From Outcome-Based to Language-Based Preferences
This addresses the problem of accurately modeling human decision-making in economics and social sciences, but it is incremental as it reviews and synthesizes existing literature rather than introducing new findings.
The paper reviews models of human behavior in social interactions with monetary payoffs, highlighting a shift from outcome-based to language-based preferences, especially when language activates moral concerns, and argues this necessitates new models and experiments.
We review the literature on models that try to explain human behavior in social interactions described by normal-form games with monetary payoffs. We start by covering social and moral preferences. We then focus on the growing body of research showing that people react to the language in which actions are described, especially when it activates moral concerns. We conclude by arguing that behavioral economics is in the midst of a paradigm shift towards language-based preferences, which will require an exploration of new models and experimental setups.