For the past few decades, Raymond Boudon has revelled in uncovering the counterintuitive aspects of social thought and action, most recently by examining irregularities within the edifice of rational choice. This book is a collection of Boudon's essays revolving around his "cognitivist" or "judicatory" model of rationality, a generalization of the conventional rational choice model. The book builds on ideas presented in his earlier work, The Art of Self-Persuasion, extending its analysis of positive beliefs to that of values, which are defined here as explicitly held normative beliefs.