Heuristics & Biases Flashcards
Herbert SimonNobel Prize -> Principle of bounded rationality
When individuals make economic choices their rationality is limited by:
Available info
Cognitive limitations of their mind
The time available
The perceived risk associated with decision
The emotional involvement
Instincts
Innate and Unalterable patterns of activity or tendencies associated with Biology
Habits
Automatic and rigid patterns of behaviour (learned through effort and repetition)
Cognitive Illusions
Situations where your mind systematically and non-consciously misperceives or misinterprets the info available
Cannot Turn them off - even when we know they exist
Dunning-kruger (Illusion of superiority where people incorrectly perceive themselves as top performers even if they have objectively lower competence than average
Biases
Systematic (non-random) and non-conscious patterns of deviation from norm, logic or rationality in judgement.
Fluency bias
Ambiguity bias
Heuristics
Cognitive shortcuts (rules of thumb that simplify decisions Example high price is perceived as quality
Paradox of choice
Jam experiment
Illusion of superiority
Dunning-kruger (Illusion of superiority where people incorrectly perceive themselves as top performers even if they have objectively lower competence than average
Fluency Bias
Fluent statements that are easier to process are better remembered (More true, more likable)
Ambiguity Bias
People tend to avoid ambiguity and uncertainty (prefer known)
Affect Heuristic
Automatic Mental shortcut that helps you make quick judgments (non-consciously substituting a difficult decision with an easier one)
Humans are EMOTIONAL but explain RATIONALLY (90%of decisions are emotional)
YES
Status Quo Bias
We have a tendency to avoid change and maintain current state of affairs (more when low energy or motivation)
Prospect Theory:
Kahneman and Tversky - people make economic choices on subjective value - the utility that each person assigns to the object or outcome
People make economic choices based on subjective value not expected value and use certain heuristics that deviate from rationality
Reference points matter
3 Principles of Prospect Theory
- Loss Aversion
- Reference Dependence
- Diminishing Sensitivity
Sunk Cost Fallacy
When we continue something as a result of previously invested resources (time, money or effort)
Endowment Effect
People attribute more value to the things they OWN (Ownership increases value)
Possibility & Certainty Effect
Changes in probability do not affect peoples subjective evaluations
a. Possibility effect - when highly unlikely outcomes are weighted disproportionately more than they deserve
b. Certainty: When sure outcomes are weighted disproportionatly more than they deserve
Non Consistent Risk Preferences
We are risk averse in gains and risk seeking in losses - willing to pay a PREMIUM to remove risk
Reference Dependence (Framing)
We are influence by the context in which things are presented to us
Anchoring
Human tendancy to rely too heavily on a previous piece of information when evaluating an uknnown value. Once the anchor is set it’s hard to change
Contrast Principle
the way we see the difference between two things that are presented together or one after the other, if the second item is fairly different, we perceive it as MORE different