Cultural dispositions and economic choice: How field-specific logics shape ‘rational’ economic behaviour

Abstract

Why do some individuals make economic choices aligning with rational choice principles while others regularly deviate from such norms? This paper addresses this question by applying Bourdieu's field theory to economic cognition, arguing that economic and cultural fields cultivate opposing dispositions through fundamentally inverse logics of accumulation. Drawing on three original studies with U.S. adults, I demonstrate that capital composition and field socialization systematically pattern economic decision-making in ways behavioural economics cannot explain through psychological mechanisms alone. Study 1 reveals a negative correlation between performance on probability-based tasks (blackjack) and aesthetic evaluation, suggesting competing rather than parallel cognitive competencies. Study 2 shows that economic capital predicts lower loss aversion while cultural capital predicts heightened loss sensitivity, controlling for risk tolerance and demographics. Study 3 demonstrates that occupational and educational field socialization predicts loss aversion above and beyond capital stocks, providing direct evidence for the habitus mechanism. These findings make three contributions. First, they provide quantitative, micro-cognitive evidence for Bourdieu's chiastic structure, demonstrating that opposing field logics generate measurable cognitive interference. Second, they advance culture and cognition scholarship by introducing relational opposition as an explanatory principle: dispositions optimized for one field create systematic disadvantages in another, not merely parallel differences. Third, they suggest implications for dual-process theory, indicating that automatic and controlled processes may be relationally structured by field position rather than simply varying in content. The results challenge behavioural economics' universal bias framework and illuminate how social structure penetrates economic cognition, with practical implications for financial literacy interventions in an increasingly financialized economy.