Homo Probabilis, Behavioral Economics, and the Emotional Life of Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism often operates by privatizing what was once public and by turning questions of moral value into questions of market finance. This essay expands our understanding of these operations by examining the way neoliberalism takes hold at the most intimate level—the level of feeling. It argues that the field known as behavioral economics has helped to produce the neoliberal subject as a person of feeling. While it shows the alignment of behavioral economics with neoliberalism, the essay also suggests how the field might put its observations to work in very different ways.