Rationality Case Study

What do you understand by the term ‘rationality’ in the context of human behaviour? In this essay I will be covering rationality in the context of human behaviour, the differences in how rationality is viewed in economics and psychology and I will provide my opinion on which rationality is useful in understanding human behaviour and why. The definition of rationality would be using logic and mythological thinking to make a wise decision and it’s a very good way of understanding human behaviour , this is very close to “simon’s words, rationality “is concerned with the selection of preferred behaviour alternatives in terms of some system of values whereby the consequences of behaviour can be evaluated” (Secchi ,20011,P16) Which is by far would

Rationality is viewed in psychology as “using conscious thought processes to solve problems” (Nugent, pam M.S, 2017) this is the basic way of viewing rationality in psychology; when it comes to problem solving in this contexts, its usually more about problems you can solve on the spot without thinking too much about the future outcome and more about how that decision will affect you at the time. This ties in very well with what Adrian Fumham states about rationality in psychology which is that the human decision is based on “satisfying (or good enough) rather than an optimal decision” (Furnham, 2012,

This is because of bounded rationality as we are so limited cognitively, there are three different heuristics according to Tvesky and Kahneman (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974, pp.1124-1131) which are availability bias, representativeness and anchoring and adjusting. Availability bias is making decisions based on what we have already experienced as it is there fastest source of information and it is a reaction from intuition and instinct. One example of this would be if you have to decide between a fast food place or a posh restaurant, you’re more likely to choose the posh restaurant due to a memory of you getting food poisoning from a different fast food place so you are automatically going to assume the same could happen if you don’t choose the posh restaurant; the person wouldn’t know if they will still get food poisoning from that fast food restaurant as they have never been as it might not, however it is the quickest assumption to make which sometimes isn’t very