Meliorating the suboptimal-choice argument

Abstract

In relatively simple choice tasks, some animals seem to behave irrationally by making suboptimal choices. Zentall (2019) suggests that these animals may choose according to a variety of heuristics that are adaptive in their natural environments but maladaptive in the contrived laboratory settings. We argue that Zentall's specific heuristics range from the reasonable and testable to the conceptually confused and even inconsistent. To be useful, heuristics must be clearly defined, delimited, and coordinated with known behavioral processes.