Variational rationality, variational principles and the existence of traps in a changing environment

This paper has two aspects. Mathematically, in the context of global optimization, it provides the existence of an optimum of a perturbed optimization problem that generalizes the celebrated Ekeland variational principle and equivalent formulations (Caristi, Takahashi), whenever the perturbations need not satisfy the triangle inequality. Behaviorally, it is a continuation of the recent variational rationality approach of stay (stop) and change (go) human dynamics. It gives sufficient conditions for the existence of traps in a changing environment. In this way it emphasizes even more the striking correspondence between variational analysis in mathematics and variational rationality in psychology and behavioral sciences.