Models of bounded rationality describe how a judgement or decision is reached (that is, the heuristic processes or proximal mechanisms) rather than merely the outcome of the decision, and they describe the class of environments in which these heuristics will succeed or fail.

Gerd Gigerenzer and Reinhard Selten eds. Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox. MIT Press, Cambridge MA. (2001), p. 4