Date: 2005.4.26 (Tues) 13:00-14:15
Place: General Research Building, Room 663
Speaker: Tomomi Kito
Title: Rationality of Human Decision Making
Keywords: Multi-Agent System, Co-Creation, Bounded Rationality, Decision Making

Affiliation: Research into Artifacts, Center for Engineering,
Department of Precision Engineering,
Graduate School of Engineering
Position: Graduate Student
Adviser: Kanji Ueda, Ueda Laboratory
Disciplines: Social Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Experimental Economics
Societies and Conferences: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, The Robotics Society of Japan, The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers

Bibliography: Tomomi Kito, Rationality of Human Decision Making, Human Science Integration Seminar Abstracts, No. 2, pp. 1, 2005.
(Please use this bibliography when you cite this abstract.)

Abstract:
This presentation overviewed studies on human decision-making from the view point of “rationality”.
In the field of economics, a perfectly-rational model has been posited classically as a decision-maker with the following embedded assumptions: (1) full knowledge of the problem – the agent is fully aware of the set of action alternatives; (2) clear preferences – the agent has a complete ordering over the entire set of alternatives; and (3) ability to optimize – the agent has unlimited ability to make whatever complicated calculations are necessary to discover optimal actions, and it never mistakes. Nevertheless, classical theories based on this model differ markedly from observed practices of actual humans. Therefore, bounded rationality has become a central theme as an alternative to perfect rationality in recent economic studies. These studies relax the assumptions applied to the agent models: agents are given limited knowledge of alternatives and their ordering, and limited ability to optimize. The representative theories or models that presuppose agents’ bounded rationality are: Satisfactory Standard, Prospect Theory, Heuristic models. Bounded rationality will also become essential as a characteristic of artificial agents in order to design flexible or adaptive artifactual multi-agent systems like systems including humans.

References: (Missing items are literatures in Japanese)
[1]Simon, H. A. (1955):”A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 69, 1955. Reprinted in Models of Man, social and rational, John Wiley and Sons, 1957.
[2]Simon, H. A. (1997a): “Administrative Behavior,” 4th ed., Free Press, 1997 (1st ed., 1947).
[3]Simon, H. A. (1997b): “Models of Bounded Rationality,” vol.3. Empirically Grounded Economic Reason, MIT Press, 1997.
[6]Kahneman, D., A. Tversky (1974): “Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases,” Science 185, pp.1124-1131.
[7] Kahneman, D., A. Tversky (1979): “Prospect theory: an Analysis of decision under risk,” Econometrica 47 (2), pp.263-291.
[8]Tversky, A., D. Kahneman (1982): ”Evidential impact of base rates,” in D. Kahneman, P. Slovic and A. Tversky ed. Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases, Cambridge University Press.
[9]Stuart J. Russell, Peter Norvig: “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach,” Printice Hall, 1995.