Heuristics Flashcards
What are heuristics?
Mental shortcuts, rules of thumb for solving problems in a quick way that delivers a result that is sufficient enough to be useful given time constraints.
What do we need to make a fully informed and rational decision or judgement?
- Identify all relevant information
- Recall and store this information
- Assessing weights of all information
- Consider all information on alternative options
- Select the right option
–> Weighted additive rule (Oppenheimer)
What stands in the way of using the weighted additive rule? And when is it not possible using this rule?
You usually don’t have all the information or mental capacity.
Small (risk) vs large (uncertainty) world.
- The small world decision is the ideal situation that only consists of risk. You know all the information and therefore make known risks; you know the outcome beforehand
- The large world decision is the decision where you don’t know a part of the information –> uncertainty
What is the reverse of the weighted additive rule –> heuristics?
- Examine less information
- Make recall and storage easier
- Simplify weighting of all information
- Consider less information on alternatives
- Select from fewer options
What is attribute substitution (Kahneman)?
People substitute a complex problem with a simpler problem, without being aware.
A part of the problem (attribute) will get replaced.
What happens when you substitute an attribute?
There is an effort-accuracy trade off –> selecting the best decision strategy given the amount of effort available, at the cost of accuracy.
When replacing a decision you lose information, so it takes less effort but at the cost of accuracy.
–> not always: less-is-more effects
What is an alternative to effort-accuracy trade off?
Ecological rationality: selecting the best decision strategy given the environment. Being as rational as your environment needs you to be
–> related to bounded rationality
What is the representative heuristic?
Using stereotypes and prototypes rather than using the actual probabilities of events happening or chances.
What is the availability heuristic? And what makes something more salient/easily retrievable?
People believe an event will be more likely to occur if they can conjure up examples or memories of it and if they recognize it.
Salient/easily retrievable:
- Recent
- Familiar
- Personal
- Important
What is the anchoring heuristic?
People’s tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information they receive on a topic. Regardless of the accuracy of that information, people use it as a reference point to make subsequent judgements.
What is framing in terms of anchoring?
Anchoring is a form of framing. Framing is how you word or present a choice option in a channel.
What is social proof?
We like to do what other people do; what we see is what we do.
What is the difference between social proof and social norms?
Social norms is about what the majority perceives as the norm, social proof is more about what the majority does.
What is the bias blind spot?
People tend to think that biases are much more prevalent in others than in themselves.
When are people more susceptible to heuristic thinking?
When they are in hot states (S1) –> for example, when you are tired, drunk, busy, hungry etc.
