IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ash/wpaper/07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Rational Choices: An Ecological Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Abhinash Borah

    (Department of Economics, Ashoka University)

  • Christopher Kops

    (Heidelberg University)

Abstract

We address the oft-repeated criticism that the demands which the rational choice approach makes on the knowledge and cognition of a decision maker (DM) are way beyond the capabilities of typical human intelligence. Our key ï¬ nding is that it may be possible to arrive at this ideal of rationality by means of cognitively less demanding, heuristic-based ecological reasoning that draws on information about others’ choices in the DM’s environment. Formally, we propose a choice procedure under which, in any choice problem, the DM, ï¬ rst, uses this information to shortlist a set of alternatives. The DM does this shortlisting by a mental process of categorization whereby she draws similarities with certain societal members—the ingroup—and distinctions from others—the outgroup—and considers those alternatives that are similar (dissimilar) to ingroup (outgroup) members’ choices. Then, she chooses from this shortlisted set by applying her preferences, which may be incomplete owing to limitations of knowledge. We show that if a certain homophily condition connecting the DM’s preferences with her ingroup-outgroup categorization holds, then the procedure never leads the DM to making bad choices. If, in addition, a certain shortlisting consistency condition holds vis-a-vis non-comparable alternatives under the DM’s preferences, then the procedure results in rational choices.

Suggested Citation

  • Abhinash Borah & Christopher Kops, 2019. "Rational Choices: An Ecological Approach," Working Papers 07, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ash:wpaper:07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dp.ashoka.edu.in/ash/wpaper/paper07_0.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti, 2012. "Categorize Then Choose: Boundedly Rational Choice And Welfare," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(5), pages 1141-1165, October.
    2. Lleras, Juan Sebastián & Masatlioglu, Yusufcan & Nakajima, Daisuke & Ozbay, Erkut Y., 2017. "When more is less: Limited consideration," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 70-85.
    3. Herbert A. Simon, 1955. "A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 69(1), pages 99-118.
    4. Yusufcan Masatlioglu & Daisuke Nakajima & Erkut Y. Ozbay, 2012. "Revealed Attention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2183-2205, August.
    5. Mandler, Michael & Manzini, Paola & Mariotti, Marco, 2012. "A million answers to twenty questions: Choosing by checklist," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(1), pages 71-92.
    6. Chaim Fershtman & Uzi Segal, 2018. "Preferences and Social Influence," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 124-142, August.
    7. Tugce Cuhadaroglu, 2015. "Choosing on Influence," Discussion Paper Series, School of Economics and Finance 201504, School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews.
    8. Cuhadaroglu, Tugce, 2017. "Choosing on influence," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(2), May.
    9. Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti, 2007. "Sequentially Rationalizable Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1824-1839, December.
    10. Yan Chen & Sherry Xin Li, 2009. "Group Identity and Social Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 431-457, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David M. Ramsey, 2020. "A Game Theoretic Model of Choosing a Valuable Good via a Short List Heuristic," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-20, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Juan Lleras & Yusufcan Masatlioglu & Daisuke Nakajima & Erkut Ozbay, 2021. "Path-Independent Consideration," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, March.
    2. Salvador Barberà & Geoffroy de Clippel & Alejandro Neme & Kareen Rozen, 2022. "Order-k rationality," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 73(4), pages 1135-1153, June.
    3. Yukinori Iwata, 2018. "Salience and limited attention," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(1), pages 123-146, January.
    4. T. Hayashi & R. Jain & V. Korpela & M. Lombardi, 2023. "Behavioral strong implementation," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(4), pages 1257-1287, November.
    5. Demirkan, Yusufcan & Kimya, Mert, 2020. "Hazard rate, stochastic choice and consideration sets," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 142-150.
    6. Leo Katz & Alvaro Sandroni, 2020. "Limits on power and rationality," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(2), pages 507-521, March.
    7. Ian Chadd & Emel Filiz-Ozbay & Erkut Y. Ozbay, 2021. "The relevance of irrelevant information," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(3), pages 985-1018, September.
    8. Manzini, Paola & Mariotti, Marco & Tyson, Christopher J., 2016. "Partial knowledge restrictions on the two-stage threshold model of choice," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 41-47.
    9. Horan, Sean, 2016. "A simple model of two-stage choice," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 372-406.
    10. Christopher Tyson, 2015. "Satisficing behavior with a secondary criterion," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(3), pages 639-661, March.
    11. Alfio Giarlotta & Angelo Petralia & Stephen Watson, 2022. "On the number of non-isomorphic choices on four elements," Papers 2206.06840, arXiv.org.
    12. Yuta Inoue, 2020. "Growing Consideration," Working Papers 2003, Waseda University, Faculty of Political Science and Economics.
    13. Manzini, Paola & Mariotti, Marco & Tyson, Christopher J., 2016. "Partial knowledge restrictions on the two-stage threshold model of choice," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 41-47.
    14. Alfio Giarlotta & Angelo Petralia & Stephen Watson, 2022. "Semantics meets attractiveness: Choice by salience," Papers 2204.08798, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    15. Yuta Inoue & Koji Shirai, 2018. "Limited consideration and limited data: revealed preference tests and observable restrictions," Discussion Paper Series 176, School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University, revised Mar 2018.
    16. de Clippel, Geoffroy & Rozen, Kareen, 2021. "Bounded rationality and limited datasets," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 16(2), May.
    17. David M. Ramsey, 2020. "A Game Theoretic Model of Choosing a Valuable Good via a Short List Heuristic," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-20, February.
    18. Guy Barokas & Burak Ünveren, 2022. "Impressionable Rational Choice: Revealed-Preference Theory with Framing Effects," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(23), pages 1-19, November.
    19. Apesteguia, Jose & Ballester, Miguel A., 2013. "Choice by sequential procedures," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 90-99.
    20. Giarlotta, Alfio & Petralia, Angelo & Watson, Stephen, 2022. "Bounded rationality is rare," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ecological rationality;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ash:wpaper:07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ashoka University (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.ashoka.edu.in .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.