preview of a possible praxeological application

I'm working on developing psychology as an axiomatic logico-deductive system based on praxeology.  Praxeologists have long argued that our science has nothing to say about what happens before values are ranked.  But I'm convinced that the logic of human action has powerful implications for the process of value formation.  I'll have a full post on that soon. In the mean time, today I was thinking specifically about the relationship between values, self efficacy and action.

The value that a man chooses to act on isn't necessarily his highest ranked value. The values that he chooses to act on are tempered by his estimation of the difficulty of the task, and his own ability to achieve his ends. His highest value may be to secure hegemonic control of the planet, but if he doesn't think that he's capable of achieving it, he won't act on it. He'll settle for acting on a lower ranked value, like getting a degree in economics or watching another episode of Breaking Bad.

Let's take a friend of mine as an example.  On any given day, his four highest ranked values are as follows:

He would prefer first to act on getting a hot girlfriend or getting a job, but he doesn't choose to act on them.  This is evidence of his conviction that he is incapable of achieving them.  This, of course, isn't some earth shattering insight.  A therapist would already ask his patient what his values are and why he isn't acting on his highest ranked values.  But the psychological literature is completely devoid of a logical system of necessary cause and effect relationships to explain this kind of phenomenon.

Consider the example of the minimum wage.  In praxeology, we would say that, ceteris paribus, if the government raises the minimum wage above the market clearing wage, it will increase unemployment.  This is a clear cause and effect relationship and a praxeological fact.

I think we can do the same thing for psychology.  We might say something like, ceteris paribus, if a patient's self efficacy falls to below his estimation of the difficulty of the current value he is acting on, he will choose to act on the next highest ranked value he believes he is capable of.  A system of deductions like this, properly elaborated, could be the beginning of a major paradigm shift in psychology and the catalyst that finally launches it into a mature science.

More on all of this soon.