Research project: Micro vs macro: social consequences of individual behaviour 3500-FAKL-MIK

Many of seemingly simple social processes are far more complex than they seem. Macro-scale phenomena are not just a simple result of individuals’ actions. Society will is understood as a system of different elements interacting with each other in such manner that its dynamics creates thoroughly new characteristics at an aggregated level. The dynamics and emergent features of society are in the centre of attention. We will deal with social results of individual behaviour that are not easily concluded from knowledge of the actions of indivuduals.Therefore, the main task for sociologist is to identify the rules of interactions and to study how they lead to certain emergence on a macrosocial level. Rational choice theory will help us complete these task.

The roots of rational choice theory include economics, sociology, political science and psychology, but nowadays, the theory is widely used in diverse disciplines. Its main distinguishing feature is ‘rationality’ that refers to the assumption that actors make their decisions in order to achieve the best possible outcome on the basis of the knowledge about the situation of choice-making. Nevertheless, theory is not limited to description of classic homo oeconomicus’s behaviour, as in its scope there are such phenomena as norms, group dynamics and social control. Behaviour of such homo sociologicus will be our main subject. We will study how his decisions lead to interesting social consequences.

Aim:
Main aim of this course is to acquaint the attendants with a selection of rational choice theory applications and with opportunities that the theory provides for sociologists. During the course a stress will be put on practical application of presented theoretical perspective, especially for description and analyses of real social phenomena, processes and problems. We would also like to underline that for the needs of this course the more sophisticated mathematical operations will be replaced by application of computer programmes.

Application of computer programmes (e.g. examples of computer simulations) has a significant practical advantage – thanks to simple computer tools it is possible to study complex relations between individual behaviour and social phenomena in macro-scale. It enables us to show such complex relations to a broad audience in a comprehensible manner. As a consequence it provides us with an opportunity to present broad range of possible applications of social choice theory to the course attendants and to de-mythologise this theoretical perspective. We hope this form of presenting the scope of rational choice theory will encourage the students to study it deeper – both individually and during more specialised courses from this discipline.
Questions: Models examples:
Why ghettos appear in tolerant societies? Spatial segregation model (Schelling)
Is it profitable to be an egoist? Prisoner’s Dillema
Why are we doomed to exploit our natural environment? Tragedy of the Commons
‘An eye for an eye’ as a way to achieve world peace? Axelrod tournament, evolutionary models
Why are we conformists? Three Types of Institutions Theorem (Swistak)

The course will be lead in a form of a workshop and will include a lecture of the basic theoretical concepts along with working in groups on solving problems that illustrate a discussed issue. Because of the workshop character of the course a maximum number of participants is 15 and each of the students needs an access to a PC.