Which statement about decision making under bounded rationality is accurate?

• A. Decision makers always optimize.
• B. Decision makers have unlimited data.
• C. They rarely consider alternatives.
• D. They satisfice due to information limits, cognitive limits, and time.

Answer: (D)

Under bounded rationality, decision makers aim for a satisfactory choice rather than a perfect one because information is incomplete, cognitive processing is limited, and time is scarce. This means people use simple rules or heuristics and stop searching once they find something good enough, rather than exhaustively evaluating every possible option to optimize. The idea comes from recognizing real-world constraints: we don’t have unlimited data or unlimited mental capacity, so a quick, good-enough decision often beats a meticulous, possibly never-ending search. While some alternatives are considered, the search is bounded, which is why satisficing is the accurate description of how decisions are made in practice.