The Rationality Debate—also called the Great Rationality Debate—is the question of whether humans are

rational Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reason. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do, or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an ...

or not. This issue is a topic in the study of

cognition Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

and is important in fields such as

economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

where it is relevant to the theories of

market efficiency The efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) is a hypothesis in financial economics that states that asset prices reflect all available information. A direct implication is that it is impossible to "beat the market" consistently on a risk-adjusted basi ...

. Many studies in

experimental psychology Experimental psychology is the work done by those who apply Experiment, experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ Research participant, human participants and Animal testing, anim ...

have shown that humans often

reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, religion, scien ...

in a way that is inaccurate or imperfect—that they do not naturally chose the ideal method or solution. An example of a problem which causes difficulty and debate is the St. Petersburg paradox. This is a lottery which is constructed so that the

expected value In probability theory, the expected value (also called expectation, expectancy, expectation operator, mathematical expectation, mean, expectation value, or first Moment (mathematics), moment) is a generalization of the weighted average. Informa ...

is infinite but unlikely so that most people will not pay a large fee to play.

Gerd Gigerenzer Gerd Gigerenzer (; born 3 September 1947) is a German psychologist who has studied the use of bounded rationality and heuristics in decision making. Gigerenzer is director emeritus of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC) at the Ma ...

explained that, in this case, mathematicians refined their formulae to model this pragmatic behaviour.

Keith Stanovich Keith E. Stanovich (born 1950) is an American research scientist and psychologist. He is an Emeritus Professor of Applied Psychology and Human Development at the University of Toronto and former Canada Research Chair of Applied Cognitive Science. ...

characterizes this as a

Panglossian Optimism is the attitude or mindset of expecting events to lead to particularly positive, favorable, desirable, and hopeful outcomes. A common idiom used to illustrate optimism versus pessimism is a glass filled with water to the halfway poin ...

position in the debate—that humans are fundamentally rational and any variance between the

normative Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible. A Norm (philosophy), norm in this sense means a standard for evaluatin ...

position and empirical outcomes may be explained by such adjustments.

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* * * * * Moral psychology Reasoning Rational choice theory {{philosophy-stub __NOTOC__

See also

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