From “Rational Agent” to “Bounded Rationality”: A Qualitative Study of Decision-Making Biases in Exercise Behavior Among Post-PCI Patients with Coronary Heart Disease
Tiantian Xia, Hongyuan Li, Lei Liu, Runyang Jin, Yunqiao Xie, Guangying Zhang, Yutong Han, Haiyang Xing, Yingjie Wang, Jiayu Wang · 2026
Read From “Rational Agent” to “Bounded Rationality”: A Qualitative Study of Decision-Making Biases in Exercise Behavior Among Post-PCI Patients with Coronary Heart Disease by Tiantian Xia, Hongyuan Li, Lei Liu, Runyang Jin, Yunqiao Xie, Guangying Zhang, Yutong Han, Haiyang Xing, Yingjie Wang, Jiayu Wang (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13546058.txt.
Description
Tiantian Xia and nine co-authors published this qualitative study in 2026. It explores why heart patients who have received a stent so often skip the exercise that would protect them. The lens is bounded rationality: people decide with biases, not as the perfectly calculating agents of textbook theory.
Twenty patients in hospital after their procedure were interviewed in depth, and the transcripts were coded for bias patterns. Three families emerged. Information biases covered clinging to fixed beliefs and over-trusting authority. Risk biases included judging exercise danger by one vivid example and generalizing it to all activity. Self-regulation biases included treating daily chores as a substitute for structured training. Patients chose whatever felt immediately safe or easy, guided by bodily sensations and neighbors' stories. The authors say cardiac rehabilitation should be designed around these biases, not against an imaginary rational patient.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Tiantian Xia, Hongyuan Li, Lei Liu, Runyang Jin, Yunqiao Xie, Guangying Zhang, Yutong Han, Haiyang Xing, Yingjie Wang, Jiayu Wang |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 52 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |