Rational Choice

Praying for an Orange Couch

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After reading Youssef Cohen’s Radicals, Reformers, and Reactionaries for my summer course, I was reminded of what we mean when we assume rationality in rational choice models. We assume rationality in decision making, that individuals will attempt to maximize their utility given their preferences and the constraints that exist. There are a few important components … Read more

The Unbearable Lightness of Game Theory?

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OrgTheory.net has a great post today assessing the merits of game theory.  The author makes some excellent points.  In particular, he points out that some of the more interesting outcomes we see in the social sciences are off-equilibrium–inherently, then, these are the ones that we can’t explain with game theory.  Additionally, and more generally as a criticism of rational choice, individuals don’t necessarily make decisions that conform to what we typically think of as the rules that describe rational actors.

Check out the post at OrgTheory.net, and the preceding entry by the same blogger (Michael McBride) about game theory’s potentially misleading name, and meet me back here after the jump.

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A cup of coffee, a blow up doll, and some functionally unpleasant commuters

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Die hard rational choice social scientists are often puzzled when they see people making less than optimal decisions. For example, it is hard to explain why people choose to pay the cost of punishment and make themselves worse off just so that they can punish someone who acted unfair or against the rules. I came across an example of this in yesterday’s Washington Post when a reporter published a story about a little known short cut near the Dulles Airport. According to the reporter, drivers normally sit in traffic, moving slowly, on a toll road as they drove passed the airport, but they could avoid the traffic and save time and money by taking the public access road through the airport. The only problem is that the public access road is only meant for airport traffic. It is against the “rules” to drive on it unless you are utilizing the airport’s services or are have a passenger with you during rush hour. People have found creative ways around these rules, like buying a cup of coffee from the sole gas station in the airport or driving with a blow up doll in the passenger seat. However, these methods are not exactly seen as legitimate ways to get around the rules. The "right" thing to do is to stay on the toll road and not cut through unfairly through the airport road.

More after the jump….

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