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Title:: Are Human Beings Rational?：A Debate in Psychology of Reasoningand Decision-making

Abstract:: Much psychological research in the last two decades has demonstrated that human responsesdeviate from the performance deemed normative according to various standard models of reasoning，judgmentand decision making（ e.g.，the basic axioms of logic，probability and utility theory） and show systematicalcognitive biases. There are different interpretations of the gap between the normative and the descriptivebehaviors，and conflicting viewpoints on whether these cognitive biases indicate systematic irrationalitiesin human cognition. The pessimists believe that the systematical cognitive biases mean normative defects inhuman thinking. The optimists，however，try to defend the assumption that human behavior and cognitionis largely rational by appealing to the arguments of divergent task construal made by the experimenter andparticipants，the wrong norm being applied by the experimenter and the weak external validity of experimentalstudies. The dual rationality theory distinguishes personal rationality and impersonal rationality，and attempts toresolve the contradiction between the views of the pessimists and the optimists.