For all the recent discoveries of behavioral psychology and experimental economics, the spirit of homo economicus still dominates the contemporary disciplines of economics, political science, and sociology. Turning back to the earliest chapters of political economy, however, reveals that pioneering figures such as Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and Adam Smith were hardly apostles of economic rationality as they are often portrayed in influential narratives of the development of the social sciences. As we will see, while all three of these thinkers can plausibly be read as endorsing “rationality,” they were also well aware of the systematic irrationality of human conduct, including a remarkable number of the cognitive biases later “discovered” by contemporary behavioral economists. Building on these insights I offer modest suggestions for how these thinkers, properly understood, might carry the behavioral revolution in different directions than those heretofore suggested.

中文翻译：

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行为经济学的早期现代起源

尽管最近发现了行为心理学和实验经济学，但经济人的精神仍然主导着当代经济学、政治学和社会学学科。然而，回到政治经济学的最早章节，我们发现弗朗西斯·培根、托马斯·霍布斯和亚当·斯密等先驱人物并不是经济理性的使徒，因为他们经常在社会科学发展的有影响力的叙述中被描绘出来。正如我们将看到的，虽然这三位思想家都可以被解读为支持“理性”，但他们也很清楚人类行为的系统性非理性，包括后来被当代行为经济学家“发现”的大量认知偏差.