Rational choice model
sociological theory
Rational choice modeling refers to the use of decision theory (the theory of rational choice) as a set of guidelines to help understand economic and social behavior. The theory tries to approximate, predict, or mathematically model human behavior by analyzing the behavior of a rational actor facing the same costs and benefits.
Rational choice models are most closely associated with economics, where mathematical analysis of behavior is standard. However, they are widely used throughout the social sciences, and are commonly applied to cognitive science, criminology, political science, and sociology.
Overview
Rational choice theory assumes that individuals have discrete preferences among available choices and these preferences can be meaningfully ordered and weighed against each other so that an individual can decide on an action by balancing costs and benefits. These preferences are assumed to be complete and transitive. As outlined in instrumental rationality the individual may or may not include the path to the goal as a factor in the decision.
For the purposes of rational choice theory, a decision is rational if it is the logical outcome of the stated preferences. More specifically, behavior is only considered irrational if it is logically incoherent.
Early neoclassical economists writing about rational choice, including William Stanley Jevons, assumed that agents make consumption choices so as to maximize their happiness, or utility.
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