Heuristics

When it comes to make judgments and decisions, we often use shortcuts in order to make them quickly and efficiently. These mental shortcuts, or heuristics, enable us to solve problems. Heuristics provide the quickest possible way for our brains to come to a quick solution (Hastie & Dawes, 2010). Two of the heuristics that we rely on are the availability and representative heuristics. One is used to judge frequency and probability and the other we use our past experiences to aid in the decision-making process (Kahneman, 2003).

When something comes to mind right away, this is an example of the availability heuristic. The availability heuristic operates under the notion that anything important can be recalled. Therefore, we tend to make decisions based on what we already know and not necessarily off of the existence of data (Hastie & Dawes, 2010). Our own experiences are more readily available than data. This is especially the case if that information is vivid or recent. Within the last decade, people have come to associate the threat of terrorist attacks as happening all of the time. This has had a lot to do with the amount of reporting on terrorist activities tied to the United States and abroad. When we look at the data, we see that there have not been a lot of terrorist attacks especially on U.S. soil since September 11^(th) (Lum & Kennedy, 2011).

The representative heuristic works similarly to the availability heuristic, but different. Instead of operating under the condition of what can be recalled, the representative heuristic comes into play when we compare an event to a previous known event under uncertainty (Hastie & Dawes, 2010). As a result, we make the assumption that the events are similar. In taking from the previous example of terrorism, one of the things that are frequently said on television when any tragic event happens is that it may be terrorist related. This is due to previous events, such as the Oklahoma City bombing or September 11^(th). People have prior experience and knowledge about the amount of destruction and loss of lives that took place. Therefore, immediately people reference those events in looking at events that happen afterward. People make the assumption that if there is destruction on that level, it must be a terrorist attack. Within this same scenario from an availability heuristic view, we can take what a friend may know about how they feel about people associated with terrorism and discard any statistical knowledge about them and be biased against them.

As useful as heuristics are, they have several downfalls. Each of these heuristics can lead to cognitive biases. Heuristics are great in helping us formulate assumptions but they are not great in formulating facts. We base our understanding on these prototypes to formulate an assumption. We may not be surprised to figure out that our assumption is correct, but in the even that we are incorrect, we have judged wrong (Gilovich, Griffin, & Kahneman, 2002). As an example, if what we know about advanced stage pregnant women fits a particular prototype, someone may offer their seat to a woman who matches it. However, what if the person is overweight and that person mentioned giving their seat to them because she is pregnant. That person has just managed to inadvertently insult the woman.

This doesn’t mean that our assumption is always wrong. Both of these heuristics can help us bring a gain of time and effort. We would not have to waste energy reinventing the wheel because all of the relevant information is available to us. If someone were to run into a person as I described above and took evaluated they knew about pregnant women, they may have very well committed a good deed and alleviated the burden for someone who may have really needed the rest off of their feet. Heuristics can help us make those quick judgments and decisions without putting a ton of thought into it. Both the availability and representative heuristic allow us to come to decisions that may aid us quickly.

References

• Gilovich, T., Griffin, D., & Kahneman, D. (2002). Heuristics and Biases. Cambridge University Press. ↩
• Hastie, R., & Dawes, R. M. (2010). Rational Choice in an Uncertain World. SAGE. ↩1 ↩2 ↩3
• Kahneman, D. (2003). A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping bounded rationality. American Psychologist, 58(9), 697–720. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.58.9.697 ↩
• Lum, C., & Kennedy, L. W. (2011). Evidence-Based Counterterrorism Policy. Springer. ↩