The Varieties of Ecological Rationality in Decision Making and Their Challenge to Behavioral Economics

This paper explores important criticisms of behavioral economics that arise from models of ecological rationality. Ecological rationality has been developed by experimental economists, behavioral scientists, game theorists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and artificial intelligence theorists. These researchers all share the idea that behavior is always relevant to the environment and, thus, decision making is adapted to the particular environment’s constraints, either as a mechanism built in by evolution and/or as a skill acquired by learning.