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  3. Within economic theory, there are in any case quite different assumptions about individual behaviour. Some neoclassical models a

Within economic theory, there are in any case quite different assumptions about individual behaviour. Some neoclassical models a

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问题     Within economic theory, there are in any case quite different assumptions about individual behaviour. Some neoclassical models assume that individuals’ expectations are rational, that is, they draw economically optimal conclusions from available information. In other models, expectations are more slowly "adaptive", or there is uncertainty about the future. Yet experimental research shows that most people are remarkably bad at assessing their own economic best interest, even when they are given clear information and time to learn. Faced with a simple economic dilemma, people are quite likely to make the wrong decision because of "bounded rationality" (the effect of misleading preconceptions or emotions) or basic computational mistakes (the inability to calculate probabilities and discount rates). Psychologists have also identified the phenomenon of "myopic discounting": our tendency to prefer a large reward later to a small reward soon—a preference we then switch as the small reward becomes irresistibly imminent. 【F1】Prospect theorists have shown that people are risk-averse when choosing between a certain gain and a possible bigger gain—they will choose the certain but smaller gain—but not when offered a choice between a certain loss and a possible bigger loss.
    Most economic institutions, if they depend on credit, also depend in some measure on credibility. But credibility can be based on credulity. 【F2】In late nineteenth-century France, Therese Humbert enjoyed a glittering career on the basis of a chest supposedly containing a hundred million francs in bearer bonds, which it was claimed she had inherited from her natural father, a mysterious Portuguese (later American) millionaire named Crawford. Borrowing against these securities, she and her husband were able to buy a luxurious hotel in the avenue de la Grande Armee, to gain a controlling interest in a Parisian newspaper and to engineer his election as a socialist deputy. Ten thousand people gathered outside the house when the box was finally opened in May 1902. It was found to contain "nothing but an old newspaper, an Italian coin and a trouser button."
    【F3】Even when we are not miscalculating—as the Humberts’ creditors plainly did—our economic calculations are often subordinated to our biological impulses: the desire to reproduce, rooted(according to neo-Darwinian theories) in our "selfish genes", the capacity for violence against rivals for mates and sustenance—to say nothing of the erotic or morbid forms of behaviour analysed by Freud, which cannot always be explained by evolutionary biology. Man is a social animal whose motivations are inseparable from his cultural milieu. 【F4】As Max Weber argued, even the profit motive has its roots in a not wholly rational asceticism, a desire to work for its own sake which is as much religious as economic. Under different cultural conditions, human beings may prefer leisure to toil. Or they may win the esteem of their fellows by economically irrational behaviour; for social status is seldom the same as mere purchasing power.
And man is also a political animal. The groups into which human beings divide themselves—kinship groups, tribes, faiths, nations, classes and parties ( not forgetting firms)—satisfy two fundamental needs: the desire for security (safety, both physical and psychological, in numbers) and what Nietzsche called the will to power: the satisfaction that comes from dominating other weaker groups. No theory has adequately described this phenomenon, not least because individuals are plainly capable of sustaining multiple, overlapping identities; and of tolerating the proximity of quite different groups, and indeed co-operating with them. 【F5】Only occasionally, and for reasons which seem historically specific, are people willing to accept an exclusive group identity. Only sometimes-but often enough-does the competition between groups descend into violence.
【F4】
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答案正如马克斯.韦伯所论证的那样，甚至是追求利润的动机也来源于并非完全理性的禁欲主义，即一种为工作而工作的欲望，这种欲望既是宗教上的，也是经济上的。
解析 该句的句子主干是the profit motive has its roots in…，句首As…引导状语从句，a desire to work…部分是a not wholly rational asceticism的同位语，对前面部分进行补充说明，which引导定语从句修饰desire．
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