Todd,P.M.

Understanding what constraints put bounds on human rationality will help us understand the nature of that rationality. Human decision making is unlikely to be adapted to fixed cognitive constraints, because evolution could shift such limitations were benefits sufficient. Instead, features of the external environment would have exerted strong adaptive pressures, particularly the need to minimize time by minimizing the search for information. In this chapter, I present evidence that human decisionmaking is adaptive in the face of time and information costs, through the use of fast and frugal decision heuristics. These heuristics can be shown analytically to perform nearly as well as slower and more information-greedy algorithms, and evidence that people use these simple strategies has been found in experiments, developmental theories, and analysis of how we restructure our own environments.

Todd, P. M. (2001). Fast and frugal heuristics for environmentally bounded minds. In G. Gigerenzer, & R. Selten (Eds.), Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox. Dahlem Workshop Report (pp. 51-70). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Publication year	2001
Document type:	In book
Publication status:	Published
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Keywords:	choicerationalityrules