The Representativeness Heuristic in Political Decision Making

Abstract

The representativeness heuristic was defined by Kahneman and Tversky as a decision-making shortcut in which people judge probabilities “by the degree to which A is representative of B, that is, by the degree to which A resembles B.” People who use this cognitive shortcut bypass more detailed processing of the likelihood of the event in question but instead focus on what (stereotypic) category it appears to fit and the associations they have about that category. Simply put: If it looks like a duck, it probably is a duck. The representativeness heuristic usually works well and provides valid inferences about likelihood. This is why political scientists saw it as an important part of a solution to an enduring problem in their field: How can people make political decisions when so many studies show they lack even basic knowledge about politics? According to these scholars, voters do not need to be aware of all actions and opinions of a political candidate running for office. To make up their mind on who to vote for, they can rely on cues that represent the performance and issue position of candidates, such as the party they are affiliated with, their ranking in the polls, and whether (for instance) they act/appear presidential. In other words, they need to answer the question: Does this candidate fit my image of a successful president? The resulting low-information rationality provides voters with much confidence in their voting decision, even though they do not know all the details about the history of each candidate. Using heuristics allows relatively uninformed citizens to act as if they were fully informed. Despite this optimistic view of heuristics at their introduction to the discipline, they originated from research showing how heuristic use is accompanied by systematic error. Tversky and Kahneman argue that using the representativeness heuristic leads to an overreliance on similarity to a category and a neglect of prior probability, sample size, and the reliability and validity of the available cue. Kuklinsky and Quirk first warned about the potential effect of these biases in the context of political decision-making. Current research often examines the effects of specific cues/stereotypes, like party, gender, race, class, or more context-specific heuristics like the deservingness heuristic. Another strand of research has started exploring the effect of the representativeness heuristic on decision-making by political elites, rather than voters. Future studies can integrate these findings to work toward a fuller understanding of the effects of the representativeness heuristic in political decision-making, more closely consider individual differences and the effects of different contexts, and map the consequences that related systematic biases might have.

The Introduction and Applications of Representativeness Heuristics

“…Politicians often use representativeness heuristic to manipulate citizens making choices on political decisions such as voting, lobbying and petitioning because representativeness bias typically works effectively and offers valid likelihood inferences. Political scientists contend that voters do not need to be informed of all the positions and acts taken by politician candidates because citizens can use indicators of a candidate's performance and attitude on issues, such as their party affiliation, polling position, and if they act or appear presidential, to decide who to vote for (Stolwijk, 2019). Most people vote depends on whether the candidate fit their image of a successful president from appearance, age, gender, speech proficiency, party preference, etc.…”

Improving election outcomes through a better understanding of heuristic evaluation of candidates

“…In other words, voters might decide the candidate who looks most like their idea of a leader is the best candidate for office. 12,13 Behavioral scientists have postulated that a reliance on System 1 thinking for the selection of leaders could have provided an evolutionary advantage in early human communities. 14,15 Because System 1 processes are quick, automatic, and less resource intensive than the careful and controlled System 2 processes, they may have been beneficial for rapidly choosing a leader in situations where there was no time to waste, such as when groups faced an attacking tiger or approaching storm.…”

Heuristics and policy responsiveness: a research agenda

“…H&B focuses on two so-called general purpose heuristics (Kahneman and Frederick, 2002 ): availability (Tversky and Kahneman 1973 ; Schwarz and Vaughn 2002 ) and representativeness (Kahneman and Frederick 2002 ; Stolwijk 2020 ; Stolwijk and Vis 2021 ; Tversky and Kahneman 1974 ) which subsume many other heuristics. 2 In general, people use the availability heuristic when assessing how likely it is that something occurs by focusing on the ease with which they can think of instances or occurrences of it.…”