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[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.
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]
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).
There are also controversies over some of these biases as to whether they count as useless or irrational, or whether they result in useful attitudes or behavior. For example, when getting to know others, people tend to ask leading questions which seem biased towards confirming their assumptions about the person.
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. [52] An indirect tactic is the rational use of the irrationalism of third parties.
Another example is a trader who would make a moderate and risky decision to trade their stock due to time pressure and imperfect information of the market at that time. In organisational context, a CEO cannot make fully rational decisions in an ad-hoc situation because their cognition was overwhelmed by a lot of information in that tense situation.