Think Like a Freak

by Steven D. Levitt

Whenever you interact with another entity, whether it’s your best friend or some faceless bureaucracy, the interaction falls into one of a handful of frameworks. There’s the financial framework that governs everything we buy, sell, and trade. There’s an “us-versus-them” framework that defines war, sports, and, unfortunately, most political activity. The “loved-one” framework covers friends and family (at least when things are going smoothly; otherwise, look out for “us-versus-them”). There’s a collaborative framework that shapes how you behave with work colleagues or in your amateur orchestra or pickup soccer team. And then there’s the “authority-figure” framework, in which someone gives instructions and someone else is expected to follow them—think of parents, teachers, police and military officers, and a certain kind of boss.