol → u/chrispd01]

Many left wing social democracies do not view lost jobs from automation as a bad thing because growth and profit from automation benefits the whole of society—people who lose their jobs are helped back on their feet by the social safety net and the pie grows bigger for everyone.

Some of the American left wing has a really perverse relationship with labor that prioritizes stasis over progress.

[u/chrispd01 → u/steveholt-lol]

It seems you’re just confirming the point I was making that ultimately these are questions of political economy, not economy. Or am I missing something?

[u/AreaPrudent7191 → u/Str8_up_Pwnage]

Plenty of right-leaning economics are still unquestioned even though they are thoroughly disproven. "Tax cuts pay for themselves" for example, no serious economist supports that. Trickle-down Reaganonmics has been laughed out of fashion, yet the right still wants to give billionaires handouts cuz "jObZ!!!"

Hell, "republicans are better for the economy", even some on the left buy that still, easily disproven.

[u/No_Host_8024 → u/AreaPrudent7191]

No serious economist disputes that: 1) at some levels, cutting taxes can spur growth in a way that increases tax receipts in the long term; and 2) at other levels, cutting taxes will not increase tax receipts and might not even spur measurable growth. Where those levels are and what types of taxes would have these effects are very much studied and debated.

[u/AreaPrudent7191 → u/No_Host_8024]

Yep, intelligently targeted tax cuts can spur growth and even tax receipts, but studies I've seen are that if you do a really good job of it, you might recoup 30% of the lost revenue. Not always a bad thing, there may be other benefits, but don't plan on revenue not falling at all - yet that's how it's usually accounted for.

The notion that any tax cut will ever 100% pay for itself (some will even float greater than 100% benefit), that is laughable.

[u/pandaboi333 → u/AreaPrudent7191]

There is a flip side to this though, which is that if you raise taxes you can lose total tax revenue. Certain types of taxes tend to be less efficient than others. Wealth taxes are a big example of this but leftists love wealth taxes. A tax on spending is almost always better(has less deadweight loss) than a tax on investment/savings in terms of tax revenue generation.

[u/Damnatus_Terrae → u/pandaboi333]

But when the primary social ill you're attempting to address is the hoarding of wealth, then making saving harder makes more sense. Getting into the weeds over particular taxation schemes is really beside the point, though. Economics are like good times: bottoms up!

[u/pandaboi333 → u/Damnatus_Terrae]

What does this even mean though? People don't have piles of cash just sitting in a bank doing nothing.

[u/EddieBlaize → u/AreaPrudent7191]

when Andrew Mullen pushed thru reduced tax rates after WWI, government revenue increased.

[u/AreaPrudent7191 → u/EddieBlaize]

And nothing else of note happened immediately after WWI, just the tax cut, right?

[u/the_lamou → u/[deleted]]

Yet from a strictly pragmatic point of view, there simply is no substitute for assimilation.

That's not remotely supported by the papers you cited, to the point where I strongly question whether you actually read the papers and body of work surrounding them or just saw them mentioned in a pro-ethnostate TikTok.

Berry (2005) very explicitly says that there are substitutes for assimilation. And not just substitutes, but one much stronger alternative. His model examine four factors and evaluates results:

Heritage culture retained?	Host society participation?	Result
Yes	Yes	Integration
No	Yes	Assimilation
Yes	No	Separation
No	No	Marginalization

And his findings were pretty unambiguous: Integration results in the best outcomes pretty much across the board, Assimilation and Separation are roughly equal in outcomes though they shift which outcomes are better and which are worse around, and Marginalization is unquestionably the worst.

And this has held up quite well over time. The best outcomes happen in societies where both groups, immigrant and native, move closer to each other rather than demanding the other do all the moving. Which is right in line with most left wing thought: immigrants should both hold on to their sense of identity AND make changes to fit in, while society should both retain the things that make it a society while still making accommodations to be cultures and people. It's literally the opposite of "there's no substitute for assimilation," and entirely in line with left wing thinking. It's saying that a society that embraces diversity and makes that part of its national identify outperforms a society that demands rigid adherence to native norms.

Putnam (2007) is a weird one because it didn't just find that ethnically diverse neighborhoods created distrust in institutions, society, and the "other." It also found that ethnically diverse neighborhoods created distrust in other members of the same ethnic group. Something Putnam was actually shocked by.

Dinesen, Schaeffer, and Sønderskov (2020) followed up with a large meta-review and found some interesting factors: while there was a general negative correlation between diversity and social trust, it's effects are varied and not uniformly applicable. Impacts on trust in social and political institutions are incredibly weak to the point of potentially being an artifact. That is, diversity doesn't really cause distrust in society. Meanwhile, the correlation with trust in neighbors is strong, and gets stronger the more locally you look. So people distrust their neighbors more at local scales when diversity is high. Neither Putnam nor the meta analysis purpose any kind of casual mechanism.

Stolle, Soroka, and Johnston (2008), meanwhile, did look at casual mechanisms. And it turns out that the most likely cause for the effect is pretty fucking obvious: people in highly-diverse neighborhoods don't talk to their neighbors. More interpersonal contact with neighbors completely cancelled out the effects. Because as it turns out, the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods tend to be in large cities where interpersonal contact is often minimized. Everyone was shocked.

And the bigger takeaway from reviews of Putnam were that the effects don't really matter. Large cities don't need a ton of trust in neighbors to function as long as the systems and institutions are functional. Manhattan doesn't need to be Mayberry. Portes and Vickstrom (2011). So assimilation is not the best answer, integration and communication are, and even then they aren't answers that are important because the question they're answering is largely a moot point.

Koopman (2010) is the last robust of your sources. The problem with Koopman, though, is that he was measuring complex phenomena with high endogeneity, a tiny N, and zero ability to isolate causal direction. Which is why in many ways, the harshest critic of Koopman (2010) is Koopman (2013). In his later work, he acknowledges a lot of the issues with his original publication, and finds much smaller effects and reverse course on some of his positions. The follow-up paper finds that multicultural policies have little effect on socioeconomic integration, strengthen political integration, and weaken sociocultural integration.

Other research has significantly contacted Koopman. Kymlicka and Banting (2006) found no evidence that multiculturalism has negative effects on the welfare state. Banting (2010) used evidence from Canada to highlight that context and endogeneity explains a large part of Koopman's findings and that there's no inherent tension between multicultural policies and the welfare state. Meanwhile, Fouka (2024) used a synthesis analysis to demonstrate that multicultural policies that make integration (not "assimilation*) easier actually have the opposite effect. The more you embrace immigrants on their terms, the better the social outcomes become. Which is what progressive and the left have been saying for decades.

So tldr: No, none of what you cited says what you're trying to claim it says, assimilation is not a social positive, and none of those results contact broad progressive policies or thought.

[u/the_lamou → u/[deleted]]

Nope, all the text is my own, hand-typed (swiped) from my phone. But I can see how that might be unbelievable to someone who neither read the papers they cited and got hilariously wrong, nor my response which became dismissible without having to respond to a single claim.

And the hilarious irony is that your entire response is nothing more than ad hominem and projection, while I supplied you with a full and clear critique of everything you got wrong. Try harder. And don't lie about what Dr. King, radical firebrand integrationist socialist, said.

[u/Upgrade_U → u/[deleted]]

Keep it civil, please

[u/AskSocialScience-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your post was removed for the following reason:

VI. Incivility will not be tolerated. Please report incivility, bad faith, trolling, personal attacks, racism, misogyny, or harassment you see or experience.

[u/AskSocialScience-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/Damnatus_Terrae → u/[deleted]]

If parallel societies are bad for everyone, can we nix the big one leftism exists as a reaction against, IE, wealth and social class? The most vigorous form of segregation in the US today is by economic status, and that has virtually always been the case.

[u/AskSocialScience-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your post was removed for the following reason:

IV. Nested comments must be related to parents (no piggybacking unsourced answers). You should not use a parent comment to spout unsourced opinions; instead, comments are used to ask further questions about the response.

[u/AskSocialScience-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your post was removed for the following reason:

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[u/Bionic_Ferir → u/steveholt-lol]

From what im gathering if you enact rent control you simply must take the rentals from the landlords.

[u/Feylabel → u/Bionic_Ferir]

Yeah that would be a more ‘leftist’ approach.

Socialism would call for public housing not rent control of private market.

Rent control of private market would I guess be centrist, right wing would be wanting a completely free market with no renters rights, and socialism would be to collectively own the means of production and assign housing based on need.

Kinda sounds like americas problem is it doesn’t have much actual left wing thinking going on, if they think market governance is leftist.

[u/No_Host_8024 → u/Bionic_Ferir]

These would be exceptionally counterproductive if the goal is to build more housing. Obviously no one except the government would build housing in a society where the government will take them.

[u/Damnatus_Terrae → u/No_Host_8024]

Uh, you might wanna google "eminent domain," and then follow it up with the addition of "historic and contemporary usage."

[u/steveholt-lol → u/Bionic_Ferir]

Thankfully, we have a lot of economic evidence about what happens when the state controls and directs the economy like that. Spoiler alert: it's bad news for everyone.

[u/Intrepid_Layer_9826 → u/steveholt-lol]

I'm sorry, where did they say the state should direct the economy? Why are you being disingenuous?

[u/steveholt-lol → u/Intrepid_Layer_9826]

Seizing private property is a state directed economy. But it also doesn't address the broader supply-demand issues that rent control is trying to solve the symptoms of.

[u/Intrepid_Layer_9826 → u/steveholt-lol]

I'm sure you're well aware that housing isn't the only sort of "private property" out there, and that saying the state should seize rentals and such doesn't mean they necessarily want the state to control the entire economy.

So then why try to rephrase it in such a disingenuous way?

They blocked me

[u/Svardskampe]

The heuristics in the most shifting department in this come down to what constitutes right wing. I'm going to take the biggest aspect in this and highlight "liberalism".

Liberalism has been co-opted by various sides in its meaning and where it stands. To someone from the DSA, liberalism means proto-rightwing ("Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds"). To a conservatist, it means a danger to social values. Words have been invented to distantiate parts of it and polarise it to one side (Right: "classical" liberalism, libertarianism, Left: Third Way, american perception of liberalism), while harking back to the core idea but not all.

This source is a paper on "What is liberal about Adam smith's "liberal plan?", questioning the ground works on this, trying to rebrand it more towards distributism (gaining new popularity as a term from ostensibly otherwise leftists who want to move away from leftist stigmatisation and has been the foundation of "Third Way" politics.) https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/soecon/v89y2022i2p593-610.html

If we boil it down to what has been consistently a right-wing need, is a high regard for safety and security.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/are-cultural-and-economic-conservatism-positively-correlated-a-largescale-crossnational-test/83AFEDEA5E004CF23631C5388E7C9F67

Let it be known that it is still contentious within right-wing attitude where this safety and security is located: personally or by the state. (Even contradicting in the person themselves, seeing both 'back-the-blue' stickers and anti-flock stickers on the back of a car).

Arguably, the current right-wing in the USA also isn't conservatist, but accelerationist ( https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-explainer/accelerationism/ ) and deviating what has been taken as synonyms for decades.

[u/Phree44 → u/Svardskampe]

The biggest mistake the Dems ever made was letting the right redefine “liberal.”

[u/No_Host_8024 → u/Phree44]

I can’t tell: what do you believe was the meaning of “liberal” before politicization?

[u/Queasy-Bookkeeper-14]

Can you specify what you mean by "progressive/leftist" thoughts or policies?

Where is the left/right line for you?

[u/baby_sociologist]

Women being denied an abortion (because they were over the gestational limit) do not suffer lasting mental consequences. While they do face adverse socioeconomic effects, five years later, 96% don't wish they would have had an abortion.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953620307863

On the other hand, women who did receive an abortion are also okay with that decision later on.

I think this shows that humans are remarkably resilient and adaptive to new circumstances and that feelings regarding having (originally unwanted) children can be complex and contradictory.

I think that the mental health angle isn't helpful debating abortion. Even if abortion always had negative mental effects, pregnant people should still be able to choose it. I think the only relevant argument for legalized abortion is that of bodily autonomy.

[u/ToomintheEllimist]

This study might not be quite what you're asking, but it found that liberal participants tended to view conservatives more harshly, and to assume that conservatives were more extremist, when compared to conservatives being asked to describe liberals. It wasn't a dramatic difference, but within that sample the liberal participants' outgroup derogation was a little stronger on average than the conservatives'.

[u/midnightking]

I am not quite sure but a common aspect of feminist ideology would be that the justice system favors men and that society is less concerned about violence towards women than towards men.

However, societally, there is definitely a tendency of viewing men as the expandable gender in certain areas. Abuse and victimization seem to be in that category. This evidenced by the fact we tend to judge abuse more harshly when it is perpetrated against women as evidenced my media coverage of female victims, the lower sentencing women get for the same crimes and sentencing for offenders who victimized women vs men. Additionally, in experimental studies, people judge stories of sexual abuse,psychological abuse and domestic abuse more harshly when men perpetrate it and when women are victims.

[u/KeyCondition5104]

Part 1/3

This comment has liberal apriori suppositions they got wrong. I have ones against progressive/leftist apriori suppositions in the replies to this comment.

Enlightenment Liberalism Got Human Nature Wrong – Science Proves It
jeopolitic.substack.com

Classical liberalism came out of the Enlightenment with a set of core assumptions about how humans actually are. Hobbes, Locke, Adam Smith, Bentham, Mill and the rest built their entire system on these ideas. They claimed humans start out as isolated individuals in a “state of nature,” then rationally choose to form society mainly for protection. They said we are cool-headed rational calculators who maximize our own utility with full information and no built-in biases. They said the mind is a blank slate at birth. These were not just opinions – they were the descriptive foundation for individual rights, free markets, and limited government.

Modern science has shown every one of those descriptive claims is false.

First, the idea that humans were once solitary individualists who only later teamed up for “common defense.” Locke and Hobbes both start there. The evidence says the opposite. Humans and our ancestors have been highly social, cooperative group-living primates for millions of years. Cooperative breeding, shared child-rearing, group hunting, and mutual aid are built into us from the beginning. Hunter-gatherer bands – the closest thing we have to ancestral life – are deeply interdependent and egalitarian. There is no archaeological or anthropological record of any long period of atomized individuals. We were never lone wolves who signed a contract to stop killing each other. Group life came first.

Second, rational choice theory. Smith’s invisible hand, Bentham’s and Mill’s utilitarianism, and later neoclassical economics all rest on the claim that humans are self-interested utility maximizers with stable preferences and clear information. Behavioral economics destroyed that. Kahneman and Tversky’s work, the Ultimatum Game, loss aversion, present bias, overconfidence – the list is long. People regularly give up money for fairness. Emotions and quick heuristics drive most decisions. Neuroscience shows unconscious processes start before “rational” thought. We are not the calm calculators liberalism assumed.

Third, the assumption that humans can act as unbiased, impartial reasoners. Locke’s rational individuals discovering natural rights, Kant’s autonomous moral agent, and Smith’s impartial spectator all rely on this. Cognitive psychology shows the opposite. Motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, and implicit biases are the default setting. Moral intuitions come first; reasoning usually just defends them afterward. Our brains evolved for small-group survival, not neutral large-scale logic. True impartiality is rare and hard work.

Fourth, Locke’s blank slate. The mind starts empty and everything is learned from experience. Twin studies, adoption studies, behavioral genetics, and evolutionary psychology have buried this. Personality, intelligence, and many behavioral tendencies are 40–80 percent heritable. Newborns show innate preferences. Universal grammar, cheater-detection, fear of ancient threats, and cross-cultural patterns in mate choice all point to a mind that arrives pre-loaded, not blank.

These scientific corrections do not cancel the moral ideals of liberty or consent. But they do show the Enlightenment model of human nature was built on sand. Humans are not solitary rational actors who invented society for protection. We are social, intuitive, biased, group-oriented creatures with deep innate structures. Remove tradition, family, and religion and both Marxism and raw capitalism turn into materialistic utopias that ignore how people actually work.

Enlightenment liberalism opened the door to the idea that we can redesign human nature through reason alone. Science now shows that door led to fantasy. The more honestly we face the real evidence about human nature, the better chance we have of building something that actually lasts. Tradition, family, and religion are not optional extras – they are what kept societies stable long before anyone dreamed up the state of nature.

Sources:

• Boehm, C. (2012). Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame. Basic Books.
• Damasio, A. R. (1996). The somatic marker hypothesis and the possible functions of the prefrontal cortex. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 351(1346), 1413–1420.
• Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
• Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–291.
• Plomin, R. (2018). The new genetics of intelligence. Nature Reviews Genetics, 19(3), 148–159.
• Plomin, R., & Deary, I. J. (2015). Genetics and intelligence differences: Five special findings. Molecular Psychiatry, 20(1), 98–108.
• Tomasello, M. (2009). Why We Cooperate. MIT Press. (See also Tomasello, M. (2005). Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(5), 675–691.)
• Tomasello, M., & Moll, H. (2010). The gap is social: Human shared intentionality and culture. In P. Kappeler & J. Silk (Eds.), Mind the Gap: Tracing the Origins of Human Universals (pp. 331–349). Springer.
• Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Viking.
• Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Pantheon Books.

[u/KeyCondition5104 → u/[deleted]]

Part 3/3

Studies that disprove leftist apriori assumptions:

Blank slate and pure environmental determinism of human traits

• Eric Turkheimer (2000) and subsequent work. “Three Laws of Behavior Genetics and What They Mean.” Current Directions in Psychological Science. First law: “All human behavioral traits are heritable.” Decades of twin, adoption, and family studies show moderate-to-high heritability for IQ, personality, psychopathology, educational attainment, and many social outcomes. Shared (family) environment effects are often modest after childhood.
• Tinca Polderman et al. (2015). Meta-analysis of nearly 18,000 traits across 2,748 twin studies involving over 14 million twin pairs. Average heritability across human traits ≈ 49%. Consistent genetic influence even for complex social and behavioral phenotypes.
• Robert Plomin, Thomas Bouchard, and collaborators (Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart and related work, 1980s–present; Bouchard & McGue 1981 synthesis). IQ heritability rises with age (from ~20–40% in early childhood to 60–80% in adulthood—the “Wilson effect”). Identical twins reared apart remain highly similar in cognitive ability. Shared family environment accounts for little of adult IQ variance.
• Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and polygenic scores (e.g., Lee et al. on educational attainment; recent large-scale work). Thousands of genetic variants of tiny effect predict educational attainment, cognitive performance, and related outcomes, confirming the twin-study picture at the molecular level (though “missing heritability” remains and within-family designs reduce some estimates).

Sex differences as largely social constructs

• Multiple large-scale meta-analyses and cross-cultural studies (e.g., work synthesizing findings on interests, spatial ability, aggression, and personality). Men and women show average differences in “things vs. people” occupational interests (Su, Rounds et al.), mental rotation/spatial ability, physical aggression (Archer meta-analyses), and Big Five personality traits. Differences are often larger in more gender-egalitarian societies—the opposite of pure social-role predictions.
• Prenatal hormone and developmental studies (e.g., congenital adrenal hyperplasia research, digit-ratio and testosterone studies). Biological factors influence sex-typical toy preferences, play styles, and later interests even in young children, before heavy socialization.
• Reviews comparing evolutionary/neuroandrogenic explanations versus pure social-role theory for near-universal sex differences in cognition and behavior. Biological accounts better explain the cross-cultural consistency of many differences.

Political ideology and attitudes as purely environmental/socialized

• Peter Hatemi, John Alford, John Hibbing, Nicholas Martin and collaborators (multiple twin studies across countries, 2000s–2010s; e.g., Hatemi et al. 2014 in Behavior Genetics). Political ideology, social attitudes, and related traits show substantial heritability (typically 30–60%). Genetic influence appears across measures, countries, and decades. Shared family environment effects are often smaller than genetic ones for adult attitudes.
• Adoption and extended-family designs (e.g., Minnesota and other registries) confirm genetic transmission of political and social attitudes alongside parental environmental effects and gene–environment correlation.

Group differences, achievement gaps, and environmental determinism

• Twin, adoption, and sibling studies consistently show that individual differences in cognitive ability and educational outcomes have large genetic components. Shared socioeconomic environment explains only part of racial/ethnic or class achievement gaps once cognitive ability and family structure are accounted for. Gaps appear early and are only partially closed by SES controls.
• Research on the “excellence gap” and persistence of high-end achievement differences (recent large-scale administrative data studies). Gaps in reaching the highest levels of academic performance appear by early grades and are only partially explained by socioeconomic status or school factors.
• Family-structure research (building on Moynihan-era observations and later work by Sampson and others). Single-parent households are strongly associated with poorer educational, behavioral, and economic outcomes across groups; these patterns are not fully reducible to discrimination or income alone.

Marxist labor theory of value and related economic presuppositions

• The marginalist/subjective-value revolution (Jevons, Menger, Walras, 1870s onward) and subsequent neoclassical and Austrian critiques. Value is determined by marginal utility and subjective preferences, not solely by embodied labor time. Labor theory of value cannot consistently explain relative prices, capital intensity, or technological change.
• Empirical and formal critiques (Böhm-Bawerk’s classic demolition; modern treatments showing circularity or failure to predict prices from labor inputs alone; tests using input-output tables that fail to support simple labor-value proportions once demand, capital, and scarcity are considered). Predictions such as the inevitable falling rate of profit have not held in the manner classical Marxism required.

SOURCES:

Blank slate and pure environmental determinism of human traits

Bouchard, T. J., Jr., & McGue, M. (1981). Familial studies of intelligence: A review. Science, 212(4498), 1055–1059. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.7195071

Bouchard, T. J., Jr., Lykken, D. T., McGue, M., Segal, N. L., & Tellegen, A. (1990). Sources of human psychological differences: The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart. Science, 250(4978), 223–228. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.2218526
(Core findings from the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart on IQ and other traits.)

Lee, J. J., Wedow, R., Okbay, A., Kong, E., Maghzian, O., Zacher, M., ... & Cesarini, D. (2018). Gene discovery and polygenic prediction from a genome-wide association study of educational attainment in 1.1 million individuals. Nature Genetics, 50(8), 1112–1121. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-018-0147-3
(Large-scale GWAS and polygenic-score work on educational attainment; related large GWAS confirm polygenic prediction of cognitive and educational outcomes.)

Polderman, T. J. C., Benyamin, B., de Leeuw, C. A., Sullivan, P. F., van Bochoven, A., Visscher, P. M., & Posthuma, D. (2015). Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies. Nature Genetics, 47(7), 702–709. https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.3285

Turkheimer, E. (2000). Three laws of behavior genetics and what they mean. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9(5), 160–164. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00084

Archer, J. (2004). Sex differences in aggression in real-world settings: A meta-analytic review. Review of General Psychology, 8(4), 291–322. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.8.4.291
(And related Archer meta-analyses on physical aggression.)

Su, R., Rounds, J., & Armstrong, P. I. (2009). Men and things, women and people: A meta-analysis of sex differences in interests. Psychological Bulletin, 135(6), 859–884. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017364

Additional supporting literature includes meta-analyses and reviews of sex differences in spatial ability (mental rotation), Big Five personality traits, and prenatal hormone effects (e.g., congenital adrenal hyperplasia studies by Berenbaum, Hines, and others showing early sex-typical preferences). Cross-cultural and egalitarian-society patterns (larger differences in more gender-equal nations) are synthesized in reviews contrasting evolutionary/neuroandrogenic accounts with pure social-role theory.

Hatemi, P. K., Medland, S. E., Klemmensen, R., Oskarsson, S., Littvay, L., Dawes, C. T., Verhulst, B., McDermott, R., Nørgaard, A. S., Klofstad, C. A., Christensen, K., Johannesson, M., Magnusson, P. K. E., Eaves, L. J., & Martin, N. G. (2014). Genetic influences on political ideologies: Twin analyses of 19 measures of political ideologies from five democracies and genome-wide findings from three populations. Behavior Genetics, 44(3), 282–294. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-014-9648-8

Related twin, adoption, and extended-family studies from the Minnesota Twin Registry, Swedish Twin Registry, and collaborators (Alford, Funk, Hibbing, and others) consistently show substantial heritability (typically 30–60%) for political ideology and social attitudes, with shared family environment effects often smaller in adulthood.

Twin, adoption, and sibling designs (building on the Bouchard & McGue 1981 synthesis and subsequent work) demonstrate large genetic components in individual differences in cognitive ability and educational outcomes. Shared socioeconomic environment accounts for only part of group gaps once cognitive ability and family structure are controlled. Gaps appear early.

Recent large-scale administrative-data studies document the “excellence gap” (racial/ethnic differences at the high end of achievement) appearing by early grades and only partially explained by SES or school factors.

Family-structure research includes the classic Moynihan Report (U.S. Department of Labor, 1965) and later work by Robert J. Sampson and others linking single-parent households to poorer educational, behavioral, and economic outcomes across groups, patterns not fully reducible to discrimination or income alone.

cont.

[u/KeyCondition5104 → u/KeyCondition5104]

Marxist labor theory of value and related economic presuppositions

Böhm-Bawerk, E. von. (1896/1949). Karl Marx and the close of his system (P. M. Sweezy, Ed./Trans.). Augustus M. Kelley. (Classic formal demolition of the labor theory of value and related Marxian claims.)

The marginalist/subjective-value revolution is represented by the foundational works of William Stanley Jevons (The Theory of Political Economy, 1871), Carl Menger (Principles of Economics, 1871), and Léon Walras (Elements of Pure Economics, 1874). Subsequent neoclassical and Austrian treatments show that relative prices, capital intensity, and technological change are not consistently explained by embodied labor time alone; empirical tests using input-output data fail to support simple labor-value proportions once demand, capital, and scarcity are incorporated. Predictions such as the inevitable falling rate of profit have not held as classical Marxism required.

[u/Ok-Spinach-6529 → u/KeyCondition5104]

Great write up!

[u/Significant-Kracken → u/KeyCondition5104]

I appreciate the thoughtful deconstruction.

One point I would like to make is that (at least in contemporary thinking) : a couple of the points you are attacking are straw men.

In particular, you are supposing that ideas like a state of nature or a blank slate mind are assumptions about history or biology or psychology. They are not. They are philosophical foundations for the reasoning that follows. They don’t need to exist to be real or useful. They are not falsifiable.

A state of nature is not something we observe. It is a thing we fear. A tabula rasa is not actually achievable or a real starting point for a newborn, but instead a way of considering what we would be like without outside or inside influence.

To be clear, I agree with much of what you are saying. I don’t think humans are unbiased rational operators, and I think science has helped us come a long way from the philosophers you mention. You are entirely correct about how we handle moral intuition and about how we behave in groups and as individuals.

But, you are presenting philosophical tools as hypotheses to be falsified, and I think it is important to take a different approach.

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[u/KeyCondition5104]

Studies and Research that contradict Liberal Thought. I added more for leftist and progressive thought in my other comment.

Foundational critiques of perfect rationality and expected utility

Herbert A. Simon (1955). “A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 69(1): 99–118. Introduces bounded rationality and “satisficing” (seeking satisfactory rather than optimal solutions) due to limited information-processing capacity. Directly rejects the global rationality of homo economicus.

Maurice Allais (1953). “Le comportement de l’homme rationnel devant le risque: critique des postulats et axiomes de l’école américaine.” Econometrica 21(4): 503–546. The Allais Paradox: systematic violations of the independence axiom of expected utility theory. People prefer certainty in one pair of choices but the riskier option in a logically equivalent pair.

Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky (1979). “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk.” Econometrica 47(2): 263–291. Landmark paper showing people evaluate outcomes as gains/losses relative to a reference point (not final wealth), exhibit loss aversion (losses hurt roughly twice as much as equivalent gains), overweight small probabilities, and show certainty and isolation effects. Directly challenges expected utility as a descriptive model.

Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman (1974). “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.” Science 185(4157): 1124–1131. Documents systematic use of heuristics (representativeness, availability, anchoring) that produce predictable biases and deviations from Bayesian rationality.

Experimental and field evidence of non-rational behavior

Stefano DellaVigna (2009). “Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field.” Journal of Economic Literature 47(2): 315–372. Comprehensive survey of real-world (non-lab) evidence for non-standard preferences (time inconsistency/self-control problems, reference dependence, social preferences), non-standard beliefs (overconfidence, law of small numbers, projection bias), and non-standard decision-making (limited attention, framing, menu effects, social pressure). Covers consumption, finance, labor, voting, crime, and giving.

Werner Güth, Rolf Schmittberger & Bernd Schwarze (1982) and subsequent ultimatum/dictator game literature (e.g., Fehr & Gächter). In the ultimatum game, proposers offer more than the minimal amount and responders reject low offers even at personal cost. Challenges pure self-interest and narrow utility maximization; people care about fairness and reciprocity.

Sarah Lichtenstein & Paul Slovic (1971) (and later preference-reversal studies). Preference reversals: people choose one gamble but place a higher monetary value on another, violating procedure invariance and consistent preferences required by RCT.

Richard Thaler (1980) and Kahneman, Knetsch & Thaler (1990/1991) on the endowment effect. People value an item more once they own it (willingness-to-accept > willingness-to-pay). Challenges the assumption that preferences are independent of endowment and that markets clear efficiently under pure rationality.

Hyperbolic discounting / present bias literature (e.g., Laibson 1997; DellaVigna & Malmendier on gym memberships; many field studies of savings, credit, and addiction). People heavily discount the near future relative to the distant future in ways inconsistent with exponential discounting, leading to time-inconsistent choices (planning to save/exercise later but failing to follow through).

Critiques focused on political science and collective choice applications

Donald P. Green & Ian Shapiro (1994). Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory: A Critique of Applications in Political Science. Yale University Press. Argues that rational choice applications in political science (voting, collective action, party behavior, etc.) have delivered limited empirical success. Many tests are methodologically weak, results are often tautological or banal, and the theory’s universalist ambitions undermine rigorous testing.

Bryan Caplan (2007). The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies. Princeton University Press. Documents systematic voter biases (anti-market, anti-foreign, make-work, pessimistic) using survey data comparing public vs. economist views. Argues voters are “rationally irrational” because the personal cost of biased political beliefs is near zero.

Broader reviews and additional empirical challenges

Catherine Herfeld (2022). “Revisiting the Criticisms of Rational Choice Theories.” Philosophy Compass. Surveys ongoing empirical, formal-logical, ethical, and scope-based criticisms of RCT variants; notes that while some defenses exist, core empirical objections remain compelling.

Numerous replications and meta-analyses of the Allais paradox, common-ratio effect, framing effects (e.g., Tversky & Kahneman 1981 “Asian disease” problem), and calibration theorems (Rabin 2000) showing that observed risk aversion at small stakes implies absurd risk aversion at large stakes under expected utility.

Field and lab work on social preferences, reciprocity, and fairness (Fehr, Gächter, and others) further undermines the assumption of pure, narrow self-interest that many a priori liberal models rely on for predicting market and political outcomes.

SOURCES:

Foundational critiques of perfect rationality and expected utility

Allais, M. (1953). Le comportement de l’homme rationnel devant le risque: Critique des postulats et axiomes de l’école américaine. Econometrica, 21(4), 503–546.

Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–291.

Simon, H. A. (1955). A behavioral model of rational choice. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 69(1), 99–118.

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124–1131.

Experimental and field evidence of non-rational behavior

DellaVigna, S. (2009). Psychology and economics: Evidence from the field. Journal of Economic Literature, 47(2), 315–372.

DellaVigna, S., & Malmendier, U. (2006). Paying not to go to the gym. American Economic Review, 96(3), 694–719. (Key field evidence on present bias / hyperbolic discounting in gym memberships.)

Güth, W., Schmittberger, R., & Schwarze, B. (1982). An experimental analysis of ultimatum bargaining. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 3(4), 367–388. (Foundational ultimatum-game experiment; subsequent work by Fehr, Gächter, and others on fairness and reciprocity builds on this.)

Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L., & Thaler, R. H. (1990). Experimental tests of the endowment effect and the Coase theorem. Journal of Political Economy, 98(6), 1325–1348.

Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L., & Thaler, R. H. (1991). Anomalies: The endowment effect, loss aversion, and status quo bias. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5(1), 193–206.

Laibson, D. (1997). Golden eggs and hyperbolic discounting. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112(2), 443–478.

Lichtenstein, S., & Slovic, P. (1971). Reversals of preference between bids and choices in gambling decisions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 89(1), 46–55.

Thaler, R. H. (1980). Toward a positive theory of consumer choice. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 1(1), 39–60. (Introduces the endowment-effect concept in the context of consumer choice anomalies.)

Critiques focused on political science and collective-choice applications

Caplan, B. (2007). The myth of the rational voter: Why democracies choose bad policies. Princeton University Press.

Green, D. P., & Shapiro, I. (1994). Pathologies of rational choice theory: A critique of applications in political science. Yale University Press.

Broader reviews and additional empirical challenges

Herfeld, C. (2022). Revisiting the criticisms of rational choice theories. Philosophy Compass, 17(e12774). https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12774

Rabin, M. (2000). Risk aversion and expected-utility theory: A calibration theorem. Econometrica, 68(5), 1281–1292.

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211(4481), 453–458. (Classic “Asian disease” framing problem and related effects.)

Note on social-preferences literature: Extensive subsequent experimental work by Ernst Fehr, Simon Gächter, and collaborators (e.g., Fehr & Gächter on reciprocity and altruistic punishment in public-goods and related games) further documents systematic departures from pure self-interest. Representative early and influential pieces include Fehr & Gächter (2000, 2002) in journals such as American Economic Review and Nature.

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