Heuristics

With limited resources and a world full of information, brains have evolved to be efficient. When decisions are not important enough to allocate the resources necessary to think carefully about everything, we can use heuristics – mental shortcuts that help us make decisions quickly and with minimal cognitive effort. For example, people tend to assume that something that costs more money is of better quality than the less expensive alternative. After all, we have all heard the phrase “you pay for what you get.” Of course, it is not always true, but if you do not have the time to do all of the research, it is a way to make a quick decision about which brand to buy. Here are some specific heuristics that influence our judgments...

Availability Heuristic – To use a common example, would you guess there are more murders or more suicides in America each year? When asked, most people would guess there are more murders. In truth, there are twice as many suicides as there are murders each year. However, murders seem more common because we hear a lot more about murders on an average day. Unless someone we know or someone famous takes their own life, it does not make the news. Murders, on the other hand, we see in the news every day. So the rule of thumb is this: the easier it is to think of instances of something, the more often that thing occurs. Here is another great example:

Anchoring Heuristic (Anchoring and Adjustment) – This is a shortcut we use when we need to estimate a number.  All we do is use a number that we have been exposed to and adjust up or down.  The problem is that we never adjust enough.  For example, imagine that I am selling you my car.  I want you to buy the car at a very high price.  Before we begin negotiating a price, I would make you think of a very high number.  I might ask you, "how many people live in the United States?"  You then reply, "about 325 million." That number (325,000,000)  becomes an anchor in your mind.  Then, when we begin negotiating a price, you adjust down from there.  You know that the price of a car is a lot less than $325 million dollars, but you are anchored by that number and you will not adjust as low as you should.  Here is another example:

Representativeness Heuristic – This rule of thumb applies to judgments about which category something belongs in. For example, you might look at the way someone is dressed and make instant judgments about their intelligence, friendliness, and sexual preference. In other words, which category does this instance best represent?  We even do this when there is other information that would lead us to a better judgment.  For example, imagine you see someone on the University of Maryland campus who is dressed in overalls and a cowboy hat.  I then ask you, "is that person from Nebraska or Maryland?" You are more likely to choose Nebraska even though, statistically, anyone on the University of Maryland campus is more likely to be from Maryland.

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