Kahneman’s tryst with reasonableness: a tease unfulfilled?

Kahneman’s criticism of neoclassical rationality was central to his research programme. He argued that rationality understood as temporal consistency among preferences and beliefs is inapt as a descriptive and prescriptive standard of decision-making. Descriptively, consistency ignores high decision costs and biases, such as framing effects. Prescriptively, it is problematic since it neglects the processual nature of choice and the crucial role of regret. Instead, Kahneman argued in favour of using reasonableness as a standard, though he did not fully develop the concept in his work.