Why do people act the way they do socially? What makes one person gregarious and another reserved? Does economics hold the answer? The answer to the last one is, of course, “duh”. Applying economic principles to human behavior of all sorts yields all kinds of interesting results, especially if it’s not strictly economic behavior. So in the spirit of Freakonomics, we’ll look at the act of socialization through a microeconomic lens.

First, we’ll define social capital as a function of time and inclination. Since everyone has the same amount of time in a day and can choose (mostly) freely what to do with that time, we’ll fix T at 24, so the determining factor is inclination. This is more or less innate to a person, and lies along the scale of extraversion. For example, an introvert would be less inclined towards social activity than an extravert, preferring to spend his time, say, developing theories of social capital instead. We therefore say that the former is willing to invest less social capital than the latter.

Inclination is essentially a utility function: a higher inclination means the person in question derives more utility from social activity, and therefore is more prone to invest, having what could be considered a higher “income”. The bulk of this theory is to look at investment behavior – socialization – given inclination.

There is a major difference between social networks and financial markets, however: social networks do not reach equilibrium in the same way that a financial market does. Risk is not proportional to return – in fact, it is generally the opposite. The friends to whom one is closest are at the same time the least socially “risky”, as well as those whose company one enjoys the most (from whose company one derives the most utility). In the financial market, equilibrium pushes prices to cancel out risk so that the risk-neutral investor will be completely indifferent to any of the options, while in the social market, current friends are doubly preferable to new and untested people, and “investors” are far from indifferent.

The extravert’s total utility (red, top) increases much faster than the introvert’s (blue, top) with additional return on social investment, leading to a more spread-out network of friends

Inclination, then, is a measure of the marginal utility of additional return on social investment, which determines how much the person is willing to invest, as is seen on the graphs to the right. For those with a high inclination – extraverts (in red) – marginal utility diminishes slowly, and may even be constant. Thus, though they are not risk-loving, their risk-aversion is very low, allowing them to spread their investments over a diverse portfolio of friends, most of whom probably do not produce a very high return on investment. The introvert’s marginal utility (in blue), on the other hand, diminishes much faster, making them not only more risk-averse with regard to new investments, but less willing overall to invest their social capital.

It is notable that in this model, the scale from introversion to extraversion is continuous, with no qualitative difference between the two. This obviously favors a theory of continuous traits (Cattell, Allport, and the Five Factor Model) rather than discrete traits (Jung and the MBTI model), though that is not to say the latter cannot also function well enough as a continuous model.

So far we have assumed that a person invests all of his social capital that he is willing and no more, but this is not necessarily the case. Risk aversion may be significantly higher than inclination, or the risks may in reality be very high – for example, someone studying abroad without knowing the language would be hard pressed to invest all the social capital he would otherwise invest. Loneliness is social capital that one is not able to invest – uninvested capital that one would be willing to invest.

Likewise if social risk is extremely low relative to one’s risk aversion (an overly gregarious group, for example), it may lead one to socially overinvest. Though one may draw social debt for a while, eventually the pressure to pay it off (to rest) builds until the returns no longer justify the debt, and one is forced to rest.

So what’s the point of all this? Hopefully it’s not only a good model for translating social networks into financial markets, but a robust model for understanding people in itself. Plus, what’s more fun than the cross-pollination of different branches of study?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
-John 1:1-3

Let it first be understood that this is a completely different, but not unrelated question from “Does God sin?”. To answer either question, we first need to define our terms. Sin is the valuation or desire for something less than good. To sin against another person is to have something less than their best interest in mind. Thus, if God is that highest good, sin in its most general form is to value anything more highly than God. This is what Jesus meant when He described Himself as the fulfillment of the law (Matthew 5:17): the law is an approximation, love is the form. The law is 3.14, love is π. The law is a riemann sum, love is an integral. The law is a series of commands that approximate how the regenerate person acts, where love is what actually produces it in fullest form.

So what is love (cue Haddaway)? Love is the linking of one’s own interest to another’s interest. That is, to rejoice with another’s good and mourn with their bad, no matter its relevance to you. In this way, sin is the opposite of love – a breaking of the principle of the law, which is love. This is why Jesus said the greatest commandment is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”, and to “Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40). Thus it is the greatest sin not to value God as the highest good – indeed, we have seen that all sin stems from the valuation of something besides God.

So if sin stems from the valuation of something higher than God, we can safely say that God cannot sin. This takes the sting out of any claim of sin ultimately stemming from God, but the issue ought nevertheless to be explored. Such an argument can be made very simply: where else would it have come from? It has been shown that God does not delegate His attributes: without delegated sovereignty, it is futile to try to vindicate God from imagined wrongdoing by laundering the creation of sin through the free will of man.

So how can we say both that God created sin, but God does not sin?

Ultimately the answer to this question lies in the question “What is the purpose of sin?”. Sin and the results thereof are very often linked with senselessness – the question “Why?” is the most common response to suffering. If sin and suffering were indeed completely senseless, then we would do well to try to vindicate God from its creation.

But sin is not senseless. We see throughout the Bible that God directs sin and evil intent towards a higher good. From the salvation from famine of the house of Jacob due to the selling of Joseph into slavery years earlier (Genesis 50:20), to the exodus from Egypt due to the hardening of Pharoah’s heart (Exodus 4:21), to godless armies being raised up to punish Israel (Isaiah 10:5-7), God directs and controls sin to accomplish a greater purpose – namely His own glory. God is glorified in the display of all of His attributes, which require the presence of sin both to condemn and from which to redeem.

Knowing that even sin works for the highest good – a good higher than even that which could exist without sin – it can be none other than God orchestrating each event towards this final goal, and being completely just in doing so. I am much more assured in faith knowing that even sin is in the hands of the sovereign Lord, rather than trying to vindicate Him by pretending it is indeed senseless and sourceless. God thus becomes all the more glorious – not a bit of suffering is wasted, and we know that even as bad as the world may seem at times, the final outcome is completely assured.