Have trouble making decisions? Me too. Economic theory on decision making predicts that individuals should make "rational" decisions. According to rational choice theory, decisions should be transitive, if you prefer A to B and B to C, you should not prefer C to A. Also, choices should be made independent of irrelevant alternatives.
Think of all the processing power each decision would take if we always made these rational decisions. The theory assumes that individuals have all information about all of their options, and can give each option an overall "value" based on their many attributes. Whoo! Not surprisingly, decision makers violate these assumptions of rational decision making all of the time, but maybe that's not such a bad thing...
For your viewing pleasure, a few of the many ways that individuals violate ration decision making.
