Every day we face countless decisions, ranging from what cereal to buy at the grocery store to how to respond when a cat runs into the road in front of our car.
In the former example, there is no time pressure, and so there is plenty of time to weigh all the various factors, like taste, nutritional value, and cost. In the latter example, by contrast, a decision must be made rapidly in a context with greater consequences if all the factors, like other cars on the road and nearby pedestrians, are not taken into account.
Heuristics are rules-of-thumb that can be applied to guide decision-making based on a more limited subset of the available information. Because they rely on less information, heuristics are assumed to facilitate faster decision-making than strategies that require more information.
Bobadilla-Suarez and Love (online first, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition) (PDF, 1326KB) tested this assumption. On each trial, participants were asked to decide whether Country A or Country B would have the higher gross domestic product based on 7 characteristics that were shown to be higher (green checkmark), lower (red X) or equivalent (equal sign) between the two.
Half of the participants were told to use a tallying strategy, in which one counts the number of cues favoring one alternative over the other, or to use a take-the-best strategy, in which one uses only the most predictive cue to make a decision.
Participants in the take-the-best condition responded more slowly and had lower compliance, meaning that they were more likely to choose the answer associated with the alternative tallying strategy, particularly on trials where decisions were made under time pressure.
Thus, even though the take-the-best strategy required less information, it was less efficient in this particular task.
However, this pattern of results was reversed when the information required to make a tallying decision was made less salient by using pairs of adjectives (e.g., higher and lower) rather than color-coded symbols. In that case, participants in the tallying condition responded more slowly and had lower compliance under time pressure.
The authors conclude that heuristics are heterogeneous in their cognitive demands, such that their suitability depends on task characteristics.
Bobadilla-Suarez and Love examined heuristics involved in objectively deciding between alternatives. However, heuristics may also be used to make other kinds of more subjective judgments.
Lindström and colleagues (online first, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General) (PDF, 962KB) tested whether a "common is moral" heuristic could account for judgments of morality.
Participants were exposed to responses in a one-shot public goods game between four players that were ostensibly collected in an earlier experiment. In one block, the majority of responses were selfish (not investing in the common pool) across trials, whereas in the other half of trials the majority of responses were altruistic (investing in the common pool) across trials. On each individual trial, participants saw player responses and had to rate the moral status of the response for a selected player.
On average, the altruistic action was judged to be more moral than the selfish behavior, consistent with preexisting norms about cooperation. Critically, however, altruistic behaviors were judged as less moral when they were rare, and selfish behavior was judged as more moral when common.
Moreover, moral judgments were faster when the behavior was common, and average morality rating was a strong predictor of the likelihood that the participant would choose the selfish action when they themselves played a subsequent one-shot public goods game.
The authors interpret these results as supporting a "common is moral" heuristic, whereby others' behaviors are judged as more moral when they are more common, and this influences subsequent moral behavior.
Citations
- Bobadilla-Suarez, S., & Love, B. C. (2017, May 29). Fast or Frugal, but Not Both: Decision Heuristics Under Time Pressure. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000419
- Lindström, B., Jangard, S., Selbing, I., & Olsson, A. (2017, September 11). The Role of a "Common Is Moral" Heuristic in the Stability and Change of Moral Norms. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000365
