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Commitment problems in the theory of rational choice.

The self-interest variant of the rational choice model favored by economists and many other social scientists paints an unflattering portrait of human nature. The model concedes, for example, that homo economicus might volunteer in a United Way campaign in order to reap the benefits of an expanded network of business or social contacts, but insists that he would never make anonymous donations to charity. The model acknowledges that homo economicus might tip in a local restaurant to ensure good service on his next visit, but predicts that he would not tip when dining alone in a restaurant far from home. The model also concedes that homo economicus might go to the polls in a local ward election, in which a single vote might be decisive, but predicts universal abstention in presidential elections. The self-interest model is simple and elegant. Unfortunately, it also predicts incorrectly much of the time. Charitable donations, for example, typically exceed $200 billion a year in the United States.1 Tipping rates are essentially the same in local restaurants as in those patronized mainly by out-of-town diners.2 And every four years, tens of millions of people vote in presidential elections. The most widely employed alternative to the self-interest model is the present-aim model,3 which holds that people are efficient in the pursuit of whatever objectives they happen to hold at the moment of action. The obvious appeal of the present-aim model is that it enables us to accommodate the plurality of goals that many people actually seem to hold, thus permitting us to account for behaviors that are anomalous within the self-interest framework. Someone donates anonymously to charity not because she hopes to receive indirect material benefits, but because she gets a warm glow from helping others in need. Someone tips in a restaurant away from home not to ensure good service on his next visit, but because he feels sympathy for the waiter's interests. Someone votes in a presidential election not because his vote might tip the balance, but because he feels it his civic duty to do so. And so on. But the present-aim model's flexibility also turns out to be its biggest liability. The problem is that virtually any bizarre behavior can be "explained" after the fact simply by assuming that the individual had a sufficiently strong taste for it. I call this the "crankcase oil problem": If someone drinks a gallon of used crankcase oil from his car, then writhes in agony and dies, a present-aim theorist has a ready explanation-the man must have really liked crankcase oil. Economists thus have sound reasons for their methodological skepticism about the present-aim model. As they correctly point out, a model that can explain virtually everything is not really a scientific model at all. We are confronted, then, with a choice between two flawed alternatives. The self-interest standard of rationality generates refutable predictions about behavior, but these predictions often turn out to be flatly incorrect. The present-aim standard accommodates a much broader range of observed behavior, but remains vulnerable to the charge of excessive flexibility. In this Essay I propose a third standard, which I call adaptive rationality. As I will argue, this standard is significantly more flexible than the self-interest standard, but in a way that sidesteps the present-aim standard's unconstrained flexibility. I will also argue that the adaptive rationality standard helps us think more clearly about a variety of issues in the domain of bioethics and the law. I. The Adaptive Rationality Standard4 Like both the self-interest and present-aim standards, the adaptive rationality standard assumes that people choose efficient means to achieve their ends. But unlike the other conceptions, which take goals as given, adaptive rationality regards goals as objects of choice themselves and, as such, subject to a similar efficiency requirement. …