There is thus a sense in which the capacity for economics to be performative arises from the cognitive limitations of human beings limitations that require standard models of the rational actor to be weakened. However, in order better to understand economic behavior, even in financial markets, it is also necessary to enrich standard models of the rational actor to encompass ways in which we affect each other that are not reducible to calculation in the ordinary sense of the word. We are often profoundly influenced by anticipation of how our behavior will appear to others, even if their approval or their disapproval has no direct material consequences.

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 1197