Self-control in peer groups

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Battaglini, M; Bénabou, R; Tirole, J
• 署名单位: Princeton University; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; National Bureau of Economic Research; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2005.04.001
• 发表日期: 2005
• 页码: 105-134
• 关键词: Peer effects; social interactions; clubs; self-control; willpower; addiction; time-inconsistency; memory; PSYCHOLOGY

摘要

Social influences on self-control underlie both self-help groups and many peer interactions among youths. To understand these phenomena, we analyze how observing each other's behavior affects individuals' ability to deal with their own impulses. These endogenous informational spillovers lead to either a unique good news equilibrium that ameliorates behavior, a unique bad news equilibrium that worsens it, or to the coexistence of both. A welfare analysis shows that people will find social interactions valuable only when they have enough confidence in their own and others' ability to resist temptation. The ideal partner, however, is someone with a slightly worse self-control problem than one's own: this makes his successes more encouraging, and his failures less discouraging. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.