Heuristics

Heuristics

Heuristics are mental shortcuts that help us make quick decisions and judgements. These strategies are generalisations or rules-of-thumb that reduce cognitive effort, enabling us to handle complex situations more easily. While they can be helpful for rapid decision-making, heuristics often lead to biased conclusions, resulting in irrational or inaccurate judgements.

We use heuristics in many everyday situations. One type of heuristic is the affect heuristic, where our emotional response to something influences our judgement, often without us realising it. For example, if we have a positive emotional reaction to a brand, we might assume that their products are high quality, even if we don’t have evidence to support this belief. Similarly, if we dislike a particular person or company, we might judge their actions more negatively, regardless of the facts.

The important thing to note about heuristics is that they aren't necessarily wrong. As broad generalisations, they can sometimes lead to accurate predictions or good decisions. However, even if the outcome is favourable, it wasn't achieved through logical reasoning. Heuristics can cause us to ignore key details and give disproportionate weight to irrelevant ones. So, while heuristics may sometimes lead to good outcomes, they do so without a solid, reasoned foundation, meaning our decisions are based on mental shortcuts rather than careful thinking.

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