The way traditional economics dealt with this was by adding expected utility theory: people don't just optimize for the expectation value of wealth, but the usefulness of wealth. Human Nature
This has led to the belief in "irrationality" and "biases" as a way to explain human behavior deviating from what economic models predict. However, many "biases" disappear when you realize that people intuitively understand periodicity. Human Nature Bias Ergodicity