A heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows an individual to make a decision, pass judgment, or solve a problem quickly and with minimal mental effort. While heuristics can reduce the burden of decision-making and free up limited cognitive resources, they can also be costly when they lead individuals to miss critical information or act on unjust biases.
Contents
- Understanding Heuristics
- Different Heuristics
- Problems with Heuristics
What Is a Heuristic?
As humans move throughout the world, they must process large amounts of information and make many choices with limited amounts of time. When information is missing, or an immediate decision is necessary, heuristics act as “rules of thumb” that guide behavior down the most efficient pathway.
Heuristics are not unique to humans; animals use heuristics that, though less complex, also serve to simplify decision-making and reduce cognitive load.
Do heuristics make us more successful?
Generally, yes. Navigating day-to-day life requires everyone to make countless small decisions within a limited timeframe. Heuristics can help individuals save time and mental energy, freeing up cognitive resources for more complex planning and problem-solving endeavors.
Why do we use heuristics?
The human brain and all its processes—including heuristics—developed over millions of years of evolution. Since mental shortcuts save both cognitive energy and time, they likely provided an advantage to those who relied on them.
Are evolved heuristics useful in modern life?
Heuristics that were helpful to early humans may not be universally beneficial today. The familiarity heuristic, for example—in which the familiar is preferred over the unknown—could steer early humans toward foods or people that were safe, but may trigger anxiety or unfair biases in modern times.
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Different Kinds of Heuristics
The study of heuristics was developed by renowned psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Starting in the 1970s, Kahneman and Tversky identified several different kinds of heuristics, most notably the availability heuristic and the anchoring heuristic.
Since then, researchers have continued their work and identified many different kinds of heuristics, including:
Familiarity heuristic
Fundamental attribution error
Representativeness heuristic
Satisficing
What is the anchoring heuristic?
The anchoring heuristic, or anchoring bias, occurs when someone relies more heavily on the first piece of information learned when making a choice, even if it's not the most relevant. In such cases, anchoring is likely to steer individuals wrong.
What is the availability heuristic?
The availability heuristic describes the mental shortcut in which someone estimates whether something is likely to occur based on how readily examples come to mind. People tend to overestimate the probability of plane crashes, homicides, and shark attacks, for instance, because examples of such events are easily remembered.
What is the representativeness heuristic?
People who make use of the representativeness heuristic categorize objects (or other people) based on how similar they are to known entities—assuming someone described as "quiet" is more likely to be a librarian than a politician, for instance.
What is satisficing?
Satisficing is a decision-making strategy in which the first option that satisfies certain criteria is selected, even if other, better options may exist.
When Heuristics Are Wrong
Heuristics, while useful, are imperfect; if relied on too heavily, they can result in incorrect judgments or cognitive biases. Some are more likely to steer people wrong than others.
Assuming, for example, that child abductions are common because they’re frequently reported on the news—an example of the availability heuristic—may trigger unnecessary fear or overprotective parenting practices. Understanding commonly unhelpful heuristics, and identifying situations where they could affect behavior, may help individuals avoid such mental pitfalls.
What is the fundamental attribution error?
Sometimes called the attribution effect or correspondence bias, the term describes a tendency to attribute others’ behavior primarily to internal factors—like personality or character—while attributing one’s own behavior more to external or situational factors.
What is an example of the fundamental attribution error?
If one person steps on the foot of another in a crowded elevator, the victim may attribute it to carelessness. If, on the other hand, they themselves step on another’s foot, they may be more likely to attribute the mistake to being jostled by someone else.
How can I make better decisions?
Listen to your gut, but don’t rely on it. Think through major problems methodically—by making a list of pros and cons, for instance, or consulting with people you trust. Make extra time to think through tasks where snap decisions could cause significant problems, such as catching an important flight.
Essential Reads
Discrimination is how we treat groups of people. Bias is how we think about them. Can better understanding cognitive biases make a difference in the fight against discrimination?
Are experts more confident in what they know than what they don't? Yes, but it's not so clear-cut.
How do we make sense of new experiences? Ultimately, it's about how we categorize them—which we often do by "lumping" or "splitting" them.
Learn how to boost mental shortcuts through the effective use of heuristics.
