HEURISTICS:
A heuristic technique is any approach to problem solving that employs a practical method sufficient for the immediate goals. Heuristics are strategies derived from experience with similar problems that uses readily accessible information to control problem solving in human beings, machines, and abstract issues. In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules, that have been made to explain how people make decisions, and solve problems typically when facing complex problems or incomplete information. Researchers test if people use those rules with various methods. These rules work well under most circumstances, but in certain cases lead to systematic errors. Examples of this method include using a rule of thumb, an educated
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In other words we often rely on how easy it is to think of examples when making a decision or judgement.When you try to make a decision, a number of related events or situations might immediately pop up in your mind. As a result, you might judge that those events are more frequent and than others. When you are trying to make a decision, you might remember a number of relevant instances. Since these are more readily available in the memory, you will likely judge these outcomes as being more common or frequently occurring. For example, if you are thinking of flying and suddenly think of a number of recent airline accidents, you might feel like air travel is too dangerous and decide to travel by car instead of going by air. Because those examples of air disasters come to your mind so easily, the availability heuristic leads you to think that plane crashes are more common than they really are. You give greater credence to this information and tend to overestimate the probability and likelihood of similar things happening in the …show more content…
It is also important that those features be salient. For example, people have long believed that ulcers were caused by stress, due to the representativeness heuristic, when in fact bacteria cause ulcers. In a similar line of thinking, in some alternative medicine beliefs patients have been encouraged to eat organ meat that corresponds to their medical disorder. Use of the representativeness heuristic can be seen in even simpler beliefs, such as the belief that eating fatty foods makes one fat. Even physicians may be swayed by the representativeness heuristic when judging similarity, in diagnoses, for example:The researcher found that clinicians use the representativeness heuristic in making diagnoses by judging how similar patients are to the stereotypical or prototypical patient with that
Fuzzy Trace theory functions and serves as a better model for explicating reasoning and decision making. There are five parts of “processing in reasoning and decision making: (a) stored knowledge and values; (b) mental representations of problems or situations; (c) retrieval of knowledge and values; (d) implementation of knowledge and values; and (e) developmental and individual differences in monitoring and inhibiting interference” (Reyna & Brainerd, Dual Processes in Decision Making and Developmental Neuroscience: A Fuzzy-Trace Model, 2011). Stored knowledge implies what has been stored in long-term memory through education and experience. Mental representations incorporate the ways in which people perceive problems to be faced, and these representations consist of verbatim- and gist-based representations.
Cognitive theory posits that the way people feel, act, or react to any given situation is not so much the situation itself more than it is “…how they construe a situation” (Beck, 2011, p. 30). The Situation/event is the first level of the cognitive model. The second level of the cognitive model is Automatic thoughts. Automatic thoughts are the thoughts and pictures that are created by emotions and perceptions of a situation “…and are not the result of deliberation or reasoning” (Beck, 2011. p. 31). They are typically accepted as factual and true regardless of evidence to the contrary. These automatic thoughts are usually responsible for one’s emotional, behavioral, and/or physiological Reaction which is the third level of the cognitive model. Five people may listen to the same lecture but experience completely different reactions ranging from excited or anxious to disappointed or disgusted.
It has been noted from the text that our perception influences the thinking and decisions we make. It shows that choices differ because of the different understanding that individual have. In addition, our intuition is essential and at many times it provides us with guidance on how to make decisions. However, we can see that this intuition can be misleading at times and therefore the best thing is to evaluate the available evidence before making decisions. In my view decision making tends to have disciplinary across individuals. The best thing can be is to take time and individuals should not rush when it comes to making critical decisions. It is because of the outcomes that might be expected in the
Rather we often rely on system one to make choices and ergo we make mistakes. Additionally there is an informational asymmetry, where we have less knowledge than others. Because of this lack of information we can not always make the best choice. We can also be influenced to make negative choices, without thinking them through. For example, consider a high school party. At this party everyone is doing drugs and drinking alcohol. If they were truly logical beings, they would have realized these things are bad for their future. Yet because of the pressure to do these things, and all the influences we see on the media they are all
Gladwell refers ‘thin slicing’ as the ability to make a fast conclusion using very little information. This is an activity that almost everybody does on a daily basis when faced with different issues. In his book, Gladwell focuses on how mental process work rapidly for one to make the best and accurate judgements. He provides several examples where quick and accurate decisions are made and they are; gambling, advertising, wars and sales. Thin slicing proves that sudden decisions are right compared to those that are planned and calculated. However, thin slicing can limit individuals’ understanding of the surrounding because of inadequate data.
Kahneman’s theory’s breaks down human thought into two systems. Our thought processes that are deliberate, rational and analytical are System 2. This type of thought is one that takes effort and time yet can yield a more accurate picture of a situation. The opposite system, System 1, is fast, quick to judge, superficial and automatic. It relies on instinct and first impression of a situation to make judgments. Kahneman explains the balance between the two systems as the equilibrium of one’s conscious and unconscious thoughts. While System 1 offers quick, apparent information about a situation, System 2 works to put the information in the correct context and fix any errors (44). Kahneman explains that the two modes are not always at work together and at times we rely on one system more in certain situations. For example, highway driving may only require System 1 as very little mental inp...
“Limited Information is really how we err. But it is also how we think.” The act of actively combating our inductive bias in Kathryn Schulz’s Evidence
While people deal with everyday life, a plethora of events is occurring throughout the day. Most people usually do a multitude of actions to resolve these events without thinking as well. This can be anything from trying to get to class as soon as possible, talking to someone that recently was introduced, or doing a kind of tradition at a football game. Cognitive Biases is defined as a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion. This article will talk about a small sample of these situations and clarify what the meaning behind them. It shall discuss Negativity Bias, Confirmation Bias, Gamblers Fallacy, and Illusion of Control
In a real life situation one may subconsciously use perceptual choice when seeing and meeting other people, such as, “through the process of selective attention, the brain picks out the information that is important to us and discards the rest” (Folk & Remington, 1998; Kramer et al., 2000). For a better understanding of how the mind works, an experiment was done to confirm the perceptions that people create. Three subjects were chosen to prove that people are mindlessly creating judgment and generalizat...
A few years ago I learned about the problem solving principle of “Occam’s Razor.” The theory defined in simple terms: when you have competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions is most likely to be the most accurate and should be
Fritz Heider (1958), an Austrian psychologist, argued that people look for regularity and predictability in their world and the ‘intuitive scientist’ within us will build models of common sense beliefs and understandings on the basis of cause and effect models to make sense of our world for example, if we drive a car, we intuitively know that we must obey to road signs, if we get on a train next step will be to pay the train ticket or if we see a person with many tattoos, we intuitively expect him to have a fiery temper, we do presumptions and consequently attribute the behaviour to situations and events which helps us to make sense of our world. Based on his research Heider proposed a psychological theory of attribution, according to which, a person can make two types attributions:
Attention Grabbing Title: Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its memory for vivid anecdotes rather than systematic statistics (Steven Pinker) (1).
Ever since the original study by Tversky and Kahnerman in 1983, it has been assumed that human reasoning prefers association of terms in lieu of mathematical probabilities in these situations. There is debate, however, as to whether this is a fallacy i...
It has occurred once or severally that people from different joints use physical impressions to make overall judgments about a particular object, subject or a person. However, it is paramount noting that the outward appearance could be misleading and may not necessarily represent what is concealed in the particular object or subject in question. This kind of misjudgment gives rise to the concept of the ‘Halo Effect.’ The ‘halo effect’ is expressed as the aspect of different individuals using universal assessments while trying to arrive at a final judgment regarding a particular set of qualities (Yeffeth, & Thomason, 2006). For instance, people may attribute good qualities such as kind and outgoing to people who are
“Never judge a book by its cover” we have all heard this saying, but what makes us judge a book by its cover? This is what psychologists have studied since the 1940’s; they call this Implicit Personality Theory. With one piece of information about someone, we imagine other details about them. The theory that we individually form impressions is still being studied today. Implicit Personality Theory is suggests we fill in blanks when identifying characteristics of people, using a few characteristics to draw inferences about others (West, Turner, 2011). It describes the specific patterns an individual uses when forming impressions based on a limited amount of information about an unfamiliar person. The word implicit essentially means automatic.