Reassessment in Psychology: The Interbehavioral Alternative

Abstract

The book is based on the Harry Camp Memorial Lectures given by Simon at Stanford University in 1982. We read in the preface that Three topics, especially, were the objects of my inquiry: the relation of reason to intuition and emotion, the analogy between rational adaptation and evolution, and the implications for bounded rationality for the operation of social and political institutions. In chapter 1 (Alternative Visions of Rationality), Simon presents three views of rationality: the subjective expected utility theory (which he criticizes), the behavioral model, and the intuitive model. He favors the behavioral model, based as it is on the actual situation and limited human computational powers. The intuitive theory, which he considers to be really a part of the behavioral theory, emphasizes recognition based on stored skills, and emotion. A fourth theory is considered in chapter 2 (Rationality and Teleology), viz., rationality as evolutionary adaptation. After covering a wide variety of topics, he concludes that evolutionary theory is most similar to the behavioral model of rationality. Both involve searching large spaces. Both are myopic in that whatever optimization they do achieve is only local, not final. Survival of the fitter (at the moment), not survival of the fittest (unspecifiable even by evolution), is all we can know. Chapter 3 (Rational Processes in Social Affairs) concludes that we might as well assume that, because of evolution, people will act from selfinterest. So we must . . create a social environment in which self-interest