Abstract
In the last decades, the neoclassical theory of homo oeconomicus’s perfect rationality has been notoriously put into question by experimental researches which eventually induced a paradigm change in favor of a more descriptive approach of economic behavior, rejecting a traditional normative stance. These researches have offered a broad set of observations around the cogni- tive, affective and perceptive mechanisms of human reasoning and judgment, particularly in the domain of economic decision making.In this essay, we want to show how so-called “heuristics” of thought, mental models and scenarios that guide human decisions and that have been studied in the cognitive sciences are partly shaped by aesthetic processes like, for example, principles of “good form” in the construction of mental schemes, formal and perceptual salience in reasoning, intensity of imagined scenarios, emotional involvement of narrative schemes that guide thought processes and decision-making. In sum, this paradigmatic turn not only brings economic and aesthetic behavior closer to each other, but also reveals how aesthetic principles affect thought processes themselves.