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Adaptive Rationality, Biases, and the Heterogeneity Hypothesis

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Abstract

Adaptive rationality (AR) theorists question the manner in which psychologists have typically assessed rational behavior and cognition. According to them, human rationality is adaptive, and the biases reported in the psychological literature are best seen as the result of using normative standards that are too narrow. As it turns out, their challenge is also quite controversial, and several aspects of it have been called into question. Yet, whilst it is often suggested that the lack of cogency comes about due to the implausibility of the alternative normative framework, in this paper I articulate a different strategy to resist the revolutionary rhetoric of AR. As I argue here, even if we accept the normative framework of AR, the challenge from AR is less damaging than usually accepted. In particular, I challenge the claim that biases reported in the literature should be conceived of as violations of axiomatic rationality. I argue that the category of bias refers instead to a range of heterogeneous phenomena and that, since several important families of biases are not just violations of axiomatic rationality, these are not vulnerable to the AR challenge. In fact, I also show that the families I consider here look like plausible cases of irrational behavior from the perspective of AR, and that the outcome of my analysis does not sit well with AR theorists’ claim that people are generally successful at achieving prudential and epistemic goals.

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Notes

  1. I am borrowing this label from Machery’s (2009) work on concepts.

  2. I wish to thank an anonymous reviewer for prompting me to clarify that other authors have suggested that biases are heterogeneous (e.g., Arkes 1991; Stanovich 2011). While they argue for this claim by pointing to the different cognitive processes involved in different types of biased reasoning, I focus on the evaluative standards against which such biases have been assessed.

  3. For instance, Todd and Gigerenzer claim that “most experimental research programs aimed at demonstrating the rationality or irrationality of humans and animals have used the abstract coherence criteria” (2000, 737), where the latter refer to the laws of logic and probability theory. Moreover, Gigerenzer and Selten write that “since the 1970s, researchers have documented discrepancies between a “norm” (e.g., a law of probability or logic) and human judgment. […] The blame was put on the human mind rather than on the norm. The discrepancies were labeled “fallacies,” such as the base-rate fallacy and the conjunction fallacy, and attributed to humans’ “bounded rationality,” in the sense of limitations on rationality” (2001, 5).

  4. While Stein refers to the “standard picture of rationality” (1996, 4), Chase et al. (1998) use the expression “classical rationality”. Moreover, Evans and Over (1996) characterize this normative perspective as “impersonal rationality”, Chater and Oaksford (2000, 99) as “formal rationality” and Kacelnik as “axiomatic rationality” (2006).

  5. I wish to thank an anonymous reviewer for prompting me to clarify this point.

  6. However, as an anonymous reviewer for this journal has pointed out, an objector might argue that the arguments that I am offering in this paper do not scathe the perspective of AR when the latter is interpreted in evolutionary terms.

  7. In light of these considerations, these scholars have also established links between reliabilism in epistemology and the AR project. For instance, Samuels, Stich and Bishop write that “Gigerenzer’s accuracy‐based criterion for epistemic evaluation bears an intimate relationship to the reliabilist tradition in epistemology” (2001, 255). But see also Rysiew (2008, 1165).

  8. For instance, Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier write that in the social domain goals “go beyond accuracy, frugality, and making fast decisions. They include transparency, group loyalty, and accountability” (2011, 471).

  9. It is worth noting, however, that commentators such as Samuels, Stich and Bishop have failed to highlight that AR theorists reject rule-based rationality as a valid normative perspective. According to them, advocates of the heuristics and biases project as well as AR theorists “typically presuppose what Edward Stein has called the “Standard Picture” of rationality” (2002, 253).

  10. It should be noted, however, that AR theorists have also offered other considerations to replace rule-based rationality. For instance, Hertwig and Volz (2013) attacked rule-based rationality by pointing to a growing body of studies suggesting that neurological and mental abnormalities foster conformity to norms of rationality.

  11. For other interesting results see also Burns (2004) and Lenton et al. (2013).

  12. Also Weinberg et al. (2001) criticize this approach to the justification of normative principles of reasoning, although their focus in the paper is mainly on work in analytic epistemology. Specifically, they take issue with what they dub “intuition driven romanticism”, viz. the attempt to derive normative claims from epistemic intuitions. In particular, they claim that “perhaps the most familiar examples of intuition-driven romanticism are various versions of the reflective equilibrium strategy” (433) and explicitly refer to Cohen’s (1981) influential paper.

  13. The concept of bias is often used in a wide set of generalizations and treated as a unitary one (e.g., Hilbert 2012). Yet, here I am highlighting that biases do not seem to possess such unity and should not be treated as instantiations of a natural kind. I wish to thank an anonymous referee for prompting me to clarify this point.

  14. It is worth noting, however, that the extent to which people are unaware of these attitudes is controversial (e.g., Hahn et al. 2014). I wish to thank an anonymous referee for drawing my attention to this point.

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Acknowledgments

I am sincerely grateful to Michela Massimi, Till Vierkant, Matteo Colombo and Armin Schulz for their constructive and helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. A special thank you goes to Florian Cova and two anonymous reviewers for their detailed feedback. This research was supported by a Studentship awarded by the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences (PPLS) of the University of Edinburgh and by a Jacobsen Fellowship awarded by the Royal Institute of Philosophy. The usual disclaimers about any error or mistake in the paper apply.

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    Andrea Polonioli

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Polonioli, A. Adaptive Rationality, Biases, and the Heterogeneity Hypothesis. Rev.Phil.Psych. 7, 787–803 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-015-0281-0

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