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 reasons. 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 abi ...

or not. This issue is a topic in the study of cognition and is important in fields such as

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

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 bas ...

. Many studies in experimental psychology have shown that humans often

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

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 The St. Petersburg paradox or St. Petersburg lottery is a paradox involving the game of flipping a coin where the expected payoff of the theoretical lottery game approaches infinity but nevertheless seems to be worth only a very small amount to t ...

. This is a lottery which is constructed so that the expected value 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 Max ...

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

Keith Stanovich Keith E. Stanovich is a Canadian 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. His research areas are the psych ...

characterizes this as a Panglossian position in the debate—that humans are fundamentally rational and any variance between the

normative Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. 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 in ...

position and empirical outcomes may be explained by such adjustments.

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

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