Rationality is a topic which you can devote years of study to without making much progress. This is because one problem is that everyone means different things by rationality. It is not just marketers disagreeing with economists, who are disagreeing with psychologists. There are also major cleavages within disciplines. One perspective from evolutionary psychologists is the idea of Deep Rationality.
A Typical Definition Of Rationality
A typical definition of a rational person might be something like this. A faultless, emotionless optimizer. Of course, this describes no one I know. Nor does it describe anyone you know. Indeed, even many economists now think of rationality more as a property of markets. This contrasts with the doomed suggestion that any individual is a faultless, emotionless optimizer.
Evolutionary psychology has a concept that may be helpful when thinking about rationality. To an evolutionary psychologist people self-evidently aren’t faultless, emotionless optimizers. That said, neither are we all fools. To show how research treats decision makers Kenrick and Griskevicius discuss the “morons”. These are the biased decision makers, that behavioral economists sometimes invoke. They also note the “econs”. These are the super-human decision makers, that economists sometimes assume. (The models are deliberately extreme to make a point.) The authors rightly claim both models are flawed descriptions of decision making. There are reasons behind human action. Although the reasons are not necessarily ones that decision makers can articulate.
“..underneath all the biases and misjudgments is an exceptionally wise ancestral system of decision making. To understand how people make decisions , we must first ask why the brain evolved to make the particular choices that it does.”
Kenrick and Griskevicius 2013 page 20
Deep Rationality
Deep Rationality is the idea that there is a logic to our actions. Still we don’t always know the logic. We don’t know why we do what we do.
It is worth noting that deep rationality is a very different concept from “traditional” rationality. Many decisions influenced by deep rationality don’t seem very sensible to the outside observer. For instance, a young man taking great personal risks, or spending money he can’t afford on status symbols, to look cool might reflect deep rationality. The young man is trying to increase his status in the group. This, might, impress potential mates or allies. So street racing might reflect deep rationality. Still, most of us wouldn’t describe it as a great choice. (The fast and the furious movies were never a great choice by my biased definition. The ride is at Universal is just plain mysterious. A pretty dull ride featuring buses that aims to appeal to people who think of themselves as driving fast cars).
It is also worth pointing out that deep rationality is not a moral justification. No one is saying, for example, that it is okay to risk killing people to potentially impress potential mates.
Don’t Assume Other People Are Morons.
We’d all do well to heed the book’s first lesson: “Don’t assume other people are morons” (page 209). There may be some rationality in other people’s choices, though sometimes you may have to look very deeply.
For more on rationality see Confusion About Individual Rationality and Market Outcomes – Marketing Thought (neilbendle.com).
Read: Douglas T. Kenrick and Vladas Griskevicius (2013), The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think, Basic Books
