How is (internal) irrationality possible?

Much unhappiness (...) has less to do with not getting what we want, and more to do with not wanting what we like.(Gilbert & Wilson, 2000)

Yes, we should make choices by multiplying probabilities and utilities, but how can we possibly do this if we can’t estimate those utilities beforehand? (Gilbert, 2006)

When we preview the future and prefeel its consequences, we are soliciting advice from our ancestors. This method is ingenious but imperfect. (Gilbert, et al. 2007)

Although we easily and intuitively assess each other’s behavior, speech, or character as irrational, providing a non-trivial account of irrationality might be tricky (something we philosophers like to deal with!) Let’s distinguish internal and external assessment of rationality: an internal (or subjective) assessment of rationality is an evaluation of the coherence of intentions, actions and plans. An external (or objective) assessment of rationality is an evaluation of the effectiveness of a rule or procedure. It assesses the optimality of a rule for achieving a certain goal. An action can be rational from the first perspective but not from the second one, and vice versa. Hence subjects’ poor performance in probabilistic reasoning can be internally rational without being externally rational: the Gambler’s fallacy is and will always be a fallacy: it is possible, however, that fallacious reasoners follow rational rules, maximizing an unorthodox utility function. Consequently, it is easy to understand how one can be externally irrational, but less easy to make sense of internal irrationality.

An interesting suggestion comes from hedonic psychology, and mostly Dan Gilbert’s research: irrationality is possible if agents fail to want things they like. Gilbert research focuses on Affective Forecasting, i.e., the forecasting of one's affect (emotional state) in the future (Gilbert, 2006; Wilson & Gilbert, 2003): anticipating the affective valence, intensity, duration and nature of specific emotions. Just like Tversky and Kahneman studied biases in probabilistic reasoning, he and his collaborator study biases in hedonistic reasoning.

In many cases, for instance, people do not like or dislike an event as much as they thought they would. They want things that do not promote welfare, and not want things that would promote their welfare. This what Gilbert call “miswanting”. We miswant, explain Gilbert, because of affective forecasting biases.

Take for instance impact biases: subject overestimate the length (durability bias) or intensity (intensity bias) of future emotive states (Gilbert et al., 1998):

“Research suggests that people routinely overestimate the emotional impact of negative events ranging from professional failures and romantic breakups to electoral losses, sports defeats, and medical setbacks”. (Gilbert et al., 2004).

They also underestimate the emotional impact of positive events such as winning a lottery (Brickman et al., 1978): newly rich lottery winners rated their happiness at this stage of their life as only 4.0, (on a 6-point scale, 0 to 5) which does not differ significantly from the rating of the control subjects. Also surprising to many people is the fact that paraplegics and quadriplegics rated their lives at 3.0, which is above the midpoint of the scale (2.5). In another study, Boyd et al., (1990) solicited the utility of life with a colostomy from several different groups: patients who had rectal cancer and who had been treated by radiation, patients who had rectal cancer and who had been treated by a colostomy, physicians who had experience treating patients with gastrointestinal malignancies, and two groups of healthy individuals. The patients with a colostomy and the physicians rated life with a colostomy significantly higher than did the other three groups. Another bias is the Empathy gap: humans fail to empathize or predict correctly how they will feel in the future, i.e. what kind of emotional state they will be in. Sometimes, we fail to take into account how much our psychological “immune system” will ameliorate reactions to negative events. People do not realize how they will rationalize negative outcomes once they occur (the Immune neglect). People also often mispredict regret (Gilbert et al., 2004b):

the top six biggest regrets in life center on (in descending order) education, career, romance, parenting, the self, and leisure. (…) people's biggest regrets are a reflection of where in life they see their largest opportunities; that is, where they see tangible prospects for change, growth, and renewal. (Roese & Summerville, 2005).

So a perfectly rational agent, at time t, would choose to do X at t+1 given what she expects her future valuation of X to be. As studies showed, however, we are bad predictors of our own future subjective appreciation. The person we are at t+1 may not totally agree with the person we were at t. So, in one sense, this gives a non-trivial meaning to internal irrationality: since our affective forecasting competence is biased, we may not always choose what we like or like what we choose. Hedonic psychology might have identified incoherence between intentions, actions and plans, an internal failure in our practical rationality.

Recommended reading:

• Gilbert, D. T., & Wilson, T. D. (2007). Prospection: Experiencing the Future. Science, 317(5843), 1351-1354.

References

• Berns, G. S., Chappelow, J., Cekic, M., Zink, C. F., Pagnoni, G., & Martin-Skurski, M. E. (2006). Neurobiological Substrates of Dread. Science, 312(5774), 754-758.
• Boyd, N. F., Sutherland, H. J., Heasman, K. Z., Tritchler, D. L., & Cummings, B. J. (1990). Whose Utilities for Decision Analysis? Med Decis Making, 10(1), 58-67.
• Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (1978). Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative? J Pers Soc Psychol, 36(8), 917-927.
• Gilbert, D. T. (2006). Stumbling on Happiness (1st ed.). New York: A.A. Knopf.
• Gilbert, D. T., & Ebert, J. E. J. (2002). Decisions and Revisions: The Affective Forecasting of Changeable Outcomes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(4), 503–514.
• Gilbert, D. T., Lieberman, M. D., Morewedge, C. K., & Wilson, T. D. (2004a). The Peculiar Longevity of Things Not So Bad. Psychological Science, 15(1), 14-19.
• Gilbert, D. T., Morewedge, C. K., Risen, J. L., & Wilson, T. D. (2004b). Looking Forward to Looking Backward. The Misprediction of Regret. Psychological Science, 15(5), 346-350.
• Gilbert, D. T., Pinel, E. C., Wilson, T. D., Blumberg, S. J., & Wheatley, T. P. (1998). Immune Neglect: A Source of Durability Bias in Affective Forecasting. J Pers Soc Psychol, 75(3), 617-638.
• Gilbert, D. T., & Wilson, T. D. (2000). Miswanting: Some Problems in the Forecasting of Future Affective States. Feeling and thinking: The role of affect in social cognition, 178–197.
• Kermer, D. A., Driver-Linn, E., Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2006). Loss Aversion Is an Affective Forecasting Error. Psychological Science, 17(8), 649-653.
• Loomes, G., & Sugden, R. (1982). Regret Theory: An Alternative Theory of Rational Choice under Uncertainty. The Economic Journal, 92(368), 805-824.
• Roese, N. J., & Summerville, A. (2005). What We Regret Most... And Why. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(9), 1273.
• Seidl, C. (2002). Preference Reversal. Journal of Economic Surveys, 16(5), 621-655.
• Slovic, P., Finucane, M., Peters, E., & MacGregor, D. G. (2002). Rational Actors or Rational Fools: Implications of the Affect Heuristic for Behavioral Economics. Journal of Socio-Economics, 31(4), 329-342.
• Srivastava, A., Locke, E. A., & Bartol, K. M. (2001). Money and Subjective Well-Being: It's Not the Money, It's the Motives. J Pers Soc Psychol, 80(6), 959-971.
• Thaler, A., & Tversky, R. H. (1990). Anomalies: Preference Reversals. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 4, 201-211.
• Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2003). Affective Forecasting. Advances in experimental social psychology, 35, 345-411.