assume that any of these assumptions can be granted? In this example, the male
participants in the game assume they know how the women will behave –
based on a series of stereotypes about women that can surely be questioned
(how they would respond to the attention of the men cannot be so simply
predicted). The men “strategize” based upon their own (questionable) assump-
tions about “female behavior.” Even more importantly, it is clear that the
actual end of this competition is left outside the field of rationality. What is
considered “rational” amounts to two limited concerns: strategic instrumen-
tal calculation, and maximizing personal gain. What is “rational” about the
choice in no way involves determining which woman one might actually find
compatible. Any woman, it appears in this situation, represents maximizing
self-interest. As we shall see in what follows, this reductive treatment of
women and interpersonal relationships is not unlike the treatment of religion
at the hands of rational choice theory.
The Presuppositions of Rational Choice Theory
Although it has recently risen in prominence, the deployment of rational
choice theory in the study of religion often resembles this fictional analysis
of partner selection depicted in A Beautiful Mind, repeating many of its flaws.
A brief examination of two scholars who apply rational choice principles to
religion will serve to demonstrate the extent to which their interpretations of
religion are based on questionable presuppositions. It is precisely such assump-
tions that Adorno and Horkheimer ’s criticism of positivism calls into question.
The applications of rational choice theory in the study of religion by Rodney
Stark, as well as by Lawrence Iannaccone, are based upon the following
premises about human activity:
i) human beings act rationally, weighing the costs and benefits of actions,
and making choices with the intention of maximizing the benefits of their
actions;
ii) the ultimate human preferences (or needs) used to assess costs and benefits
do not vary much;
iii) the interaction of individual choices and actions result in a social equi-
librium.^5
156 • Christopher Craig Brittain
(^5) For a brief summary of these basic assumptions, see: Iannaccone 1997:26; also
Stark & Bainbridge 1987.