Taylor and I will be discussing how the social sciences put paid to the notion of the rational actor this Sunday (24 November) during our meetup. Here are the couple of articles I will be talking about. The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice (wikipedia, pdf) by Tversky and Kahneman.  This work would earn Daniel Kahneman a shared Nobel Prize for Economics. Amos Tversky had passed away. It is about how people act differently in the same situation depend on how it is described to them. Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction by Palmer and Loftus 1974. (pdf, overview at simplypsychology). Elizabeth Loftus’s work over the years has shed light on unreliability of eyewitness testimony. If you really want to get into it, read Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk. (wikipedia) The short story?  We are rationalizing actors, not rational actors.  Big difference.