“Das Adam Smith Problem” is the name given by eighteenth-century German scholars to the question of how to reconcile the role of self-interest in the Wealth of Nations with Smith’s advocacy of sympathy in Theory of Moral Sentiments. As the discipline of economics developed, it focused on the interaction of selfish agents, pursuing their private interests. However, behavioral economists have rediscovered the existence and importance of multiple motivations, and a new Das Adam Smith Problem has arisen, of how to accommodate self-regarding and pro-social motivations in a single system. This question is particularly important because of evidence of motivation crowding, where paying people can backfire, with payments achieving the opposite effects of those intended. Psychologists have proposed a mechanism for the crowding out of “intrinsic motivations” for doing a task, when payment is used to incentivize effort. However, they argue that pro-social motivations are different from these intrinsic motivations, implying that crowding out of pro-social motivations requires a different mechanism. In this essay I present an answer to the new Das Adam Smith problem, proposing a mechanism that can underpin the crowding out of both pro-social and intrinsic motivations, whereby motivations are prompted by frames and motivation crowding is underpinned by the crowding out of frames. I explore some of the implications of this mechanism for research and policy.

中文翻译：

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我们应该如何调和自私和亲社会的动机？“DAS ADAM SMITH 问题”的复兴

“亚当斯密问题”是 18 世纪德国学者对如何调和自身利益在国富论史密斯提倡同情道德情操论. 随着经济学学科的发展，它侧重于自私代理人的互动，追求他们的私人利益。然而，行为经济学家重新发现了多种动机的存在和重要性，并且出现了一个新的亚当斯密问题，即如何在单一系统中容纳自私和亲社会的动机。这个问题特别重要，因为有证据表明动机拥挤，付钱的人可能会适得其反，付款会产生与预期相反的效果。心理学家提出了一种机制，用于挤出完成一项任务的“内在动机”，当报酬被用来激励努力时。然而，他们认为亲社会动机与这些内在动机不同，这意味着排挤亲社会动机需要不同的机制。在这篇文章中，我提出了新的达斯亚当斯密问题的答案，提出了一种机制，可以支持亲社会动机和内在动机的挤出，即动机由框架激发，而动机拥挤则由框架挤出支撑. 我探讨了这种机制对研究和政策的一些影响。