People view rationality and reasonablenessas distinct principles of judgment8 January 2020

Spontaneous ascriptions of reasonable vs. rationalpersons. (A) Common themes in descriptions of rationaland reasonable persons. (B) Themes differentiatingreasonable (in blue on top) from rational (in brown on thebottom); size of the word is mapped to its maximumdeviation across reasonable versus rational text corpora.Credit: Igor Grossmann

When it comes to making sound judgements, mostpeople understand and distinguish that beingrational is self-serving and being reasonable is fairand balanced, finds new research from theUniversity of Waterloo.

The study is the first systematic attempt to explorewhat people consider to be sound judgment andwhether they understand rationality andreasonableness along the lines advocated byexperts in economics, law, and other socialscientists.

"Our results show that laypeople grasp economists'view of rationality, yet they favour sociallypragmatic reasonableness as a separate standardof judgment," said Igor Grossmann, professor ofpsychology at Waterloo and lead author on thestudy.

To understand how the general public viewsrationality and reasonableness, Grossmann

collaborated with colleagues in Canada andPakistan to examine impressions of rational andreasonable persons and actions.

"The concept of rationality that we found lay peoplehave corresponds to economists' definition, whichemphasizes abstract logic and pursuit of self-interest," said Grossmann. "We also found peopletend to uphold a distinct standard ofreasonableness that corresponds to philosophicaltraditions encouraging context-specific balance ofself-interest with fairness."

General study synopsis in a long format. Credit: IgorGrossmann

The researchers analyzed the use of the terms"rational" and "reasonable" in web-based news, USSupreme Court Opinions, scripts of popular soapoperas, and Google books covering languagesspoken in 1/6 of the world today. They quantifiedcommon characteristics attributed to rational andreasonable persons.

Researchers also surveyed laypeople's commonstereotypes of rational and reasonable agents, andperformed 13 experiments contrasting cooperativeand self-serving behavior in economic games.

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Experiments involved participants in North Americaas well as urban and rural Pakistan.

"Rationality and reasonableness lead people todifferent conclusions about what constitutes soundjudgment in dilemmas that pit self-interest againstfairness," said Richard Eibach, professor ofpsychology at Waterloo and a co-author of thestudy. "People view rationality as absolute andpreference-maximizing, whereas they viewreasonableness as paying attention to particularsand fairness."

Results of the text-based analyses (news reports,SCOTUS Opinions, Soap Operas, Google Books), wideformat Credit: Igor Grossmann

Results of surveys about spontaneous impressions ofrational and reasonable persons, wide format. Credit:Igor Grossmann

Information about the Dictator Game and results ofeconomic games showing expectations for rational andreasonable agents in Dictator Games, wide format.Credit: Igor Grossmann

Personality, stereotypes, and behavioral attributes ofreasonable vs. rational persons. (A) Difference inattribution of personality characteristics to reasonableversus rational persons. (B) Difference in cardinalstereotype dimensions of agency and communionascribed to reasonable versus rational persons, alongwith ascription of selfishness. (C) Expectation ofmaximizing (alternative search; goal of choosing thebest) and satisficing behavior to reasonable versusrational agents. (A) to (C) show violin plots with densitydistribution of difference scores, 25% median, 75%quantiles, boxplots, estimated means, and bootstrapped95% confidence intervals. Scores above zero indicategreater attribution to reasonable persons. Credit: IgorGrossmann

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Expected contributions in a Dictator Game by rationaland reasonable persons among bank managers, streetmerchants, and rural barterers in Pakistan. Graphsrepresent violin plots with density distribution ofpercentage scores, 25% median, and 75% quantiles,boxplots, estimated means, and bootstrapped 95%confidence intervals. Credit: Igor Grossmann

Researchers also found that people use rationaland reasonable standards of judgment strategically,favouring a rational person to represent their side ineconomic and social disputes, but choosing areasonable person to represent the other side.

"These findings cast prior demonstrations ofpeople's irrationality in a new light," saysGrossmann. "People may choose to be irrationalwhen it violates their preferred standard ofreasonable, socially-conscious behavior."

"Folk standards of sound judgment: RationalityVersus Reasonableness" by Grossmann andEibach, along with collaborators Jacklyn Koyama(University of Toronto) and Qaisar B. Sahi(Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Scienceand Technology in Pakistan) was published in thejournal Science Advances.

More information: I. Grossmann el al., "Folkstandards of sound judgment: Rationality VersusReasonableness," Science Advances (2019). advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/1/eaaz0289

Provided by University of Waterloo

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APA citation: People view rationality and reasonableness as distinct principles of judgment (2020,January 8) retrieved 20 May 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2020-01-people-view-rationality-distinct-principles.html

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