Marr, Memory, and Heuristics
Marr, Memory, and Heuristics
Michael Watkins has said that a cognitive theory “is a bit like someone else’s toothbrush—it is fine for the individual’s use, but for the rest of us…well, we would just rather not, thank you.” To say whether people are behaving rationally requires a definition of what it means to behave rationally, and like a toothbrush everyone has their own. This chapter, defines rational behavior as follows: To behave rationally in some context is to display behavior that corresponds to a normative standard of behavior for that context. The choice of the standard determines what constitutes rational behavior. This chapter explores the roots of the idea that behavior that is rational in natural environments may not necessarily be rational in the peculiar environments that experimental psychologists concoct.
Keywords: Strüngmann Forum Reports, bounded rationality, intuition, logic, rational behavior
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