Consumer power and market control: Exploring consumer behaviour in affluent contexts (1946–1980)

Journal of the History of Economic Thought preprints - Harry Helson’s Adaptation-Level Theory, Happiness Treadmills, and Behavioral Economics

“…Tibor Scitovsky's The Joyless Economy (1976) was an attempt to translate The affluent society into the academic language of economists (Edwards 2014), and it did so by proposing a "psychology and economics of motivation" that reformulated consumer demand theory. Scitovsky drew heavily from motivational psychology -especially that in D. Berlyne's Conflict, arousal and curiosity (1960) -and advanced two motives explaining consumer behavior in affluent contexts: the "pursuit of novelty", and the et al (1953), Haber (1958) and Helson (1964):…”

“…Helson's own expression of a Zeitgeist, which involved many other critiques of western affluent societies during the late-1960s and 1970s (seeYarrow 2010, Edwards 2014). Those critical views were influenced by Cold-war issues, and written by behaviorists like B.F. Skinner, and economists like J.K. Galbraith, E. Mishan and T. Scitovsky (below).…”

“… See Edwards (2012, 2014 for an analysis of Gestalt psychology as applied to (behavioral) economics by George Katona.5 AL theory was an important contribution to psychophysics, comparable to Thurstone's…”

Impact of modernization processes on the economic behavior of households

“…Економічна поведінка домогосподарств, за неокласичною теорією, має в основі універсальний принцип -раціональну максимізацію добробуту. Тобто домогосподарства діють свідомо та обережно, маючи повну інформацію [18]. Однак реальність не відповідає положенням ідеальної теорії.…”

Economic behavior of households and their impact on the development model of the country

“…Thus, the neoclassical approach assumes that households participants act consciously and prudently, having the full information thanks to which welfare maximization is possible [5].…”