Apropos of the lengthy discussion generated by the Krugman essay on Milton Friedman, here is an interesting summary by David Warsh of the AEA proceedings and George Akerlof's presidential address. I believe the address was mentioned in one of the posts. Below are  couple of quotes and the link to the article. Akerlof makes an argument  for broadening the field of vision of economic actors.
 
http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/07.01.07.html
 
"Personal preferences as characterized by economists heretofore have been excessively narrow, he argued. Taking account of individuals' feelings about how they should and should not behave in particular circumstances might make the landscape begin to resemble the one roughly sketched three-quarters of a century ago by Keynes."
 
I would think that this can be traced all the way back to Adam Smith's view of how socialized individuals act in general and how even their self-interested 'economic' behavior assumes a degree of reciprocity which is crucial to his model of the market economy.
 
"Economists first had to take norms as given before they could begin to spin models of how they might change in response to changing economic conditions."
 
This is profoundly important to those who believe not only that norms influence individual choices, but they also severely constrain the choices available to many individuals.
 
Sumitra Shah