Gori Girl

The study of economics screws up your brain. Or, at least, that’s what people outside the field who haven’t drunk the econ kool-aid tell me. (Like most potentially insane people, I, of course, wouldn’t know if I were in fact insane. That’s the fun of it!)

Anyway, I’m informed that most people don’t think about romantic relationships in terms of intertwined, interdependent utility functions. But I do. And I think you should consider the idea too. Think of it as practice in learning how a subculture (a geeky, mathematically-inclined subculture) thinks about love and romance.

Economics – quick & dirty

Economics isn’t an inherently sexy subject. Most people, in fact, think that economists only study things like banking and capital flows and, well, money-stuff (and that we’re incompetent at it, too, what with the whole financial crises “thing”). However, at its roots economics is all about happiness – except that economists call happiness “utility” to keep you common folk clueless. How do people, given all of the constraints of mortal life – time, energy, physical resources, limited attention spans – best make themselves happy? And when you have a bunch of people engaged in trying to be happy, how do they interact as a group – as an economy? When you go back to this basic view of economics, you (or, at least, I) realize that it should have a heck of a lot to say about personal relationships and marriage – after all, that’s one of the key things that most people need to live a happy life.

So how does the economic approach to happiness differ from, say, psychology or sociology? Well, economists do it with models. (Heh.) That is, economists try to sketch out the underlying key features of a situation  in much the same way a map tries to sketch out the key features of an area. And just like you could have several different maps (topological, major roads, sites of interest, etc) of the same region, you can several different economic models of the same sort of situation, with each emphasizing a different facet of human behavior. For example, a model describing how you and your spouse decide which restaurant to eat out at tomorrow could focus on the process of bargaining between spouses to be that night’s “restaurant decider”, or it could focus on how the emphasis on the price of the meal changes compared to how you two would decide to weigh costs if you were dining individually, or it could focus on the strategy each person uses in suggesting restaurants to reach a solution satisfactory to both parties (with Aditya, my strategy is to say ‘sushi’ if I’m in a sushi mood, and otherwise chant “channa, channa, channa” until he gives in and we go get kabobs and chickpeas).  Most of these economic models are written out in a mathematical manner in order to make clear exactly what the model is assuming and what its predictions are. Which leads us to…

Fun, exciting utility functions!

Utility functions are the way economists describe what makes an individual happy – remember how utility means happiness in economic nerd speak? And, as you may have guessed, utility functions are often pretty mathematical in nature. However, I’ll be keeping the discussion light & easy for the less math-inclined amongst you.

A very basic, general utility function looks like this:

U = (a, b, c, d, e, …)

where U stands for the total utility (happiness) a person has, and the letters stand for various things you can have and experience that bring you joy. So, for example, “a” could be the experience of watching the sun set on the beach, and “b” could be the experience of watching the sun set from the top of the Eiffel Tower (and “c” could be the experience of sitting in Kabob Palace at sunset & would very likely be combined with “d” – eating channa).  You’ll note that in the utility function I didn’t spell out exactly how much happiness each one of these items could bring me. That’s because I, like most economists, am lazy.

Paired with every utility function is a cost function, describing how much of various resources it’ll cost me to get each item that might bring me happiness. So, for instance, sitting on a beach is free, but it’ll still take gas money to get there, and, of course, that precious resource of time. Flying to Paris, obviously, takes even more money and time – perhaps enough that I prefer the trip to the beach, at least right now. Sitting in Kabob Palace at sunset might not bring me much happiness – but it does make the cost of achieving “channa eating” a lot lower, since I’m already right there in the restaurant. No travel time at all!

Intertwined utility functions

So what does this all have to do with relationships and intercultural marriages and such? Well, like I said at the start, lots!

Economics gets a bad rap as only considering selfish efforts to maximize one’s own happiness as “rational” You have a utility function, and you try to choose all your stuff so that your end result is a really big number for your utility. And, yes, there are a lot of simple models of relationships and marriage that take this approach. But nuanced economics is none of that. Instead, we have an interdependent utility function, where your partner’s happiness is incorporated into your own. And that’s what partnership is really about, right? So my utility function might look something like this:

Gori Girl’s Utility = [a, b, c, d, e, ... , Aditya's Utility (a, b, c, d, e, ...)]

Now, for me, this is a really romantic notion – this is what love is all about (remember, we established that I might be insane at the top of this post).

It’s not a matter of “well, if he’s happy, my life is easier and less stressful, and thus I’m happier”. It’s not a matter of simply adding together his happiness and my happiness and coming up with a value for our family’s happiness. And it’s certainly not a matter of wanting to please him just because we’re partners or because he’s another human being deserving of happiness. Please – I’m not that good a person to be able to incorporate every one’s utility function into my own. No human is. Instead, it’s just love, plain and simple. A world where Aditya’s happiness is 253 oodles of joy is a better one than where he only has 252 oodles of joy (yes, joy is counted in units of oodles. Because oodles is a happy word.)

And it gets better! Imagine if Aditya’s utility function looks like this:

Aditya’s Utility = [a, b, c, d, e, ... , Gori Girl's Utility (a, b, c, d, e, ... , Aditya's Utility)]

Well, now we have a recurrsive function, where his utility is based off in part my utility, which is based off in part of his utility, which is… This is the absolute brillance of human relationships – our joy is compounded by the joy of those around us, forming a gestalt of happiness where the sum of the whole is greater than each individual piece broken out. And all this just from a couple of simple formulas!

Of course, this economic framework to not just made to be awesome – it’s also a very good way in my mind to frame relationship issues. There’s still tradeoffs to be made (and as we all know from the stand-up economist, this is not a good thing), since the things that make Aditya and I happy aren’t identical. But when we choose to do something he really wants – like get a pingpong table rather than an, ahem, way more useful outdoor table for the deck – I can remind myself in moments of frustration that, hey, Aditya’s utility matters quite a bit too. This reframing of the issue is particularly important for me, because, frankly, by nature I’m a pretty independent self-centered person.

I suspect that this framework can also give one insights into the extended family of Indian and other “Eastern” cultures as well. To grossly simplify a complex matter (remember, models are about simplifying to key components, even if that leaves out some important details & exceptions), we’re taught in the US that, ultimately, your life is yours to lead – and you should make your decisions based on your own desires and happiness. Basically, it’s okay for your utility function to not include other individuals, beyond the  basic respect you should give all people. On the other hand, in cultures where your family members’ utility functions are considered a key component of your utility function, it’s simply not rational to ignore their desires and happiness, or to try to place those on an order below your own – after all, their happiness is a core component of your own happiness. You can’t separate the two.

Obviously, like all simplifications – or all models overall – intertwined, interdependent utility functions aren’t a perfect representation of our relationships. They’re simply one way of looking at the world, and considering certain aspects of it, just like a poet might look at it another way. Of course, as a trained economist, this is the way I’m most comfortable thinking about the world – all math and analytics and no conventional romanatic leanings to speak of. But, then Aditya knew it when he married me – and in our cross-cultural marriage, I have it worse: he’s studied (and liked) post-modernism.