The Implementation of a Relational Conception of Emotion in Behavioral Economics
In this article, we study how standard economics, which has gradually introduced emotions and moods in previous years, is now addressing what emotion historians have called the “affective turn”. We rely on emotion theory by putting forward a relational and extensive conception of affect. Does taking into account this relational dimension transform the rational framework characteristic of traditional economic analysis? Considering recent behavioral studies (van Winden, 2015; Bault et al. 2017), we show that the building of affective social ties can be, in certain circumstances, a practical solution to the well-known “free-rider” problem. This leads to a discussion on the specific role of emotion in the building of cooperative attitudes in a spatial and dynamic framework.