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Psychological origins of the Industrial Revolution: Why we need causal methods and historians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2019

Johannes Haushofer
Johannes Haushofer*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08558. [email protected]/haushofer
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Abstract

Did affluence lead to psychological changes such as reduced discounting, and did these changes facilitate the innovation associated with the Industrial Revolution? I argue that claims of this sort are best made when they can be supported by causal evidence and good psychological measurement. When we have neither identifying variation nor adequate measures, the toolbox of psychologists is not useful.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 42 , 2019 , e200
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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