Fear, happiness, or stress alter our choices, to the point of making the least rational decisions in a given social context, adjusting our behavior according to the norms or expectations of our environment; we feel the pressure to do the same as the majority, even when we don’t need to... We are not living calculators as the classics thought, but complex beings, shaped by emotions, biases, and contexts.
Our economic decisions don’t always aim to maximize our personal utility in absolute terms, as classical theory predicts, because to a greater or lesser extent, we navigate a world where the value of what we have is measured by the yardstick of what others possess...
I believe the true currency of our choices is subjective satisfaction, shaped by the social context and constant comparison.
What would happen if we decided to ignore others’ expectations and seek only our own utility?