Ecologically rational decision making

How do we make inferences about a world full of uncertainty and given the mind’s natural bounds in computational abilities? I present a perspective according to which the decision maker is equipped with a repertoire of strategies, containing both simple heuristics and more complex strategies that are adaptive under different ecological and cognitive conditions. I will sketch methodological approaches for studying this “adaptive toolbox” and give an overview of empirical investigations of it. The results suggest that strategy selection in human decision making exploits and is adaptive to both the statistical structure of the environment (e.g., redundancy between cues) and internal factors of the decision maker (e.g., cognitive abilities, knowledge). Further, the use of simple heuristics often seems to occur strategically and efficiently, implementing bounded and ecological rationality.

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