DECISION MAKING AND LEARNING UNDER VARYING CONDITIONS OF REINFORCEMENT *

From the work of philosophers, mathematicians, economists, and psychologists, a theory of rational choice has emerged that considers the nature of rational behavior in human decision-making.’-’O According to this approach, when a person can specify a set of alternative outcomes such that for any strategy p , he knows the probability distribution of outcomes, that person is LLrational” if he chooses a strategy that will enable maximization of expected utility. Most decision-making theorists take “probability” to mean subjective probability, and “utility” to mean subjective value. Thus a strategy p , is admissible if there is no other strategy p , such that

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