The reasonable, the rational, and the good: On folk theories and flexible use of different concepts of good judgment.

Abstract

We explore folk theories of sound judgment across two cultures, with a particular focus on the distinction between rationality and reasonableness and how people apply these concepts in a range of social and non-social contexts. Four studies using English-speaking samples in North America (Studies 1-3; N=1,826) and a Mandarin-speaking sample in China (Study 4; N=659) examine spontaneous descriptions of characteristics of sound judgment, preferences for and perception of agents in different social contexts (varying in demands for rule-based vs. holistic approaches to decision-making), and categorization of non-social objects. People spontaneously considered both rationality and reasonableness as central features of sound judgment and yet assigned unique attributes to these standards when mapping concept networks. In experiments, people favored rational agents for contexts demanding analytic reasoning and reasonable agents for contexts demanding interpretive/holistic reasoning. Moreover, across cultures, people used rule-based categorization for rational judgment and overall-similarity categorization for reasonable judgment of non-social objects.

Conviction Narrative Theory: A theory of choice under radical uncertainty

“…This argument assumed that the definitions of theorists and of laypeople are equivalent, which is not necessarily so. Lay people define rationality as reductionist and seeking to serve a single value whereas they define reasonableness as holistic and seeking to balance incommensurable values (Meyers, Eibach, Hanxiao, & Grossmann, 2022). The lay definition of rationality does not require probabilities to be assigned, sidestepping the original rejection of rationality as a benchmark.…”

Deconstructing Wisdom through a Cultural Lens: Folk Understandings of Wisdom and its Ontology in the Philippines and Sri Lanka

“…On the other hand, more recent evidence with larger samples showed that Western Europeans also emphasize socio-emotional characteristics (Glück & Bluck, 2011). Moreover, work on folk understanding of reasonableness, a common synonym of wisdom, shows that in many non-Western countries such as China, or Pakistan, a reasonable person imbues both social and epistemic characteristics (Grossmann et al, 2020a;Grossmann & Eibach, 2021;Meyers et al, 2021). Overall, despite good reasons to expect cultural differences and lack of alignment between scientific and folk views of wisdom, empirical evidence on the salience of epistemic versus social characteristics for wisdom in non-Western societies remains inconclusive.…”

Narratives need not end well; nor say it all

“…This argument assumed that the definitions of theorists and of laypeople are equivalent, which is not necessarily so. Lay people define rationality as reductionist and seeking to serve a single value whereas they define reasonableness as holistic and seeking to balance incommensurable values (Meyers, Eibach, Hanxiao, & Grossmann, 2022). The lay definition of rationality does not require probabilities to be assigned, sidestepping the original rejection of rationality as a benchmark.…”