Heuristic Decision Making

Abstract

As reflected in the amount of controversy, few areas in psychology have undergone such dramatic conceptual changes in the past decade as the emerging science of heuristics. Heuristics are efficient cognitive processes, conscious or unconscious, that ignore part of the information. Because using heuristics saves effort, the classical view has been that heuristic decisions imply greater errors than do "rational" decisions as defined by logic or statistical models. However, for many decisions, the assumptions of rational models are not met, and it is an empirical rather than an a priori issue how well cognitive heuristics function in an uncertain world. To answer both the descriptive question ("Which heuristics do people use in which situations?") and the prescriptive question ("When should people rely on a given heuristic rather than a complex strategy to make better judgments?"), formal models are indispensable. We review research that tests formal models of heuristic inference, including in business organizations, health care, and legal institutions. This research indicates that (a) individuals and organizations often rely on simple heuristics in an adaptive way, and (b) ignoring part of the information can lead to more accurate judgments than weighting and adding all information, for instance for low predictability and small samples. The big future challenge is to develop a systematic theory of the building blocks of heuristics as well as the core capacities and environmental structures these exploit.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation decisions in the emergency department: An ethnography of tacit knowledge in practice

“…In the ED, we propose that the ascription of patients to tacitly applied resuscitation categories draws on heuristics to create a fast and frugal decisionmaking tree (Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier, 2011) constructed through experience.…”

“…In decision making, when the conditions for using logical and rational approaches, such as statistical probabilities cannot be met, there may be recourse to a model that relies on heuristics; a strategy of decision making that ignores part of the available information but nonetheless allows decisions to be made quickly and accurately (Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier, 2011). Heuristics decision strategies have particular characteristics, they are: simple; neither inherently good or bad; exploitive of learned human capacities and reflective of the way decisions are made naturally, in the environments at hand (Pieterse & de Vries, 2013).…”

“…One form of heuristics uses the principle of less is more, i.e. where there is an inverse relationship between the level of accuracy and amount of information (Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier, 2011). Heuristic decision making is a consequence of human experience gained over time within a particular context.…”

Intuitive decision making as a gradual process: investigating semantic intuition‐based and priming‐based decisions with fMRI

“…1990) put forward (as outlined above), seizes on (1) the aspect of rapidity in intuitive judgments, (2) the lack of an explicit basis for decisions made intuitively and (3) the stimulative nature of intuition to initiate and guide decisions. Hence it concurs with other definitions of intuition as a (1) quick, and (2) mostly non‐conscious process (i.e., with regard to the underlying cognitive processes as well as the source of the decision), which is (3) based on tacit knowledge and (4) results in some sort of feeling gravitating towards an idea or hunch that is strong enough to act upon (e.g., Betsch 2008; Sadler‐Smith 2008; Glöckner and Witteman 2010; Hogarth 2010; Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier 2011; Volz and Zander 2014). It is interesting that this apprehension of intuition seems to coincide with what has been conceived of as implicit memory processes.…”

Bayesian principles or Gestalt perception for clinical judgment

“…According to cognitive psychological studies, there are two fundamental approaches to decision-making: intuitive and analytical [3,4]. The intuitive approach, also termed System 1, is unconscious, ''fast and frugal,'' characterized by heuristics, or strategies that provide shortcuts to quick decisions, and vulnerable to biases [5]. This model implies non-analytical reasoning, based on pattern recognition.…”