When in doubt about how to behave in an ambiguous situation, people may think back to narratives and adopt a role they have heard of, as if they are acting in a play they have seen before. We can debate whether such behavior is rational. In one sense it is rational to copy the behavior of apparently successful people, even if one does not see any logic in the behavior. Those being copied might have mysterious or unobserved reasons for such behavior, and their success suggests they have at least stumbled onto an advantageous behavior. But traditional economic theory does not model this kind of rationality. It sees the following of others’ behavior as more reflexive, not as a thoughtful application of the principle “When in doubt, imitate.” This reflexivity does not generally follow the typical economic assumption that people attempt to maximize their utility based on all available information. On the contrary, following scripts set by others often looks like quite stupid behavior.
Blindly copying the behaviour and actions of successful people might actually make logical sense, even if we can’t understand or see why. However, that does work with typical economic assumption.
That might also explain why people tend to copy the idiosyncracies or behaviors of wildly rich people.
