Heuristics are mental shortcuts that enable people to provide quick solutions to problems and make quick judgments in an efficient manner (Baron, 2000). Heuristics are rule-of-thumb strategies that enable people to function immediately without having to stop and think about the courses of action to be taken. Heuristics are considered efficient, but they do not guarantee success (Cherry, 2015). They have proven to be very helpful in a variety of situations, but people are likely to form biases. Confirmation bias is the tendency of humans to recall information according to their own beliefs.
Heuristics quicken the speed of decision making processes and problem-solving processes, but they can bring up errors (Goldacre, 2008). Using a particular mental shortcut to solve a problem or make a decision does not mean that the same shortcut will be effective in similar situations in the future. Heuristics provide trade-offs between efficiency and accuracy. The use of heuristics makes it hard for people to identify other solutions or put their faith on new ideas.
The overreliance on heuristics can lead to cognitive biases. Most people will end up seeking solutions or accepting judgments and choices they think are good enough (Cordelia, 2006). There are chances that these solutions or decisions could be optimized, but people prefer to rely on what they believe will give them good results. Research has also shown that accuracy could be achieved even when some parts of the information required to make a decision are missing.
Cognitive heuristics are known to work well using a process known as attribute substitution. People perform attribute substitution without conscious awareness. It follows that if someone makes judgment based on a complex target attribute, he substitutes a heuristic attribute that would have been easily calculated (Kahneman and Fredrick, 2002). Available heuristics are mental shortcuts taken by people where their judgments are based on easy examples that come to their minds. Representative heuristics are mental shortcuts that are used to make judgments about events that are in conditions of uncertainty (Kahneman and Fredrick, 2002). Anchoring is used to describe the tendency of humans to rely on the first information that they receive rather than wait for other pieces of information.
I have used available heuristics when filling a codeword puzzle. A codeword puzzle involves the identification of all the 26 letters of the English alphabet. The letters are assigned unique numbers at random. One or two letters together with their numbers are provided to start the puzzle. I used available heuristics in the codeword puzzle by basing my assumption on the fact that most words have vowels, and that the vowel that is mostly used is the letter E. I used representative heuristics to determine which team was going to kick-off the ball at the start of the game by tossing up a coin. I used anchoring heuristics during and intelligence quiz when I was asked to name which country was distinctively known as “Land of Kangaroos”. I answered Australia because there are many Kangaroos in Australia. I used confirmation bias to make judgment on the issue of legalizing marijuana when I was told to speak publicly to a group of people. I used alignment heuristic to straighten the arrangement of my bed so as to make sure my bed was parallel to the wall of my bedroom.
Heuristics do not exist in a situation where you are driving and there is a car that is rushing straight towards you. You think you should swerve to the side of the road, but you are not sure whether the oncoming car will also swerve to that same side of the road. You ponder whether the oncoming car will get back to the correct lane.
A second area where heuristics do not exist is when a teacher asks a question in class and expects all the students to raise up their hands. Failure to raise your hand will mean that you did not read the assigned case study, and the teacher will require you to remain back in school for detention. You wonder whether to raise your hand and hope that you are not called to answer the question or to be honest and end up in detention.
A third area where heuristics do not apply is when you find yourself in the supermarket with 6 items, and the queues are too long. The express counter says no more than 5 items. You wonder whether to take a chance and go to the express counter despite the notice on 5 items only, or to wait on the long queues.
Works Cited
Goldacre, Ben. Bad Science. London: Fourth Estate. 2008. Print.
Baron, Jonathan. Thinking and Deciding (3rd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. 2000. Print.
Fine, Cordelia. A Mind of its Own: How your Brain Distorts and Deceives. Cambridge: Icon Books. 2006. Print.
Kahneman, Daniel; and Shane Fredrick. Representativeness Revisited: Attribute Substitution in Intuitive Judgment. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2002. Print.
Cherry, Kendra. What is a Heuristic. 2015. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. http://psychology.about.com/od/hindex/g/heuristic.htm
