Vicarious problem-solving is a
rational actor
A rational agent or rational being is a person or entity that always aims to perform optimal actions based on given premises and information. A rational agent can be anything that makes decisions, typically a person, firm, machine, or software.
...
approach developed by
Thomas Schelling
Thomas Crombie Schelling (April 14, 1921 – December 13, 2016) was an American economist and professor of foreign policy, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms control at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Coll ...
. In economic reasoning it is an educated common sense where one informally models the situation assuming agents ‘operate in a purposeful manner, aware of their values and alert to their opportunities’. Using this approach, the researcher figures out what an agent might do by imagining him or herself in the person's position, as best he or she understands that position, and decides what that person will likely do, given that person's aims, values, objectives and constraints.
Vicarious problem solving has been criticised as a type of
armchair theorising
Armchair theory is an approach to providing new developments in a field that does not involve analysis of empirical (real-world) data. The term is typically pejorative, implying such scholarship is weak, frivolous, and disconnected from reality. ...
.
References
Economic methodology
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