Behavioral Economics - Second Entry

Neocalvinism vs Catholicism

    Prelec argues that decisions have diagnostic value: they reveal something about our deeper preferences and identity. I find this idea convincing because it explains why people care about what their actions say about them.

In Prelec’s “neo-Calvinist” framework, actions can reveal an underlying type — a deep set of values or dispositions that already exists. There, utility has two components:

U_calvinist(x | type) = Outcome utility + Diagnostic utility

The type is assumed to be prior, and the action does not create it; it reflects and reveals it. Part of the motivation comes from what the action allows the person to infer about himself. The structure is therefore:

Type → Action → Information about type

In this sense, the neo-Calvinist conception is mainly descriptive. It explains how people in fact experience moral action: as a way of reading themselves. Morality can function as a mirror and the focus is on what the act reveals about a pre-existing identity.

In contrast, I understand the Catholic perspective differently. Here, there is no fixed moral type waiting to be revealed. Actions are not only informative; they are transformative. They shape virtue, responsibility, and character over time.

In schematic form, we could write:

U_catholic(x) = Outcome utility + Transformative effect

The act produces a real change in the moral state of the person. The structure becomes:

Action → Transformation → New moral state

For this reason, the Catholic conception tends to be, in my opinion, normative. By this I mean that it does not describe how people usually behave, but how they should behave. It proposes an ideal of moral action and responsibility. Acts are not mainly signs of who we already are, but steps in who we ought to become.

At the same time, the neo-Calvinist model described by Prelec is powerful because it is able to explain how people actually behave in many contexts, even outside religion. In areas such as self-control, politics, or personal identity, individuals often treat their actions as evidence about their type. In that sense, it has strong descriptive value: it captures a real psychological mechanism.

For me, this is the key difference. The descriptive diagnostic framework explains common patterns of behavior, while the normative Catholic view focuses on what moral action is meant to achieve.

Alejandro Olivares Rodríguez