“Our basis of knowledge for estimating the yield ten years hence of a railway, a copper mine, a textile factory… amounts to little and sometimes to nothing,” British Economist John Maynard Keynes wrote, “If people are so uncertain, how are decisions made? They can only be taken as a result of animal spirits.”
–George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, Animal Spirits (Princeton University Press, 2009)
In this article, we explore the revival of Keynes’s theory of “Animal Spirits” to explain the underlying psychological forces that drive the workings of the economy. We will discuss the concept of Animal Spirits in the field of Economics as well as its application to a branch of Economics that intersects with Sociology and Psychology known as Behavioral Economics.
Also, for the amusement of our readers, we will quantify some of the qualitative elements that comprise the human psyche that Keynes referred to as Animal Spirits. By doing this in a lighthearted way, we hope to shed some light on the influences that the core of human behavior has had on the global economy and upon the political current that flows underneath.
As applied to modern Economics, Ackerlof and Shiller define Animal Spirits as “a restless and inconsistent element in the economy. It refers to our particular relationship with ambiguity or uncertainty. Sometimes we are paralyzed by it. Yet at other times it refreshes and energizes us, overcoming our fears and indecisions.”
The notion of some vague prime mover in the economy is nothing new. For example, in The Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith wrote of the economy as moving “as if by an invisible hand.” Therefore, we see the small step that Keynes took to develop the notion of Animal Spirits in order to describe that same vagueness. Keynes comments extensively that, though rational motivations govern most economic activity, human beings continue to act and react in the marketplace on a less-than-rational basis and with purely noneconomic motives.
One might conjecture that some basic mental energy and life force, the fundamental “Id,” or a “Primitive Lust” of human nature, drives our behavior beneath the orderly veneer of a so-called rational economy. We will stay in the accepted realm of the social sciences and explore the fundamental Id.
The concept of the Id provides us with an adequately developed, useful tool that we can use in our attempt to measure the forces and resulting events of Animal Spirits. Wanting to be neither dismissive nor longwinded, let us begin by summarizing the necessary principles as developed by Sigmund Freud, Rudolf Steiner, and others at the turn of the twentieth century.
We begin with the concept “I,” the basic point of our individual self. This emanates from that which we can define collectively as the cosmic all. For each of us, our “I” possesses its own unique set of uncoordinated instinctual trends. Freud and others referred to this set of trends as the “Id.”
From this point, let us follow the path laid out by Steiner, who described the Id as having the ability and freedom (free will) to generate an “Idea” through our human minds. From here, Steiner explains that our minds set Ideas into “Action” by taking them through the human heart. To put it more concisely, we go from I to Id to Idea and finally to Action.
We now arrive at the juncture where we must consider an apparent duality that forms the unified whole of human behavior. Not wanting to lose any of our readers at this critical point, we will introduce an element of fun to our discussion. Rather than explaining this matter directly, let us instead play a game.
For simplicity’s sake, we will structure our game like the many inventories that we have seen in various newspapers, magazines, and self-help books or possibly in the process of job applications. We will use a “tally sheet” composed of seven horizontal lines.
After pausing for a moment to draw these seven lines, let us sketch ten equidistant benchmarks along each of these lines. Finally, from left to right, we will number each set of marks with the numbers one through ten. If you are reading this column while sitting on the beach, you can use your finger or your swizzle stick to draw in the sand.
Next, we ask our readers to look at pairs of statements and to circle one of the numbered marks on each line. In the following section, you will find seven pairs of statements. Within each pair, the two statements appear to be different and perhaps contrasting to each other. Using whatever method of judgment and selection is comfortable for you, please circle one of the numbers on each line, using one line for each pair of statements.
These pairs of statements are meant to provide us with end-posts for the purpose of identifying our preferred position in between them. Some of us may identify ourselves completely with one or the other statement in each pair.
If you identify totally and agree with the first statement (Statement A), circle the number one (1). On the other hand, if you identify completely and agree with the second (Statement B), circle the number ten (10).
However, if you are like many of us, you may agree with both statements in a pair, at least to some extent. If this is the case, circle a number near the middle or toward the statement with which you identify more strongly. All set? Here we go.
I. All of us have a preferred state of consciousness in which we feel most comfortable and desire to spend our time. Some of us prefer the concrete here and now of the world around us, whereas others prefer to spend some or all of our time in general meditation or in some form of prayer. Therefore, the two simplified statements are: A) I prefer a normal waking consciousness; B) I prefer a meditative or spiritual state of consciousness.
II. On the second line, we will measure our desire, willingness, or need to transform ourselves. Some of us may call this process of transformation a desirable growth, while others view such transformation as unnecessary or even destructive to our sense of self. Therefore, this pair of statements is: A) I prefer no transformation in order to stay centered in my organized, reality-based self; B) I prefer transformation through transcendence or some transpersonal experience.
III. This third item helps us to identify our preferred method of acquiring and maintaining knowledge. All of us have slightly different learning styles. However, let us consider this item as generally as possible. To simplify this process of measurement, we will let the statements be: A) I prefer to acquire knowledge through secular reasoning or religious belief; B) I prefer to acquire knowledge through higher inspiration and intuition.
IV. Next, we want to consider the means by which we view and rely upon authority for our beliefs and behavior. Some of us look to defined laws and codes, while others depend more strongly upon an inner sense of right and wrong.
Therefore our fourth pair of statements is: A) I prefer to rely upon a religious institution, a scientific or philosophical school of thought, the government, social norms, or other external manifestations of authority; B) I prefer to rely upon my feelings, senses, instincts, intuition, or other internal manifestations.
V. This fifth item helps us to identify the breadth and scope of the philosophical, religious, and/or scientific principles to which we adhere. Some of us enjoy and thrive on a base or path of belief that is as wide as possible. Others do better with simpler, clearer, and narrower ones to guide us in life.
Therefore, these two statements are: A) I prefer one narrow authority of religious faith, scientific method, or other, such that anything beyond that principle or school of thought may be false and/or is to be avoided; B) I prefer a broad and universal base of beliefs drawing from many different teachings and philosophies.
VI. The next matter focuses on how we perceive and attempt to understand that which may exist beyond the purely physical world. It has to do with how we gain knowledge about subjects, either in time and space or in eternity and infinity, which we simply cannot measure and test. Some of us may believe that the only thing that exists is the matter around us that we can touch and feel. Some of us may believe in a spiritual reality beyond the physical world. Perhaps we believe that we cannot understand the all from its part and must consider it as a whole.
On the other hand, we may abide in a sophisticated, complex view of the cosmos. This view may be one that suggests that everything emanates from something else or that the world unfolds like a dramatic play. This sixth pair of statements is tough to nail down. However, let us list them as follows: A) I prefer the view that the all is only what we can feel or touch. It is perhaps a physical reality plus a spiritual one, or maybe a collective all that only can be understood as a whole; B) I prefer the view that to understand the all we must have a complex vision of the cosmos, one by which it emanates from something else or unfolds and develops like a play.
VII. If you have made it past the sixth item, then welcome to the last one! This final item of identification is the biggie. It encompasses our concepts of the absolute reality of everything! Actually, this last item is relatively simple. Many of us believe in something. For some of us, it may be the presence of an external and separate prime mover or Supreme Being that we call God. For others, it may exist as the collective whole of Space-Time-Energy or some theory of everything.
On the other hand, some of us may perceive everything as one, as a Universal Consciousness or an Omnipresent Divinity that exists within as well as without. Therefore, our last pair is: A) I prefer the belief of an external and separate mover or being; B) I prefer the belief of a Universal Consciousness or Omnipresent Divinity.
Congratulations! You have made it to the end of this inventory. Assuming that each line is numbered from left to right and that you have circled a number on each of the seven lines, you have done great. However, you are probably wondering what all of this means. First, you need to add the seven numbers together.
The total that places you at one extreme of the spectrum, that is closest to the “A’s,” equals seven. In contrast, a total of seventy places you at the other end of the spectrum, closest to the “B’s.” Neither one is good nor bad or is better than any point in between. Position is merely a natural point on a spectrum, like a range of colors or musical tones. The median total is fifty-five points.
In terms of Behavioral Economics, your total places you somewhere in a range between what philosophers and others have referred to as the Esoteric and the Exoteric. The term Esoteric means the “inner” (eso-), in the sense of the inner consciousness. It represents the contemplative, mystical, or meditative transpersonal perspective that can only can be understood by intuition or by higher mental or spiritual faculties. In relative contrast, the term Exoteric means the “outer” (exo-).
It is the everyday consciousness that includes both the scientific-materialistic and the literal religious perspective. The Exoteric does not require any transformation of consciousness (as that may be considered harmful). For those curious about their “score,” a value of seven would identify an extremely Exoteric person while a value of seventy would identify an extremely Esoteric person.
In applying this concept to Behavioral Economics, there appear to be behavior patterns that follow from one’s own views, sense of self-identity, and set of beliefs. In turn, these behaviors carry over into economic/political decision-making.
However, let us point out that there seems to be no clear separation between Exoteric and Esoteric identity on the basis of religious affiliation, political party, or other groups with which we identify ourselves. Again, let us state that many of us tend to be somewhere in between the two extremes.
To avoid confusion, we must note that, from a historical perspective, we do find examples of groups from the same common philosophical, theosophical, or deist tradition dividing into Esoteric and Exoteric factions. In some cases, these factions have set themselves at extreme odds with one another and have turned their philosophical stances into political and militaristic reality.
However, we must bear in mind that what we might consider to be Esoteric and Exoteric viewpoints became mixed with a sundry of quasi-scientific theories, folklore practices, and the like. Furthermore, these diluted factions subsequently were manipulated, distorted, and used by shadow groups with agendas for political and economic domination. Therefore, we must point out that, though these historical events do not negate the use of the Esoteric/Exoteric spectrum in Behavioral Economics, the events of history have muddied the waters extensively.
The specific turbulence of recent centuries that led to Behavioral Economics being brushed aside toward the dustbin of science may be tracked to the emergence of the Esoteric and Exoteric philosophies and to their subsequent fall into the mire of pseudo-science. The latter contributed greatly to the tragedy in the world during the first half of the twentieth century.
In addition to the teachings of Freud and Steiner and other well-known personages who were considered mainstream, a substantial amount of influence came from those figures in the large, more arcane movements that flourished at the turn of the twentieth century. These include the Theosophistic, Aryianist, Occultist, and Pan-Germanic Volkisch (Germanenorden) Movements, which were led by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Guido Von List, Joerg Lanz Von Liebenfels, and Rudolf Glauer (aka Baron von Sebottendorff), respectively.
In 1918, the Germanenorden, Theosophists, and a number of diverse philosophical groups including Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophical Society, coalesced into one organization. The front name for this group was the Thule Society; the word “Thule” refers to the mythical Nordic land of Ultima Thule from which the Aryan race allegedly came. However, within a few years, this movement had split into two opposing factions.
The Esoteric faction aligned itself with Rudolf Steiner and his school, the Goetheanum (named in honor of German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who greatly influenced Steiner). Meanwhile, the Exoteric faction aligned itself with Adolf Hitler and his brown-shirt SA (Sturmabteilung, or Storm Battalion), which grew out of the German Workers’ Party. This party was financed by a shadow group within the Thule Society that consisted of anti-Communist bankers, industrialists, and intellectuals.
Just before Steiner was to hold a meeting with clerics of many denominations, the Goetheanum fell prey to arson on New Year’s Eve, 1922. Allegedly, the fire that destroyed Steiner’s school was set by members of Hitler’s SA.
After the First World War, the German economy floundered. Through the 1920s, it continued to decline, soon to be followed by the economies of most of the world after the Crash of 1929. While this was happening, the Exoteric faction of the Thule Society, which had been co-opted by Hitler and the financial backers of the German Workers’ Party, led to the negation of many worthwhile contributions to Behavioral Science.
In Europe and other countries of the world, this emerging science was overshadowed and tainted by the pseudo-science propagated by Heinrich Himmler and the members of the National Socialist elite. They did this in order to justify their genocidal plans, which were developed from some of the philosophical and theosophical beliefs that had gained wide populist support during the preceding half-century.
Meanwhile, in Britain, Keynes’s followers rooted out and removed almost all of the noneconomic motives and irrational behaviors-the Animal Spirits–that lay at the core of his explanation of the Great Depression in his book The General Theory, 1936. In addition, these motives and behaviors served as part of the base that distinguished the new teachings of Keynes from the Classical Economics of the day that had been advanced largely by Keynes’s own tutor, the legendary British Economist Alfred Marshall.
In today’s world, with a few exceptions, governments do not execute the investment strategies for their countries-business people do. Anyone who has gone to business school has learned about the quantitative management skills, logic models, and theories that are used to make optimal investment decisions. However, when real companies actually invest, underlying psychological factors play a major role, more often than not.
To illustrate this assertion, Akerlof and Shiller quote from Jack Welch, the former head of General Electric, in his autobiography Jack: Straight from the Gut (Business Plus 1000, 2001). Welch distrusts quantitative procedures in business decision-making. He writes, “The last thing I wanted was a series of technical questions to score a few points. We had dozens of people routinely going through what I considered ‘dead books.’ All my career, I never wanted to see a planning book before the person presented it. To me, the value of these sessions wasn’t in the books. It was in the heads and hearts of the people who were coming to [GE headquarters]. I wanted to drill down, to get beyond the binders and into the thinking that went into them. I needed to see the business leaders’ body language and the passion they poured into their arguments.”
This story exemplifies the way that the elements of Animal Spirits-confidence, possible corruption, the illusion of money, and storytelling–enter into the real world of business, markets, and the economy as a whole.
“The Media IS the Message” -Marshall McCluhan
Since the era in which the Exoteric/Esoteric and Animal Spirits were more widely studied and discussed, another major issue that has arisen is the proliferation of electronic media and the possible effect of the widespread “medianet” (a term associated with the networking giant Cisco Systems that refers to the integrated network of many types of electronic media) on brain development and the resulting behavior of humans.
When Steiner and others discussed Esoteric and Exoteric thought and Keynes wrote about Animal Spirits affecting economic activity, the world only recently had entered the age of motion pictures, radio, and landline telecommunication. However, in our present world, anyone over the age of fifty probably grew up with televisions that glowed many hours per day. As we move down through the age strata, we find ourselves, our younger siblings, and our own children and grandchildren exposed to an even wider range of media during the early ages of human development.
Ackerloff and Shiller suggest that Keynes’s statements about Animal Spirits driving the economy and the resulting role of government in the 1930s resembles much of the parenting advice offered today by books, articles, and television shows. As parents, we are warned not to be too authoritarian; otherwise children will exhibit only superficial obedience and then rebel as teenagers.
On the other hand, we are warned not to be too permissive, lest our children never learn to set proper limits for themselves. The mainstream of parenting advice champions a middle-of-the-road approach. This gives children their freedom while protecting them from their own Animal Spirits and maintaining a happy home.
However, an increasing amount of serious research has inquired into the developmental impacts of media on the human brain and on resulting social behavior. These impacts may have altered or mutated the nature of our Animal Spirits from those of our predecessors, who lived with limited media access during the 1920s and 1930s.
In short, research has offered proof that we have been exposed to a growing number of types of electronic media for an increasing number of hours per day. Some studies have begun to show evidence of changes in brain chemistry and growth as well as changes in social behavior.
What Keynes witnessed and experienced in respect to Animal Spirits no longer may be relevant to the world of today. Perhaps we face a whole new paradigm of human behavior, one influenced by both the positive and negative impact of our multitudinous media. The question remains, to what end?
“I Don’t Want a Nation of Thinkers. I Want a Nation of Workers.”
–John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
In the early 2000s, the Kaiser Family Foundation interviewed children from eight to eighteen to determine the effects of media on youth. The Foundation published the report Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds in 2005. In their report, the Foundation found that various media distracts children from serious study.
In his book The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30), Penguin, 2009, Mark Blauerlein responded to the Kaiser report of 2005. He wrote, “Screen literacy improves their visual acuity, their mental readiness for rushing images, and updated information.” Nevertheless, Blauerlein states that screen intelligence does not transfer well to a non-screen experience that builds knowledge and verbal skills.
Based upon their findings of 2005, the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a national survey on the topic of youth and media. The results were published in a second document, Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds in 2009. The Foundation found that the amount of time that young people spend with entertainment media rose dramatically since its first study.
This is especially true among minority youth. Today, eight- to eighteen-year-olds devote an average of seven hours and thirty-eight minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media in a typical day. This totals more than fifty-three hours per week. Because they spend so much of that time “media multitasking” (using more than one medium at a time), these young people actually manage to pack a total of ten hours and forty-five minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those seven-and-a-half hours.
“We Don’t Need No Education. We Don’t Need No Thought Control.” -“Another Brick in the Wall, Part II,” Written by Roger Waters and Recorded by Pink Floyd on Their Album The Wall (EMI Records, 1979)
As a result of the heavy emphasis on information over knowledge, many critics of electronic media have voiced the belief that media may have the potential to destroy free will. However, the threat to free will is not new and is not limited to electronic media. In the early nineteenth century, well before the invention of the Internet, television, or even radio, an intellectual movement arose in Europe that propounded the idea of the destruction of free will.
With this destruction, the educational system itself could become a means to social control by which the state could sustain a docile population without the need of military or police. It was the seeds from this philosophical movement that eventually would lead to the Nazi and Communist totalitarian states of the twentieth century.
In his book The Impact on Society (Simon and Schuster, 1951), British philosopher Bertrand Russell quotes Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a teacher of philosophy and psychology at the Prussian University in Berlin. Fichte directly influenced philosopher Georg W.F. Hegel and others during the age of German Idealism.
By 1810, Fichte had applied the concepts developed by Enlightenment philosopher Emmanuel Kant to the process of education. Fichte stated, “Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schools’ masters would have wished.”
Who Says That the Revolution Won’t Be Televised?
However, students continue to rebel as they always have. I remember my Jesuit instructors in high school telling us that those who rebel the most eventually fit best into society. This appears to be a universal truth.
In 2010, the YouTube video remake of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” has gone “viral” in Iran. In her article “This Exists: ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ Remake for Iranian Protesters,” 4 August 2010, Jocelyn Rousey tells us about “a pair of exiled, Iranian-born brothers living in Canada who have remade Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)” into a protest song for young Iranians.
The brothers, Sepp and Sohl, make up the group Blurred Vision, and they obtained special permission from Pink Floyd front man Roger Waters to make the remix. The music video, shot by Iranian director Babak Payami, combines clips of the band with footage of the violence during last summer’s protests in Iran.” In an interview with Rousey, Sepp explained that the song has an even earlier history in Iran.
Originally released by Pink Floyd during the year of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, many Iranians felt that the song spoke to them about all of the promises of the ayatollahs, statements that turned out to be lies. Rousey quotes Sepp saying, “After the Islamic Republic banned rock ‘n’ roll, Iranian kids used shortwave radios to transmit ‘Another Brick’ to one another. It just exploded, and became their anthem.” Today, the Blurred Vision cover of the song is being disseminated among the youth of Iran by iPhone and other modern media technologies.
In summary, we have explored the concept of Animal Spirits in the field of Economics as well as its application to Behavioral Economics. Because this branch seemed to have fallen by the wayside during the 1930s, we looked at the history of thought during the half-century preceding these years, especially those of the various Esoteric and Exoteric movements in Europe.
We identified some of the economic and political events that caused a major bifurcation in Behavioral Science and implied why this approach to understanding economic decision-making was pushed to the shadowlands of science for the next half-century.
Accepting Ackerlof’s and Shiller’s assertion that Animal Spirits clothed in the garb of Behavioral Economics helps to explain the quicksilver nature of the economy during recent decades, we worked with the concept of Esoteric and Exoteric human nature and considered how modern media may have significantly affected or even mutated the Animal Spirits described by John Maynard Keynes.
Taking this argument a step further, we have considered how the “medianet” that allows for instant communication around the world has, in a sense, unleashed these little-understood, transformed Animal Spirits in a way that profoundly affects decisions in our global political economy today.
By adding Behavioral Economics to Neo-Classical Economics, our most prevalent school of thought, we can achieve a better understanding of the volatile changes that affect our markets in the twenty-first century. We assert that media has changed our Animal Spirits.
That, in turn, influences our behavior in financial markets. In recent decades, action and reaction among players has accelerated profusely as the scope of our communication has become more global and instantaneous. The result is that we live in a restless, unstable economy.
Akerlof, George A. and Robert J. Shiller. Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, (Princeton University Press, 2009).
Blauerlein, Mark. The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30), (Penguin Group USA, 2009).
Kaiser Family Foundation. Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds in 2005 (Kaiser Family Foundation, http://kff.org/other/event/generation-m-media-in-the-lives-of/, 20005).
Keynes, John Maynard. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Palgrave Macmillan, 1936).
Rousey, Jocelyn. “This Exists: ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ Remake for Iranian Protesters,” (Mediatite Online, http://www.mediaite.com/online/this-exists-%E2%80%9Canother-brick-in-the-wall%E2%80%9D-remake-for-iranian-protesters/, 2010).
Russell, Bertrand. The Impact on Society (Simon and Schuster, 1951).
Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations (W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776).
Waters, Roger. “Another Brick in the Wall, Part II,” recorded by Pink Floyd on their album The Wall (EMI Records, 1979).
Welch, Jack and John A. Byrne. Jack: Straight from the Gut (Business Plus, 2001).
