ultimately does not deliver folk-economic explanations that are both novel and correct. We argue that (a) most current explanations are evolutionary already; (b) B&P’s model is as ad hoc as other theories, and proves too much; and (c) it overrates evolution at the cost of discounting other crucial factors. We applaud Boyer & Petersen (B&P) on the choice of an immensely important and under-researched topic, and consider their article an important contribution to our understanding of the ways in which evolution might be affecting people’s attitudes in the realm of economic issues (although arguments over the precise effects of evolution on the human mind are notoriously hard to settle). We are afraid, however, that their model, despite its overall ingenuity, eventually falls short of providing a novel (more “ultimate”) and correct explanation of folk-economic beliefs (FEBs), contra B&P’s claim. We see three arguments in favor of such a skeptical verdict. Not too novel. While the evolution-based narrative supporting the FEB’s existence may or may not be true (more on that below), it would not be hard to attach a similar or even identical tale to, for example, Caplan’s four biases (Caplan 2007). Had Caplan been more specific in discussing the evolutionary roots of folk economics instead of merely asserting it (p. 178), it would be hard to tell his account apart from B&P’s. He did not do so, which is why B&P deserve credit, but for going deeper or being complementary rather than going further. This applies to even simpler FEBs’ explanations which B&P do not refer to. For example, all of the folk-economic beliefs that B&P discuss (including their lack of influence on individual-level decision- making) can also be explained by people’s tendency to consider the more immediate and salient features of a phenomenon and ignore the ones that are more distant and subtle (Arkes 1991; Houdek 2016; Pennycook & Rand 2017). This is the long- established “seen versus unseen” in economics (Bastiat 1850/ 1995) or more recent WYSIATI (what-you-see-is-all-there-is) in psychology (Kahneman 2011). This tendency may have its evolutionary origins as indeed both Bastiat (1850/1995, para. 1.5) and Kahneman (2011, p. 90) explicitly suggest, but their failure to be as elaborate as B&P in this regard does not render B&P’s account more “ultimate.” Proving too much. Although bias-oriented explanations are admittedly ad hoc, as B&P implicitly hint at in section 2.5, their own model is in the end equally malleable to ad hockery. At first, it appears impressive to see any of the FEBs explained away by a meticulously blended cocktail of intuitions (products of inference systems). But on second thought, these ingredients are so powerful in their combination and so flexible in their inter- pretation that mixing them in a particular way can explain much more than that, including FEBs that are antithetical to the ones actually held by people, or indeed ones that do not exist. For example, by taking the free-rider detection topped up with the ownership intuition while keeping the coalitional psychology side- lined, one could beautifully prove why laypeople (unlike econo- mists) fanatically oppose trade protectionism or the welfare state (which they of course do not). Incomplete. B&P portray the whole of folk-economics as ulti- mately an outcome of evolutionarily determined cognitive pro- cesses (they do allow for some cultural input to explain subtle variations between different societies). Although the idea that evolution matters (or, at least, may matter) seems absolutely undisputed, we find B&P’s account over-rates the role of evolu- tion at the cost of discounting cultural aspects such as education, values (Caplan 2002; Edwards 2006, Houdek et al. 2016), or media (Ribstein 2012). In reality, non-evolutionary factors may mitigate all of the evolutionary influences so eloquently described by B&P, but they may be deliberately produced by particular interest groups within society. If evolution were all there is, it would be hard to square with observed FEBs incidence that varies with: 1. Time: Some FEBs are more widely believed now than they used to be. For example, what McCloskey calls “bourgeois era” was marked by a recession of the many anti-market biases (or by even positive endorsement of alertness to business opportunity, entrepreneurship, and “innovationism”), to which McCloskey attributes the triggering of industrial revolution and the great enrichment (McCloskey 2006; 2010). 2. Geographic space: Populations in different countries succumb to different FEBs to different degrees (see, e.g., O’Rourke et al. 2001; Neher 2011; Davidov et al. 2008, also see opinion surveys such as International Social Survey Programme [ISSP] 2006 or World Values Survey [WVS] 2014). In fact, this is true about opinions of economists as well, which vary in impor- tant ways across countries (for an overview, see Stastny 2010, pp. 6–23); 3. Socioeconomic space: People of different education levels show different degrees of susceptibility to FEBs (e.g., Caplan & Miller 2010). Insights of many sciences – not only economics – might run against some evolutionary intuitions, but in economics they seem to survive and stick around much more. For example, over the course of evolution, people’s folk-physics minds have had every reason to think the Earth was flat, or their folk- biology minds have had every reason to think the world (including humans) was created by divine design (see, e.g., Evans 2001). Yet, natural scientists were able to convince (almost) all of mankind that the Earth is round and was not created within 6 days. However, it may well be that people do find international trade objectionable for evolutionary reasons – but how is it that this is still a predominant belief despite some 250-plus years of econo- mists’ trying to enlighten populations in that regard? We are afraid that B&P’s model is of limited assistance here, and is actu- ally outperformed by long-existing models that include cultural factors as interacting with cognitive biases without necessarily worrying much about their precise roots (evolutionary or not). Why do people think that others should earn this or that? doi:10.1017/S0140525X18000559, e189 Daniel Sznycer, a Elsa Ermer, b and John Tooby c a Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, H3C 3J7, Canada; b Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD 21201; c Center for Evolutionary Psychology, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3210. daniel.sznycer@umontreal.ca eermer@som.umaryland.edu tooby@anth.ucsb.edu http://danielsznycer.org/ https://sites.google.com/site/elsaermer/ http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/ Abstract: Some questions, such as when a statistical distribution of incomes becomes too unequal, seem highly attention-grabbing, inferentially productive, and morally vexing. Yet many other questions that are crucial to the functioning of a modern economy seem uninteresting non-issues. An evolutionary–psychological framework to study folk-economic beliefs has the potential to illuminate this puzzle. We commend Boyer & Petersen (B&P) for outlining an evolution- arily and cognitively informed program for studying folk-eco- nomic beliefs. Here we consider recent work documenting the folk-economic belief that the current level of economic inequality is too high. This work suggests that people underestimate the actual degree of wealth inequality, prefer less wealth inequality (Arsenio & Willems 2017; Norton & Ariely 2011; Norton et al. 2014), underestimate the actual income gap between CEOs and unskilled workers, and think this gap should be smaller (Kiat- pongsan & Norton 2014; see also Davidai & Gilovich 2015; Kraus & Tan 2015). We offer some reflections on the last of these Commentary/Boyer & Petersen: Folk-economic beliefs 44 BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES, 41 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X17001960 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 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