Heuristics
We make decisions and judgments every day – if we can trust someone, if we should do something (or not), which route to take, how to respond to someone’s question, the list is endless. If we carefully considered and analysed every possible outcome of these decisions and judgments, we would never get anything done!
Thankfully, our mind makes things easier for us by using efficient thinking strategies known as heuristics. A heuristic is a mental shortcut that helps us make decisions and judgments quickly without having to spend a lot of time researching and analysing information
Heuristics play important roles in both problem-solving and decision-making.
When we are trying to solve a problem or make a decision, we often turn to these mental shortcuts when we need a quick solution.
For example, when walking down the street, you see a workman hauling up a pallet of bricks on a pulley. Without a break in stride, you would likely choose to walk around that area instead of directly underneath the bricks. Your intuition would tell you that walking under the bricks could be dangerous, so you make a snap judgment to walk around the danger zone. You would probably not stop and assess the entire situation or calculate the probability of the bricks falling on you or your chances of survival if that happened. You would use a heuristic to make the decision quickly and without using much mental effort
However, while heuristics can speed up our problem and decision-making process, they can introduce errors and biased judgments. Just because something has worked in the past does not mean that it will work again, and relying on an existing heuristic can make it difficult to see alternative solutions or come up with new ideas.
As a result of research and theorising, cognitive psychologists have outlined a host of heuristics people use in decision-making. Heuristics range from general to very specific and serve various functions. The “price heuristic”, in which people judge higher priced items to have higher quality than lower priced things, is specific to consumer patterns; while the “outrage heuristic”, in which people consider how contemptible a crime is when deciding on the punishment (Shah, & Oppenheimer, 2008). According to Shah and Oppenheimer three important heuristics are the representative, availability, and anchoring and adjustment heuristics. These and other heuristics are discussed in the next section.