Why can humans be rational decision-makers?
Biases, heuristics, and other judgment altering factors. The rational actor assumption is so hard to give up, and many vehemently argue this idea to death. But does the evidence favor rationality? Let us consider that fact that to take in information is to perceive it first. In other words, to understand or contemplate information, we have to notice it. Just in this first step alone, humans err. “You may feel that you are looking at things in a completely unbiased way, but as will become clear, it is nearly impossible for people to avoid biases in perception. Instead, people selectively perceive what they expect and hope to see” (Scott Plous The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making, 1993 p.15). What Plous is referring to are motivated and unmotivated biases. At the first interception of information, humans apply what they want and expect to see. The field of social psychology has shown, over and over again, that humans ignore what they don’t expect or want to perceive. The placeb
