VOLUME LXV | MAY 2022

Efficiently irrational: deciphering the riddle of human choice

Deciphering human choice behavior is like unraveling a perplexing riddle. Over the past five decades, cognitive and social scientists have grappled with the illogical decisions people consistently make. Are these choices evolutionary adaptations or merely a haphazard mix of competing mechanisms? This review offers a fresh perspective: human choice is efficiently irrational. Like finding the perfect balance between precision and efficiency, our decision-making reflects a finely tuned optimization process. By connecting dots across disciplines, researchers have unearthed a compelling insight. The apparent irrationalities in choice behavior stem from a deliberate trade-off—increasing the precision of our choices entails diminishing benefits. In other words, our decision-making mechanisms appear flawed on the surface, yet they represent an adept navigation of the costs and gains involved.

Li Wei Chen

Li Wei is a Chinese-Canadian neuroscientist in Vancouver, studying brain plasticity and lifelong learning. He contributes articles on harnessing neurotechnology to expand human capabilities, drawing from his experiences in cross-cultural innovation hubs.

For the past half-century, cognitive and social scientists have struggled with the irrationalities of human choice behavior; people consistently make choices that are logically inconsistent. Is human choice behavior evolutionarily adaptive or is it an inefficient patchwork of competing mechanisms? In this review, I present an interdisciplinary synthesis arguing for a novel interpretation: choice is efficiently irrational. Connecting findings across disciplines suggests that observed choice behavior reflects a precise optimization of the trade-off between the costs of increasing the precision of the choice mechanism and the declining benefits that come as precision increases.
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