Abstract
While theories of rationality and decision making typically adopt either a single-powertool perspective or a bag-of-tricks mentality, the research program of ecological rationality bridges these with a theoretically-driven account of when different heuristic decision mechanisms will work well. Here we described two ways to study how heuristics match their ecological setting: The bottom-up approach starts with psychologically plausible building blocks that are combined to create simple heuristics that fit specific environments. The top-down approach starts from the statistical problem facing the organism and a set of principles, such as the bias– variance tradeoff, that can explain when and why heuristics work in uncertain environments, and then shows how effective heuristics can be built by biasing and simplifying more complex models. We conclude with challenges these approaches face in developing a psychologically realistic perspective on human rationality.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, J. R. (1990). The adaptive character of thought. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Barrett, H. C., & Kurzban, R. (2006). Modularity in cognition: Framing the debate. Psychological Review, 113(3), 628–647.
Bennis, W. M., Katsikopoulos, K. V., Goldstein, D. G., Dieckmann, A., & Berg, N. (2012). Designed to fit minds: Institutions and ecological rationality. In P. M. Todd, G. Gigerenzer, & The ABC Research Group, Ecological rationality: Intelligence in the world (pp. 409–427). New York: Oxford University Press.
Berlin, I. (1953). The Hedgehog and the Fox: An essay on Tolstoy’s view of history. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Borges, B., Goldstein, D. G., Ortmann, A., & Gigerenzer, G. (1999). Can ignorance beat the stock market? In G. Gigerenzer, P. M. Todd, & The ABC Research Group, Simple heuristics that make us smart (pp. 59–72). New York: Oxford University Press.
Boyd, M. (2001). On ignorance, intuition, and investing: A bear market test of the recognition heuristic. Journal of Psychology and Financial Markets, 2, 150–156.
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1985). Culture and evolutionary processes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (2005). The origin and evolution of cultures. New York: Oxford University Press.
Breiman, L. (2001). Statistical modeling: The two cultures. Statistical Science, 16, 199–231.
Brighton, H., & Gigerenzer, G. (2012a). How heuristics handle uncertainty. In P. M. Todd, G. Gigerenzer, & The ABC Research Group, Ecological rationality: Intelligence in the world (pp. 33–60). New York: Oxford University Press.
Brighton, H., & Gigerenzer, G. (2012b). Are rational actor models “rational” outside small worlds? In S. Okasha & K. Binmore (Eds.), Evolution and rationality: Decisions, co-operation and strategic behaviour (pp. 84–109). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brighton, H. J., & Olsson, H. (2009). Identifying the optimal response is not a necessary step toward explaining function. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32, 85–86.
Bröder, A. (2012). The quest for take-the-best: Insights and outlooks from experimental research. In P. M. Todd, G. Gigerenzer, & The ABC Research Group, Ecological rationality: Intelligence in the world (pp. 216–240). New York: Oxford University Press.
Buss, D. M. (2011). Evolutionary psychology: The new science of the mind (4th ed.). Boston: Pearson.
Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1994). Origins of domain specificity: The evolution of functional organization. In L. A. Hirschfeld & S. A. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture (pp. 85–116). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Czerlinski, J., Gigerenzer, G., & Goldstein, D. G. (1999). How good are simple heuristics? In G. Gigerenzer, P. M. Todd, & The ABC Research Group, Simple heuristics that make us smart (pp. 97–118). New York: Oxford University Press.
Davey, G. (1989). Ecological learning theory. Florence, KY: Taylor & Frances/Routledge.
DeMiguel, V., Garlappi, L., & Uppal, R. (2009). Optimal versus naive diversification: How inefficient is the 1/N portfolio strategy? Review of Financial Studies, 22, 1915–1953.
Dieckmann, A., & Rieskamp, J. (2007). The influence of information redundancy on probabilistic inferences. Memory & Cognition, 35, 1801–1813.
Fasolo, B., McClelland, G. H., & Todd, P. M. (2007). Escaping the tyranny of choice: When fewer attributes make choice easier. Marketing Theory, 7(1), 13–26.
Geisser, S. (1993). Predictive inference: An introduction. New York: Chapman and Hall.
Geman, S., Bienenstock, E., & Doursat, R. (1992). Neural networks and the bias/variance dilemma. Neural Computation, 4, 1–58.
Gigerenzer, G. (2008). Rationality for mortals: How people cope with uncertainty. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gigerenzer, G., & Brighton, H. (2009). Homo heuristicus: Why biased minds make better inferences. Topics in Cognitive Science, 1, 107–143.
Gigerenzer, G., Dieckmann, A., & Gaissmaier, W. (2012). Efficient cognition through limited search. In P. M. Todd, G. Gigerenzer, & The ABC Research Group, Ecological rationality: Intelligence in the world (pp. 241–274). New York: Oxford University Press.
Gigerenzer, G., & Goldstein, D. G. (1996). Reasoning the fast and frugal way: Models of bounded rationality. Psychological Review, 103, 650–669.
Gigerenzer, G., & Goldstein, D. G. (1999). Betting on one good reason: The take the best heuristic. In G. Gigerenzer, P. M. Todd, & The ABC Research Group, Simple heuristics that make us smart (pp. 75–95). New York: Oxford University Press.
Gigerenzer, G., & Selten, R. (Eds.). (2001). Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gigerenzer, G., & Todd, P. M. (1999). Fast and frugal heuristics: The adaptive toolbox. In G. Gigerenzer, P. M. Todd, & The ABC Research Group, Simple heuristics that make us smart (pp. 3–34). New York: Oxford University Press.
Gigerenzer, G., & Todd, P. M. (2012). Ecological rationality: The normative study of heuristics. In P. M. Todd, G. Gigerenzer, & The ABC Research Group, Ecological rationality: Intelligence in the world (pp. 487–497). New York: Oxford University Press.
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M., & The ABC Research Group. (1999). Simple heuristics that make us smart. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gilboa, I., Postlewaite, A., & Schmeidler, D. (2012). Rationality of belief or: Why Savage's axioms are neither necessary nor sufficient for rationality. Synthese, 187, 11–31.
Goldstein, D. G., & Gigerenzer, G. (2002). Models of ecological rationality: The recognition heuristic. Psychological Review, 109, 75–90.
Hammerstein, P., & Stevens, J. R. (Eds.). (2012). Evolution and the mechanisms of decision making. Strüngmann Forum Reports. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hertwig, R., Hoffrage, U., & The ABC Research Group. (2013). Simple heuristics in a social world. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hogarth, R. M. (2012). When simple is hard to accept. In P. M. Todd, G. Gigerenzer, & The ABC Research Group, Ecological rationality: Intelligence in the world (pp. 61–79). New York: Oxford University Press.
Hogarth, R. M., & Karelaia, N. (2006). “Take-the-best” and other simple strategies: Why and when the work “well” with binary cues. Theory and Decision, 61, 205–249.
Hogarth, R. M., & Karelaia, N. (2007). Heuristic and linear models of judgment: Matching rules and environments. Psychological Review, 114, 733–758.
Hutchinson, J., Wilke, A., & Todd, P. M. (2008). Patch leaving in humans: Can a generalist adapt its rules to dispersal of items across patches? Animal Behaviour, 75(4), 1331–1349.
Hutchinson, J. M. C., Fanselow, C., & Todd, P. M. (2012). Car parking as a game between simple heuristics. In P. M. Todd, G. Gigerenzer, & The ABC Research Group, Ecological rationality: Intelligence in the world (pp. 454–484). New York: Oxford University Press.
Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (Eds.). (1982). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Katsikopoulos, K. V. (2011). Psychological heuristics for making decisions: Definition, performance, and the emerging theory and practice. Decision Analysis, 8, 10–29.
Katsikopoulos, K. V., & Martignon, L. (2006). Naive heuristics for paired comparisons: Some results on their relative accuracy. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 50, 488–494.
Kenrick, D. T., Griskevicius, V., Sundie, J. M., Li, N. P., Li, Y. J., & Neuberg, S. L. (2009). Deep rationality: The evolutionary economics of decision-making. Social Cognition, 27, 764–785.
Kurzenhäuser, S., & Hoffrage, U. (2012). Designing risk communication in health. In P. M. Todd, G. Gigerenzer, & The ABC Research Group, Ecological rationality: Intelligence in the world (pp. 428–453). New York: Oxford University Press.
Loewenstein, G., Vohs, K. D., & Baumeister, R. F. (2007). Introduction: The hedgefox. In K. D. Vohs, R. F. Baumeister, & G. Loewenstein (Eds.), Do emotions help or hurt decision making? A Hedgefoxian perspective (pp. 3–9). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Marewski, J. N., & Schooler, L. J. (2011). Cognitive Niches: An ecological model of strategy selection. Psychological Review, 118, 393–437.
Martignon, L., & Hoffrage, U. (1999). Why does one reason decision making work? In G. Gigerenzer, P. M. Todd, & The ABC Research Group, Simple heuristics that make us smart (pp. 119–140). New York: Oxford University Press.
McKenzie, C. R. M., & Chase, V. M. (2012). Why rare things are precious: How rarity benefits inference. In P. M. Todd, G. Gigerenzer, & The ABC Research Group, Ecological rationality: Intelligence in the world (pp. 309–334). New York: Oxford University Press.
Miller, G. F. (2000). The mating mind: How sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature. New York: Doubleday.
Pachur, T., Todd, P. M., Gigerenzer, G., Schooler, L. J., & Goldstein, D. G. (2012). When is the recognition heuristic an adaptive tool? In P. M. Todd, G. Gigerenzer, & The ABC Research Group, Ecological rationality: Intelligence in the world (pp. 113–143). New York: Oxford University Press.
Piattelli-Palmarini, M. (1996). Inevitable illusions: How mistakes of reason rule our minds. New York: Wiley.
Rieskamp, J., & Otto, P. E. (2006). SSL: A theory of how people learn to select strategies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 135, 207–236.
Rissanen, J. (2007). Information and complexity in statistical modeling. New York: Springer.
Schooler, L. J., & Hertwig, R. (2005). How forgetting aids heuristic inference. Psychological Review, 112, 610–628.
Shmueli, G. (2010). To explain or to predict? Statistical Science, 25(3), 289–310.
Silver, N. (2012). The signal and the noise: Why so many predictions fail—But some don’t. New York: Penguin Press.
Simon, H. A. (1981). The sciences of the artificial (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Simon, H. A. (1990). Invariants of human behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 41, 1–19.
Şimşek, Ö. (2013). Linear decision rule as aspiration for simple decision heuristics. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 26, 2904–2912.
Tetlock, P. E. (2006). Expert political judgment: How good is it? How can we know?. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Todd, P. M. (2001). Fast and frugal heuristics for environmentally bounded minds. In G. Gigerenzer & R. Selten (Eds.), Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox (pp. 51–70). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Todd, P. M., & Gigerenzer, G. (2007). Environments that make us smart: Ecological rationality. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(3), 167–171.
Todd, P. M., & Gigerenzer, G. (2012). What is ecological rationality? In P. M. Todd, G. Gigerenzer, & The ABC Research Group, Ecological rationality: Intelligence in the world (pp. 3–30). New York: Oxford University Press.
Todd, P. M., Gigerenzer, G., & The ABC Research Group. (2012a). Ecological rationality: Intelligence in the world. New York: Oxford University Press.
Todd, P. M., Hills, T. T., & Robbins, T. W. (Eds.) (2012b). Cognitive search: Evolution, algorithms, and the brain. Strüngmann Forum Reports (vol. 9). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Tukey, J. W. (1962). The future of data analysis. The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 33, 1–67.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124–1131.
Wilke, A., & Todd, P. M. (2012). Evolutionary foundations of decision making. In M. K. Dhami, A. Schlottmann, & M. Waldmann (Eds.), Origins of judgment and decision making (pp. 3–27). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Todd, P.M., Brighton, H. Building the Theory of Ecological Rationality. Minds & Machines 26, 9–30 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-015-9371-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-015-9371-0