What is it about?
The essay examines three classic experiments. Two are by Kahneman and Tversky, one by Dan Ariely. Unlike other commentators, I do not offer alternative explanations of the experiments results. I suggest that test subjects may well fail to accept the tests as they are specified. They may change the problems, not according to some alternative conception of rational choice, but in defiance of the constraints imposed. The upshot, I content, is that the experiments fail to establish that there are phenomena to be explained.
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Why is it important?
Though these classic experiments play a foundational role in behavioural economics, they also belong to social psychology, whose reputation for sound experimental procedure has recently taken a beating. If these experiments are unsound, what of the other tests that underlie the work they have inspired? Perhaps people do not deviate from conventional rationality as much as the experimenters would apparently like us to believe.
Perspectives
I don't believe you can conduct sound experimental work on rational choice without fairly extensive communication with the test subjects. Anyone who has taught classes on the subject will understand that there is seemingly no limit to the types of liberties that test subjects can take with what is put before them!
Michael Neumann
Trent University
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This page is a summary of: Testing Rationality, Dialogue, March 2018, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s0012217318000094.
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