'Rational self interest' is a fairly widely known economic principle. Everyone acts in their own rational self interest, including infants, cats, and horseflies. Infants, cats, and horseflies are certainly not logicians, but when they want something, they will generally take the steps necessary to try to achieve it.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-macroeconomics/chapter/...
A great way to think about this is voting. If we were all acting logically, everyone would vote, because in theory, we'd all be better off. But because of the principle of rational self interest, many or most people don't vote because the cost of researching candidates and policies and going to the effort of voting is very often higher than the benefit (a 1 in 100,000,000 chance of influencing the outcome of the election)
