I’ve been reading a lot of psychology text(s) on the topic of individualism and social functioning within groups. I have also started to get interested in game theory and so have been checking out books on this subject.
One thing that seems to be presented (or discussed) a lot is the concept of rational behaviour. It seems to talk about the rational mode of thinking and in all the theories discussed it appears that the parties involved ALWAYS follow this pattern/train of thought.
My question is, what is an accurate description of rational behaviour and to what measurable extent do humans follow this?
I would be thinking of any long-term psychological experiments/investigations that have attempted to establish whether individuals are actually rational in thier thinking and how much thier rational thinking is counter-balanced by what would be classified as irrational thinking.
Rational behavior would be to maximize your own personal pleasure and minimize pain, over the longest possible term.
Democritus and Epicurus had a lot to say on the subject.
Do human practice this behavior? I don’t think so: we put too much emphasis on short-term payoff, and not enough on long-term. (How many of us really invest enough to cover our needs in retirement, for example?)
An economist would define rational behavior as “pursuing an activity as long as its marginal utility outweighs its marginal cost.” Such behavior is likely to result in maximizing utility, the objective of most rational people.
Most economic models assume that the participants all behave rationally. I am not familiar with experimental attempts to verify this assumption; however, I am not an economist, so I haven’t studied the literature enough to rule out the possibility of such an experiment.
Speaking from a game theory perspective, I’d venture to guess that the rational individual would be, as mentioned above, striving for maximum gain with minimum risk/effort, within the rules of the game. Anyone acting outside the game’s parameters would be “irrational”, even if their overall motive fit the rest of the criteria.
As for the second question, my own perception leans toward “eh, I dunno”, which, I believe, is the “noncommittal” game, in the, uh, in the industry.
An eminent psychologist has studied this. I think it might have been Kahneman, the recent Nobel Laureate, but I don’t have any references right now. The conclusion, IIRC, was that people in general don’t behave “rationally” as defined by economists. People are more likely to use heuristics, “rules of thumb,” than to attempt cost-benefit analysis for each decision. I wish I had a cite, but I don’t.
My daughter is a lifeguard. She pulls some drowning kid out of the pool at least once a week (for about 2 years now). She says there are, generally speaking, 3 reactions:
About 10% of parents thank her. (Rational behavior, in my opinion–I would want to encourage that sort of action.)
Most people, about 80%, are so embarassed that they weren’t watching their kid that they pack up silently and go. (Again rational, since you want to avoid anyone knowing you are such a bad parent.)
The final 10% start screaming and cursing at her. “What do you think you’re doing?” and such. (Not rational, IMHO. What positive result do they think they’re promoting? Sheesh!)
Regarding the OP, I would have to say that you need to search the literature for a definition, or figure it out from the context. Since you’re reading psychology, I would imagine that there is a definition that is specific to the field and/or the particular author you’re reading.
I think that the defn. that you come up with will be different from the common, dictionary defn. of the term. Much like in economics where the definition of rational really doesn’t fit what the common concept of rational may be. Many people may not consider a serial killer to be a rational person, but an economist would if, say, model mugging classes became very popular in his town and in response to the increased difficulty of abducting local women he started hunting in a neighboring town. That could be characterized as economically rational even thought the guy is clearly nuts.
For the record, for a good paper about some of the experimental work done in econ., google for “Vernon Smith’s Insomnia and the Dawn of Economics as an Experimental Science.” The paper that you’ll find (you may need to visit a couple sites to get one that you don’t need to be a subscriber to–but it can be found without too much trouble) goes through some of the early experimental work in economics. It’s my understanding that the rationality assumption holds up pretty well. Where the breakdown occurs, as I understand it, is that money is used as a proxy for utility/satisfaction. It may be a pretty good proxy for life, but in experiments it can lead to results that look irrational since people don’t maximize money but utility, which may have nothing to do with money. Some people value what they consider to be fair deals and they are willing to forfeit some money to see that a fair deal obtains. When the experiment is looking only at money, a fair dealer will come out looking irrational because the experimental design is not sensitive enough to measure her preference for being ethically responsible.
This link gives a short discourse on Rationality and Maximizing Expected Utility, this is “rationality” from a Game-Theory/Decision and Value Theory perspective.
Even in this rarified state, “rationality” can be shown to be an unrealistic expectation in many situations! Two specifically come to mind:
[ul]
[li] Decison making under uncertainty (i.e. where the outcome is dependent on one or more variables the value of which is not known and no probability function can be assigned to it)[/li][li] Most multi-person “games” have no solution, a solution being where each player and each sub-group of players seeks to maximise their returns (i.e. acts rationally)[/li][/ul]
Why do I mention this? Oh yes, that was it – even in mathematically idealised models rationality is demonstrably not something that we can expect, let alone insist upon.