Assuming rational actors simplifies theory to make it within reach of undergraduate students, so it is useful to get people started in the field. Lots of thing

Assuming rational actors simplifies theory to make it within reach of undergraduate students, so it is useful to get people started in the field. Lots of things are explained by rational choice, such as the actions of many corporations (that have research analysts collecting and refining data to make better decisions). I think a lot of irrational actions taken by humans is better explained by them having incomplete information. The contrived nature of these experiments occludes their structure to the participants. Using the viral disease/antidote example: If you presented each scenario to the students at the same time and then explained how they reduced to the exact same decision, then many students (but probably not all) would assign the same price to each scenario. Instead what these experiments do is say "make a decision," then they say "make a decision on this new complicated phrasing which makes you think that the situation has changed but only I realize that it is actually the same." No surprise there when the outcome is different.