What Is Rationality, Whom Is It Ascribed To, and Why Does It Matter? Evidence From Internet Text for 66 Social Groups and 101 Occupations

Charles A. Dorison, Tessa E. S. Charlesworth

Psychological Science · 2025 · Volume 36 · Issue 9

Abstract

Scholars have extolled the virtues of rationality for centuries while also debating what rationality is and who is rational. Advancing these debates, we used word embeddings trained on 840 billion words of internet text—and validated with Prolific workers in the United States—to uncover the representation, group stereotypes, and occupational correlates of rationality at scale in naturalistic language. Four results emerged. First, rather than being synonymous with competence, representations of rationality included both an analytic/logic component and an interpersonal/trust component. Second, irrationality was not merely the opposite of rationality but contained its own unique subcomponents (volatility and unfairness). Third, rationality was consistently ascribed to high-power targets across 66 social groups. Last, rationality (especially its analytic component) was consistently associated with both earnings and wage gaps across 101 occupations. Associations with demographic representation were less consistent. Complementing normative approaches, these descriptive findings advance canonical debates about rationality, extending understanding of its components, stereotypes, and correlates.

Keywords

rationality, social groups, stereotyping, occupations, text analysis, word embeddings

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