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What Is Rationality, Whom Is It Ascribed To, and Why Does It Matter? Evidence From Internet Text for 66 Social Groups
Charles A Dorison1, Tessa E S Charlesworth2
1Management Area, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University.
Psychological Science
|August 14, 2025
Summary
Rationality involves both logic and interpersonal skills, not just competence. It is associated with high-power groups and influences earnings across occupations.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Computational Linguistics
Background:
- Scholars have long debated the definition and characteristics of rationality.
- Understanding rationality's societal representation and correlates is crucial.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the representation, group stereotypes, and occupational correlates of rationality using large-scale naturalistic language data.
- To advance debates on rationality by providing descriptive, data-driven insights.
Main Methods:
- Utilized word embeddings trained on 840 billion words of internet text.
- Validated findings with human participants via Prolific.
- Analyzed rationality's associations across 66 social groups and 101 occupations.
Main Results:
- Rationality representations encompass both analytic/logic and interpersonal/trust components.
- Irrationality comprises unique subcomponents: volatility and unfairness.
- Rationality is consistently linked to high-power social groups and influences occupational earnings and wage gaps.
Conclusions:
- Descriptive findings on rationality's components, stereotypes, and correlates complement existing normative theories.
- Large-scale language analysis reveals nuanced societal perceptions of rationality.
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