Ecological rationality results from matching decision strategies to appropriate environmental structures, but how does the matching happen? We propose that people learn the statistical structure of the environment through observation and use this learned structure to guide ecologically rational behavior. We tested this hypothesis in the context of organic foods. In Study 1, we found that products from healthful food categories are more likely to be organic than products from nonhealthful food categories. In Study 2, we found that consumers' perceptions of the healthfulness and prevalence of organic products in many food categories are accurate. Finally, in Study 3, we found that people perceive organic products as more healthful than nonorganic products when the statistical structure justifies this inference. Our findings suggest that people believe organic foods are more healthful than nonorganic foods and use an organic-food cue to guide their behavior because organic foods are, on average, 30% more healthful.

We review research on eye movements in decision making and show that decision makers are subject to several visual biases such as the size, salience, position, emotional valence, predictability, and number of information elements. These biases lead decision makers to allocate their attention in ways that are arbitrary to their goals and sometimes bias their choices. We show that while some visual biases can be minimized, others are unavoidable. Consequently, it is impossible to present information in a completely neutral way. Any presentation format will bias decision makers to attend or ignore different information and thereby influence their choices.

The authors thank Thomas Scheidegger for help in collecting the data, Andreia Ferreira de Moura for discussing the results, and Susannah Goss and Helena Juliet Kahan for editing.We have no known conflicts of interest to disclose.