Post by Admin on Jan 14, 2022 12:05:53 GMT
Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality
psyche.co/ideas/autistic-people-challenge-preconceived-ideas-about-rationality
A rational person, according to traditional economic models, is someone who considers all relevant information when reasoning, reaching a decision or making a judgment. In this sense, rationality allows for optimal decision-making. Yet humans are so frequently irrational that this aspect of our nature is taught in introductory psychology courses and used in marketing to turn a profit. The human brain is bounded by limited computing power. It is impossible for people to compute all the scenarios, weigh all the options, and integrate all the available information, especially given limited time to make decisions. So we tend to use cognitive shortcuts (also called heuristics) to filter incoming information. Human irrationality can be seen as partly a byproduct of these shortcuts and other filters – which can include past experience, context, emotions and intuitions.
How do these filters affect behaviour? To take one example, people are highly motivated to avoid loss, and they will reliably choose options that are framed in terms of gains more than they choose options framed in terms of losses, even if the outcomes of these choices are in fact the same. This is referred to as the ‘framing effect’. It might seem strange that people consistently fall prey to such a bias – but what about you? Would you be more inclined to agree to a surgery that you’re told has a ‘90 per cent chance of survival’, or one that’s described as having a ‘10 per cent chance of death’? The emotions engendered by a more negative framing can influence our decision-making. Similarly, people are often unduly attracted by the possibility of high gains, even if their actual likelihood is very low – as when someone plays the lottery. Cognitive biases can affect the sorts of decisions that people make regularly, from preferring an ‘80 per cent fat-free’ yogurt over one that contains ‘20 per cent fat’ to buying sensible insurance immediately after hearing about a disaster, only to cancel it later because one (wrongly) perceives the risk of disaster to have passed.
Such examples can make it seem as if such irrationality is an inevitable characteristic of human thinking. However, in the past decade or so, challenges to this idea have arisen from unexpected places. As we explained in a recent review paper, researchers have repeatedly found evidence that Autistic individuals are, on average, more consistent, less biased, and more rational than non-autistic individuals in a variety of contexts. (We use identity-first language, eg, ‘Autistic people’, as it is preferred by many people on the autism spectrum.) Specifically, many Autistic people seem to be less susceptible to cognitive biases, and therefore better able to make judgments and reach decisions in a more traditionally ‘rational’ manner.
Some studies have found, for instance, that Autistic participants are less influenced by the framing of a choice when deciding between options (the ‘framing effect’ described above). Other research suggests that Autistic individuals might have a reduced ‘optimism bias’. This is the bias wherein people tend to neglect information containing undesirable news (eg, an unexpectedly high probability of an adverse event happening), but adjust their outlook in response to desirable news (a lower-than-expected probability of such an event). The research indicates that Autistic individuals integrate information in a more objective and unbiased manner than is typical, representing a more veridical view of the world.
psyche.co/ideas/autistic-people-challenge-preconceived-ideas-about-rationality
A rational person, according to traditional economic models, is someone who considers all relevant information when reasoning, reaching a decision or making a judgment. In this sense, rationality allows for optimal decision-making. Yet humans are so frequently irrational that this aspect of our nature is taught in introductory psychology courses and used in marketing to turn a profit. The human brain is bounded by limited computing power. It is impossible for people to compute all the scenarios, weigh all the options, and integrate all the available information, especially given limited time to make decisions. So we tend to use cognitive shortcuts (also called heuristics) to filter incoming information. Human irrationality can be seen as partly a byproduct of these shortcuts and other filters – which can include past experience, context, emotions and intuitions.
How do these filters affect behaviour? To take one example, people are highly motivated to avoid loss, and they will reliably choose options that are framed in terms of gains more than they choose options framed in terms of losses, even if the outcomes of these choices are in fact the same. This is referred to as the ‘framing effect’. It might seem strange that people consistently fall prey to such a bias – but what about you? Would you be more inclined to agree to a surgery that you’re told has a ‘90 per cent chance of survival’, or one that’s described as having a ‘10 per cent chance of death’? The emotions engendered by a more negative framing can influence our decision-making. Similarly, people are often unduly attracted by the possibility of high gains, even if their actual likelihood is very low – as when someone plays the lottery. Cognitive biases can affect the sorts of decisions that people make regularly, from preferring an ‘80 per cent fat-free’ yogurt over one that contains ‘20 per cent fat’ to buying sensible insurance immediately after hearing about a disaster, only to cancel it later because one (wrongly) perceives the risk of disaster to have passed.
Such examples can make it seem as if such irrationality is an inevitable characteristic of human thinking. However, in the past decade or so, challenges to this idea have arisen from unexpected places. As we explained in a recent review paper, researchers have repeatedly found evidence that Autistic individuals are, on average, more consistent, less biased, and more rational than non-autistic individuals in a variety of contexts. (We use identity-first language, eg, ‘Autistic people’, as it is preferred by many people on the autism spectrum.) Specifically, many Autistic people seem to be less susceptible to cognitive biases, and therefore better able to make judgments and reach decisions in a more traditionally ‘rational’ manner.
Some studies have found, for instance, that Autistic participants are less influenced by the framing of a choice when deciding between options (the ‘framing effect’ described above). Other research suggests that Autistic individuals might have a reduced ‘optimism bias’. This is the bias wherein people tend to neglect information containing undesirable news (eg, an unexpectedly high probability of an adverse event happening), but adjust their outlook in response to desirable news (a lower-than-expected probability of such an event). The research indicates that Autistic individuals integrate information in a more objective and unbiased manner than is typical, representing a more veridical view of the world.