The Wealth of Nations was not the status quo, though. The neoclassical model of economics was much more committed to a model in which the individual maximizes

The Wealth of Nations was not the status quo, though. The neoclassical model of economics was much more committed to a model in which the individual maximizes some utility function. The neoclassical model certainly built on Adam Smith, but by no means the same as, and one of the differences was that neoclassical economics tried to find ways to ignore or abstract away anything to do with human psychology.