Ecological Rationality and Adaptive Heuristics

Question 1

Trade-off of accuracy and effort: General concepts

Answer 1

• Decision strategies are sequences of mental operations
• The cognitive effort needed to reach a decision using a particular strategy is a function of the number and type of operators used
• Different strategies are characterised by different levels of accuracy
• Decision makers are assumed to have more than one decision strategy resulting from past experience and training
• Individuals decide how to decide based on consideration of the cognitive effort and the accuracy of various strategies
• Additionally individuals are influenced by the need to justify decisions to others or the need to minimise conflict inherent in a decision
• Strategy selection is generally adaptive and intelligent if not optimal

Question 2

PBJ assert that decision problems are characterised by 3 basic components:

Answer 2

• Alternatives
• Uncertainties
• Values

Question 3

WADD = weighted additive rule

Answer 3

• Alternatives have an overall value calculated based on the weight by the attribute value for each attribute
• There are various methods for calculating the ‘weights’ and some systems have it that all the attribute weights must sum to 1.

Question 4

EQW = Equal weight heuristic

Answer 4

• This assumes that ll the attributes can be expressed on a common value scale

Question 5

SAT = satisficing heuristic

Answer 5

• This rule sets an aspiration level and then compares each alternative to that level
• The first alternative that passes the aspiration level on all the attributes is selected

Question 6

LEX = lexicographic heuristic

Answer 6

• This rule simply determines that most important attribute and then compares alternatives on that attribute

Question 7

EBA = Elimination by aspects

Answer 7

• Tversky (1972)
• A cutoff value is adopted and all alternatives that are below the cutoff on that attribute are eliminated
• Go through the alternatives until one is left standing

Question 8

MCD = Majority of confirming dimensions

Answer 8

• Compare alternatives on dimensions in pairs and select the one with the majority of values

Question 9

FRQ = Frequency of good and bad features

Answer 9

• Choice based on simple counts of good and bad features
• Look up “choice magazine” evaluations

Question 10

EP main concepts

Answer 10

• EP is based on evolutionary theory, especially that described as “inclusive fitness”
• EP is a meta-theory developed to provide an overarching structure to psychological investigations across the whole gamut of research
• EP asserts that ALL manifest behaviour depends on underlying psychological processes i.e. rules for taking in information and responding in appropriate ways
• EP has made conceptual and empirical contributions to many areas of cognitive, social, developmental and neurological psychology.
• EP asks
  
  • What adaptive problems do psychological mechanisms solve?
  • Why do these mechanisms exist in the form they do?
  • These mechanisms exist because of causal evolutionary processes

Question 11

What defines successful solutions in EP.

Answer 11

will be dependent on context which covers external environment from geography though social to individual characteristics

Question 12

The criteria for the existence of a solution to a survival problem include:

Answer 12

• Economy
• Efficiency
• Sufficient specialisation
• Appropriate complexity
• Reliability

Question 13

Ecological rationality

Answer 13

• The realisation that human beings have a limited cognitive capacity and therefore live by a boundedly rational mode of information processing has had profound effects on defining what it is to be rational.
• All human life is carried on within a limited sampling of possible experiences. This means that the schemas and knowledge humans accumulate is also bounded by the environment.
• This boundedness results in the development of heuristics that are particularly suited to the environment in which they emerged.
• Ecological rationality is a concept which highlights the fit between heuristics and their emergent environment.
• A heuristics success or failure is judged by the match between the heuristic and the information structure of that environment.
• ER also asserts a different view rationality. A heuristic is successful within certain environments and may be ineffective in others. Its rationality can only be judged within the context from which it emerged and from the perspective of the particular problem or set of problems it arose to solve.

Question 14

Modularity of mind

Answer 14

• Many systems that aggregate together.
• Fodor (1983) was an early proponent
• Modules are (see Coltheart, 1999)
  
  • Domain specific
  • Innately specified
  • Informationally encapsulated (cf. Samuels (2000))
  • Fast
  • Neutrally hardwired
  • Autonomous
• These modules range from movement detection, visual-object recognition to higher order processes such as cheater detection and theory of mind.

Question 15

Adaptive heuristics

Answer 15

• Researchers and authors have criticised the findings of Prospects theory and its affiliates. Gigerenzer and Kahneman.
• Discussion of Prospect theory centers around the irrationality of human thinking. It Is often asserted that people are not able to think rationally as defined by such models as laws of logic or statistical and probability axioms. It must be stated that Kahneman said that heuristics were accurate on some occasions and problematic on others.
• Gigerenzer (1999, 2000, 2001) and others reject a blanket derision of human thinking and judgement. They assert that human thinking has not done too badly up until now. These authors broadly speaking adopt an evolutionary perspective.
• Gigerenzer has conducted an extensive research program examining how the heuristics and biases findings can be understood in a more positive light.
• The research know as Fast and Frugal Heuristics (FFH) has been designed to examine identified heuristics and to explore criteria of success that are more ecologically valid. i.e. that works in particular environments answering particular questions.

Question 16

Fast and Frugal: dealing with the limitations of human thinking – main concepts

Answer 16

• Firmly based on EP perspective
• Basis is the concept of ecological rationality -> suggests a mechanism for the development of the heuristics that is not dependent on internal processes only.
• Gigerenzer et al (1999) assert that as organisms spend much of their time dealing with the uncertainty and disorder of the external world this fact is paramount in the formation of heuristics. Heuristics are designed to assist with survival, including reproduction.
• “Fast and frugal heuristics that are matched to particular environmental structures allow organisms to be ecologically rational” (Gigerenzer et al, 1999)
• Thus we need to study the structure of heuristics and the structure of the environment in which they were produced and the match between the two.
• Gigerenzer et al (1999) position their approach firmly within the bounded rationality camp. They also explore concepts around the idea of definitions of rationality that have been prominent in the work of EUT theorists. They term it “visions of rationality”
• The concept of “demon” may appear strange but Gigerenzer et al use it to mean an all knowing supernatural super-intelligence. In his various writings he often quotes Laplace who expressed the hope modernistic determinism when he said,
  
  • “Given an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who compose it – an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis…nothing would be uncertain and the future as the past, would be present to its eyes.”
• Gigerenzer has taken the view that determinism is an inaccurate and problematic view. He has written extensively over the last 20 years on the role of chance and stochiastic processes and their match to reality and on the question of determinism vs. probabilistic view of reality.
• The Laplacian super intelligence or demon is a character of super human nature and thus both and impossible standard to aspire to and therefore totally inappropriate to judge human rationality by.
• The position of FFH is that humans are trying to solve survival problems and situations from within an uncertain world. Thus it is more appropriate to examine reasoning and judgement from the perspective of incomplete information and even that information is not in many cases going to have high levels of uncertainty associated with it.
• The consequence of this is that the heuristics developed by humans will be situations specific and have limited effectiveness but sufficient effectiveness to promote survival in the situations confronting them.
• Thus Gigerenzer et al have developed their research to reflect these constraints. They look for real world examples and try to understand the heuristics from within the information environment that they have been developed within.
• The program is called Fast and Frugal Heuristics (FFH) indicating the twin criteria for successful ecologically rational rules of thumb.
• FFH program has identified a number of heuristics including:
  
  • Take the Best (TTB); examines cues in order to discriminate between two alternatives
  • Recognition; choose whichever alternative is recognised
  • Minimalist; examine cues randomly until one matches aspiration level.
• Three sets of guiding principles that FFH asserts are essential for an effective and boundedly rational decision process. They are;
  
  • Search principles
  • A stopping rule, and
  • A decision rule.

Question 17

• One step decision rules
  
  • Recognition heuristic

Answer 17

• The recognition heuristic states “If one of two objects is recognised and the other is not, then infer that the recognised object has higher value”
• Only works in environments where recognition is correlated with the criterion
• The recognition heuristic relies on the combination of the ecological validity of the cues and the discrimination rate of the cue
  
  • Ecological validity = The relative frequency with which the cue correctly predicts the target defined with respect to the reference class.
  • Discrimination rate = the relative frequency with which the cue discriminates between any two objects from the reference class.