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Irrational behavior can be useful when used tactically in certain conflict, game and escape situations. The moves of an irrational opponent are not (or only very limitedly) predictable. An irrational negotiator cannot be put under rational pressure. [55] An indirect tactic is the rational use of the irrationalism of third parties.
Rational irrationality is not doublethink and does not state that the individual deliberately chooses to believe something he or she knows to be false. Rather, the theory is that when the costs of having erroneous beliefs are low, people relax their intellectual standards and allow themselves to be more easily influenced by fallacious reasoning, cognitive biases, and emotional appeals.
Rational choice theory uses a much more narrow definition of rationality. At its most basic level, behavior is rational if it is reflective and consistent (across time and different choice situations). More specifically, behavior is only considered irrational if it is logically incoherent, i.e. self-contradictory.
Rationalization encourages irrational or unacceptable behavior, motives, or feelings and often involves ad hoc hypothesizing. This process ranges from fully conscious (e.g. to present an external defense against ridicule from others) to mostly unconscious (e.g. to create a block against internal feelings of guilt or shame).
In Models of Man, Simon argues that most people are only partly rational, and are irrational in the remaining part of their actions. In another work, he states "boundedly rational agents experience limits in formulating and solving complex problems and in processing (receiving, storing, retrieving, transmitting) information". [9]
The difference between the two is that actions are intentional behavior, i.e. they are performed for a purpose and guided by it. In this regard, intentional behavior like driving a car is either rational or irrational while non-intentional behavior like sneezing is outside the domain of rationality. [6] [63] [64]
[1] [2] The concept of irrationality is especially important in Albert Ellis's rational emotive behavior therapy, where it is characterized specifically as the tendency and leaning that humans have to act, emote and think in ways that are inflexible, unrealistic, absolutist and most importantly self-defeating and socially defeating and destructive.
As the study of argument is of clear importance to the reasons that we hold things to be true, logic is of essential importance to rationality. Arguments may be logical if they are "conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity", [1] while they are rational according to the broader requirement that they are based on reason and knowledge.