The Psychology of the Main Social Groups: Motivations (2024)

America before 1787: The Unraveling of a Colonial Regime

Jon Elster

Published:

2023

Online ISBN:

9780691242668

Print ISBN:

9780691242651

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America before 1787: The Unraveling of a Colonial Regime

Jon Elster

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Jon Elster

Jon Elster

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Pages

27–127

  • Published:

    April 2023

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Elster, Jon, 'The Psychology of the Main Social Groups: Motivations', America before 1787: The Unraveling of a Colonial Regime (Princeton, NJ, 2023; online edn, Princeton Scholarship Online, 23 May 2024), https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691242668-003, accessed 27 May 2024.

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Abstract

This chapter examines the psychology of the main social groups under discussion, with a focus on their motivations. It begins by classifying human motivations into reason, interest, and passion. Next, the chapter discusses honor, deference, shame, and contempt. Jointly, these attitudes conferred stability to the colonial regime. Anger, perceived injustice, as well as envy are also explored. But as the chapter shows, anger and grievances alone would not have jumpstarted the American Revolution. In the American Revolution, the aim was liberty, and the force that, in alliance with anger, brought it about was enthusiasm. Finally, the chapter explores the motivations of fear and interest.

Keywords: human motivations, colonial regime, perceived injustice, American Revolution, liberty, fear

Subject

History of the Americas

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