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Heuristics (from Ancient Greek εὑρίσκω, heurískō, "I find, discover") is the process by which humans use mental shortcuts to arrive at decisions. Heuristics are simple strategies that humans, animals, [1] [2] [3] organizations, [4] and even machines [5] use to quickly form judgments, make decisions, and find solutions to complex problems.
The availability heuristic (also known as the availability bias) is the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater "availability" in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be. [20] The availability heuristic includes or involves the following:
Due to the availability heuristic, names that are more easily available are more likely to be recalled, and can thus alter judgments of probability. [31] Another example of the availability heuristic and exemplars would be seeing a shark in the ocean. Seeing a shark has a greater impact on an individual's memory than seeing a dolphin.
Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier (2011) state that sub-sets of strategy include heuristics, regression analysis, and Bayesian inference. [14]A heuristic is a strategy that ignores part of the information, with the goal of making decisions more quickly, frugally, and/or accurately than more complex methods (Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier [2011], p. 454; see also Todd et al. [2012], p. 7).
As a striking illustration of confirmation bias in the real world, Nickerson mentions numerological pyramidology: the practice of finding meaning in the proportions of the Egyptian pyramids. [ 3 ] : 190 There are many different length measurements that can be made of, for example, the Great Pyramid of Giza and many ways to combine or manipulate ...
The representativeness heuristic is simply described as assessing similarity of objects and organizing them based around the category prototype (e.g., like goes with like, and causes and effects should resemble each other). [2] This heuristic is used because it is an easy computation. [4]
Heuristics are simple for the brain to compute but sometimes introduce "severe and systematic errors." [ 6 ] For example, the representativeness heuristic is defined as "The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood" of an occurrence by the extent of which the event "resembles the typical case."
In psychology, a heuristic is an easy-to-compute procedure or rule of thumb that people use when forming beliefs, judgments or decisions. The familiarity heuristic was developed based on the discovery of the availability heuristic by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman; it happens when the familiar is favored over novel places, people, or things.