We model a two-alternative election in which voters may acquire information about which is the best alternative for all voters. Voters differ in their cost of acquiring information. We show that as the number of voters increases, the fraction of voters who acquire information declines to zero. However, if the support of the cost distribution is not bounded away from zero, there is an equilibriu...

We evaluate the applicability of a decision making framework to the teenage contraceptive and sexual behavior of 1032 Philadelphia teenagers. We examine three reasons why the decision making perspective may not apply in this domain: (a) because the decision makers are teenagers, (b) because the decision concerns sexual behavior, and (c) because the costs of contraception and abstinence are imme...

Much research on judgment and decision making has focussed on the adequacy of classical rationality as a description of human reasoning. But more recently it has been argued that classical rationality should also be rejected even as normative standards for human reasoning. For example, Gigerenzer and Goldstein (1996) and Gigerenzer and Todd (1999a) argue that reasoning involves ‘‘fast and fruga...

It seems easy to accept that rationality involves many features that cannot be summarized in terms of some straightforward formula, such as binary consistency.  However, this recognition does not immediately lead to alternative characterizations that might be regarded as satisfactory, even though the inadequacies of the traditional assumptions of rational behavior standard used in economic theo...

BACKGROUND The high prevalence of risky irrational drug use behaviors mean that outpatients face high risks of drug resistance and even death. This study represents the first application of the Information-Motivation-Behavioral Skills (IMB) model on rational drug use behavior among second-level hospital outpatients from three prefecture-level cities in Anhui, China. Using the IMB model, our stu...

In this paper we study a number of problems in the context of rational representations of behaviors. In that context, a given proper real rational matrix can represent three behaviors. In the first place it can represent an input-output behavior. Secondly it can represent the kernel behavior of the rational ’differential operator’ associated with the rational matrix. Thirdly, it can represent t...