(Dis)Embodied Rationality and ‘Choice Posture’ : Addressing Behavioral Science's Mind-Body Problem

Applied behavioral science has made its mark identifying and correcting for cognitive biases and noise as causes of “irrational” decision-making that lead individuals to act against their self-interest. However, its reliance on surfacing behavioral insights largely through decontextualized research findings has also contributed to a tradition of crafting interventions built to address generalized or average behavioral tendencies, despite individuals’ diverse and embodied personal experiences. We argue that overcoming behavioral science’s version of the mind-body problem may require repositioning physical embodiment’s inextricable influences on perceptions and dispositions within decision-making contexts and situations, which contribute to distinct and individual choice postures that go beyond cultural nuances and resist the application of averaged insights. Further, recognizing the diversity of choice postures in applied behavioral science suggests recharacterizing binary notions of rationality versus irrationality in a more subjective form—as “or-rationality”—which better reflects the set of valid judgments and decision-making responses that result from by an individual’s accumulation of situated, embodied experiences over time. We conclude with speculations about how attention to choice posture can contribute to evolution of applied behavioral science, and “re-embody rationality” in the interest of addressing the field’s mind-body problem