The anchoring bias reflects rational use of cognitive resources

Cognitive biases, such as the anchoring bias, pose a serious challenge to rational accounts of human cognition. We investigate whether rational theories can meet this challenge by taking into account the mind’s bounded cognitive resources. We asked what reasoning under uncertainty would look like if people made rational use of their finite time and limited cognitive resources. To answer this question, we applied a mathematical theory of bounded rationality to the problem of numerical estimation. Our analysis led to a rational process model that can be interpreted in terms of anchoring-and-adjustment. This model provided a unifying explanation for ten anchoring phenomena including the differential effect of accuracy motivation on the bias towards provided versus self-generated anchors. Our results illustrate the potential of resource-rational analysis to provide formal theories that can unify a wide range of empirical results and reconcile the impressive capacities of the human mind with its apparently irrational cognitive biases.     

The Rational Analysis Of Mind And Behavior

Rational analysis (Anderson 1990, 1991a) is an empiricalprogram of attempting to explain why the cognitive system isadaptive, with respect to its goals and the structure of itsenvironment. We argue that rational analysis has two importantimplications for philosophical debate concerning rationality. First,rational analysis provides a model for the relationship betweenformal principles of rationality (such as probability or decisiontheory) and everyday rationality, in the sense of successfulthought and action in daily life. Second, applying the program ofrational analysis to research on human reasoning leads to a radicalreinterpretation of empirical results which are typically viewed asdemonstrating human irrationality.     

Psychological plausibility of the theory of probabilistic mental models and the fast and frugal heuristics

The theory of probabilistic mental models (PMM; G. Gigerenzer, U. Hoffrage, & H. Kleinb?lting, 1991) has had a major influence on the field of judgment and decision making, with the most recent important modifications to PMM theory being the identification of several fast and frugal heuristics (G. Gigerenzer & D. G. Goldstein, 1996). These heuristics were purported to provide psychologically plausible cognitive process models that describe a variety of judgment behavior. In this article, the authors evaluate the psychological plausibility of the assumptions upon which PMM were built and, consequently, the psychological plausibility of several of the fast and frugal heuristics. The authors argue that many of PMM theory's assumptions are questionable, given available data, and that fast and frugal heuristics are, in fact, psychologically implausible.     

Incommensurability, incomparability, and rational world-choice

Klaas J. Kraay argues that the rational choice model for divine creation—according to which God chooses to actualize one world among possible alternatives based on its axiological properties—cannot succeed given failures of comparability across possible worlds. I argue that failure of comparability across worlds would not undermine the rationality of choosing one world to create among possible alternatives.     

Ten years of the rational analysis of cognition

Rational analysis is an empirical program that attempts to explain the function and purpose of cognitive processes. This article looks back on a decade of research outlining the rational analysis methodology and how the approach relates to other work in cognitive science. We illustrate rational analysis by considering how it has been applied to memory and reasoning. From the perspective of traditional cognitive science, the cognitive system can appear to be a rather arbitrary assortment of mechanisms with equally arbitrary limitations. In contrast, rational analysis views cognition as intricately adapted to its environment and to the problems it faces.     

The cognitive attitude of rational trust

I provide an account of the cognitive attitude of trust that explains the role trust plays in the planning of rational agents. Many authors have dismissed choosing to trust as either impossible or irrational; however, this fails to account for the role of trust in practical reasoning. A can have therapeutic, coping, or corrective reasons to trust B to ${\phi}$ , even in the absence of evidence that B will ${\phi}$ . One can choose to engage in therapeutic trust to inspire trustworthiness, coping trust to simplify one’s planning, or corrective trust to avoid doing a testimonial injustice. To accommodate such types of trust, without accepting doxastic voluntarism, requires an account of the cognitive attitude of trust broader than belief alone. I argue that trust involves taking the proposition that someone will do something as a premise in one’s practical reasoning, which can be a matter of believing or accepting the proposition. I defend this account against objections that it (i) provides insufficient rational constraints on trust, (ii) conflates trust and pretense of trust, and (iii) cannot account for the rationality of back-up planning.     

How (far) can rationality be naturalized?

The paper shows why and how an empirical study of fast-and-frugal heuristics can provide norms of good reasoning, and thus how (and how far) rationality can be naturalized. We explain the heuristics that humans often rely on in solving problems, for example, choosing investment strategies or apartments, placing bets in sports, or making library searches. We then show that heuristics can lead to judgments that are as accurate as or even more accurate than strategies that use more information and computation, including optimization methods. A standard way to defend the use of heuristics is by reference to accuracy-effort trade-offs. We take a different route, emphasizing ecological rationality (the relationship between cognitive heuristics and environment), and argue that in uncertain environments, more information and computation are not always better (the ??less-can-be-more?? doctrine). The resulting naturalism about rationality is thus normative because it not only describes what heuristics people use, but also in which specific environments one should rely on a heuristic in order to make better inferences. While we desist from claiming that the scope of ecological rationality is unlimited, we think it is of wide practical use.     

Rational requirements and ‘rational’ akrasia

Can akrasia be rational? Can it be rational to resist the motivational force of your own practical judgment? While I do not believe that akrasia can be rational, I think there is something revealingly right in recent arguments for the proposition. I aim to defend that insight in a way that does not entail that akrasia can be rational but more fundamentally addresses the normative structure of rational requirements. The fundamental issue lies in the relationship between two conceptions of rationality. Previous treatments of ‘rational’ akrasia have tended to regard rationality as a responsiveness to reasons. Previous treatments of rational requirements have tended to regard rationality as an attitudinal coherence. I’ll reformulate the question of rational akrasia within a framework that construes rationality as coherence. And I’ll reformulate the question of rational coherence to admit the possibility of reasoning as the apparently rational akratic does—from failure to follow through on a judgment to abandonment of that judgment. I’ll argue that rational requirements codify an agential coherence that you negotiate through a dynamic of self-trust and self-mistrust. It is not reasoning to abandon your judgment through forgetfulness, confusion or perverse self-rebellion. But it can be reasoning to abandon your judgment through reasonable self-mistrust. The difference lies in how self-mistrust can manifest a sensitivity to the norm of rational coherence that gives normative force to rational requirements. The core insight of those who defend the possibility of ‘rational’ akrasia lies in their emphasis on the rational force of self-mistrust.     

Nonrational processes in ethical decision making

Most current ethical decision-making models provide a logical and reasoned process for making ethical judgments, but these models are empirically unproven and rely upon assumptions of rational, conscious, and quasilegal reasoning. Such models predominate despite the fact that many nonrational factors influence ethical thought and behavior, including context, perceptions, relationships, emotions, and heuristics. For example, a large body of behavioral research has demonstrated the importance of automatic intuitive and affective processes in decision making and judgment. These processes profoundly affect human behavior and lead to systematic biases and departures from normative theories of rationality. Their influence represents an important but largely unrecognized component of ethical decision making. We selectively review this work; provide various illustrations; and make recommendations for scientists, trainers, and practitioners to aid them in integrating the understanding of nonrational processes with ethical decision making.     

Normative theories of argumentation: are some norms better than others?

Norms—that is, specifications of what we ought to do—play a critical role in the study of informal argumentation, as they do in studies of judgment, decision-making and reasoning more generally. Specifically, they guide a recurring theme: are people rational? Though rules and standards have been central to the study of reasoning, and behavior more generally, there has been little discussion within psychology about why (or indeed if) they should be considered normative despite the considerable philosophical literature that bears on this topic. In the current paper, we ask what makes something a norm, with consideration both of norms in general and a specific example: norms for informal argumentation. We conclude that it is both possible and desirable to invoke norms for rational argument, and that a Bayesian approach provides solid normative principles with which to do so.     

Précis of Simple heuristics that make us smart

How can anyone be rational in a world where knowledge is limited, time is pressing, and deep thought is often an unattainable luxury? Traditional models of unbounded rationality and optimization in cognitive science, economics, and animal behavior have tended to view decision-makers as possessing supernatural powers of reason, limitless knowledge, and endless time. But understanding decisions in the real world requires a more psychologically plausible notion of bounded rationality. In Simple heuristics that make us smart (Gigerenzer et al. 1999), we explore fast and frugal heuristics--simple rules in the mind's adaptive toolbox for making decisions with realistic mental resources. These heuristics can enable both living organisms and artificial systems to make smart choices quickly and with a minimum of information by exploiting the way that information is structured in particular environments. In this précis, we show how simple building blocks that control information search, stop search, and make decisions can be put together to form classes of heuristics, including: ignorance-based and one-reason decision making for choice, elimination models for categorization, and satisficing heuristics for sequential search. These simple heuristics perform comparably to more complex algorithms, particularly when generalizing to new data--that is, simplicity leads to robustness. We present evidence regarding when people use simple heuristics and describe the challenges to be addressed by this research program.     

Reconceiving rationality: situating rationality into radically enactive cognition

Rational beliefs and actions are typically evaluated against certain benchmarks, e.g., those of classical logic or probability theory. Rationality therefore is traditionally taken to involve some sort of reasoning, which in turn implies contentful cognition. Radically Enactive (and Embodied) views of Cognition (REC), on the other hand, claim that not all cognition is contentful. In order to show that rationality does not need to lie outside of REC’s scope of radicalizing cognition, I develop a Radically Enactive notion of Rationality (RER), according to which rationality is embodied, situated and contentless. For RER, an organism acts rationally insofar as it sustains a proficient interaction with its environment, which in turn requires the coordination of cognitive abilities in accordance with environmental constraints. Rationality is thus distinguished from reasoning, for reasoning is understood as a capacity to coordinate representational cognitive abilities.

     

Probabilistic Mental Models with Continuous Predictors

Gigerenzer and his colleagues have sought to develop psychologically plausible models of human judgment. Their models are classified as ones of bounded rationality based on a principle of one-reason decision making. The models associated with the theory of Probabilistic Mental Models (PMM) have been developed for tasks in which all predictors are binary. This article extends PMM to the case of continuous predictors. The current model employs the limitation on the number of categories people use in making absolute judgments along a single perceptual dimension (7 +/- 2; Miller, 1956). The algorithm transforms each continuous predictor to be consistent with this limitation, then implements a step-down one-reason decision procedure similar to previous PMM models. Like previous PMM models, the 7 +/- 2 model predicts binary judgments as well as a multiple-regression model. However, the model does not successfully predict the probability judgments of individual participants, which is also true of all other models in the literature. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.     

Rationality and reflective equilibrium

Cohen (1981) and others have made an interesting argument for the thesis that humans are rational: normative principles of reasoning and actual human reasoning ability cannot diverge because both are determined by the same process involving our intuitions about what constitutes good reasoning as a starting point. Perhaps the most sophisticated version of this argument sees reflective equilibrium as the process that determines both what the norms of reasoning are and what actual cognitive competence is. In this essay, I will evaluate both the general argument that humans are rational and the reflective equilibrium argument for the same thesis. While I find both accounts initially appealing, I will argue that neither successfully establishes that humans are rational.     

Rationality and Judgment

Abstract: Philosophical/epistemic theories of rationality differ over the role of judgment in rational argumentation. According to the “classical model” of rationality, rational justification is a matter of conformity with explicit rules or principles. Critics of the classical model, such as Harold Brown and Trudy Govier, argue that the model is subject to insuperable difficulties. They propose, instead, that rationality be understood, ultimately, in terms of judgment rather than rules. In this article I respond to Brown's and Govier's criticisms of the classical model, and to the “judgment model” they propose in its place. I argue that that model is unable both to distinguish between rational and irrational judgment and to avoid recourse to rules, and is therefore inadequate as an account of rationality, critical thinking, or argument appraisal. More positively, I argue that an adequate account of rationality must include a place for both rules and judgment.     

The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment.

Research on moral judgment has been dominated by rationalist models, in which moral judgment is thought to be caused by moral reasoning. The author gives 4 reasons for considering the hypothesis that moral reasoning does not cause moral judgment; rather, moral reasoning is usually a post hoc construction, generated after a judgment has been reached. The social intuitionist model is presented as an alternative to rationalist models. The model is a social model in that it deemphasizes the private reasoning done by individuals and emphasizes instead the importance of social and cultural influences. The model is an intuitionist model in that it states that moral judgment is generally the result of quick, automatic evaluations (intuitions). The model is more consistent that rationalist models with recent findings in social, cultural, evolutionary, and biological psychology, as well as in anthropology and primatology.     

Visions of rationality

The classical view that equates rationality with adherence to the laws of probability theory and logic has driven much research on inference. Recently, an increasing number of researchers have begun to espouse a view of rationality that takes account of organisms' adaptive goals, natural environments, and cognitive constraints. We argue that inference is carried out using boundedly rational heuristics, that is, heuristics that allow organisms to reach their goals under conditions of limited time, information, and computational capacity. These heuristics are ecologically rational in that they exploit aspects of both the physical and social environment in order to make adaptive inferences. We review recent work exploring this multifaceted conception of rationality.     

The Normative Source of Kantian Hypothetical Imperatives

Abstract

This paper offers a critique of Christine Korsgaard’s interpretation of Kantian instrumental reason. Korsgaard understands Kantian hypothetical imperatives to share a common normative source with the categorical imperative – namely self-legislating, human rational agency. However, her reading of Kantian hypothetical imperatives is problematic for three reasons. Firstly, Korsgaard’s agent-centred approach renders incoherent Kant’s analytic-synthetic division. Secondly, by minimising the dualistic framework of Kant’s practical philosophy the dialectical character of practical rationality is lost: norms of instrumental reasoning therefore become confused with those of moral reasoning. Thirdly, this in turn curtails the distinct critical authority of pure practical rationality over instrumental choice. The paper argues that we need to understand the normativity of instrumental rationality through the lens of Kant’s dualisms. An alternative interpretation is offered which highlights how the norms of hypothetical imperatives appeal to standards of theoretical cognition and practical efficiency rather than the self-legislative demands of pure practical reason.