Symbolic Rewards: Being Bought off Cheaply

Abstract

Symbolic rewards are shown to be of two types. One variety—that which promises future material rewards—is inherently deserving of scorn, for promises must necessarily be less valuable than actual delivery. But there is another sort of symbolic appeal which is essentially ‘affective’, playing on emotions that knit social groups together and in no way implying delivery of any material commodities. Such symbolic rewards are shown to be far less objectionable than those with promissory overtones. In practice, of course, the two types are often intertwined. This poses genuine problems for policy-makers, but they are problems which require for their resolution analytic groundwork of the sort laid herein.