Abstract
Heuristics are strategies that allow individuals to reach a conclusion for themselves or to fill a gap when information is not available. In the past 25 years or so, the empirical study of heuristics showed that these strategies are ingrained in the functioning of the human brain and central to processes like problem-solving and judgment and decision-making. As a result, heuristics have become a fundamental feature of psychological theories and challenge the traditional vision of analytical, rational thinking and information processing that was proposed in other disciplines (e.g., economics). Past research has shown that there is an array of heuristics that individuals employ to cope with the complexity of the environment in which they are living. These strategies allow to make quick evaluations of events and stimuli that can inform decision-makers about what to do when the outcomes are uncertain, information is incomplete, or time is constrained. Heuristics are also instrumental to save cognitive resources by engaging in a tradeoff between the quality and the effort required to make a decision. A consequence is that heuristics can bias thinking and reasoning, although they are also instrumental to allow the human brain to react with high flexibility and speed. The debate is still open on whether the impact of heuristics on our reasoning is positive or not, and a wide range of debiasing techniques has been developed over the years (228).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Brest, P., & Krieger, L. H. (2010). Problem solving, decision making, and professional judgment: A guide for lawyers and policymakers. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chapman, L. J., & Chapman, J. P. (1967). Genesis of popular but erroneous psycho-diagnostic observations. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 72, 193–204.
Epley, N., & Gilovich, T. (2006). The anchoring and adjustment heuristic: Why the adjustments are insufficient. Psychological Science, 17, 311–318.
Gideon, K., & Teigen, K. H. (2004). Yet another look at the heuristics and biases approach. In D. J. Koehler & N. Harvey (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of judgment and decision making (chapter 5). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M., & the ABC Research Group. (1999). Simple heuristics that make us smart. New York: Oxford University Press.
Guthrie, C., Rachlinski, J. J., & Wistrich, A. J. (2001). Inside the judicial mind. Cornell Law Review, 86, 777–830.
Hirshleifer, D. (2015). Behavioral finance. Annual Review of Financial Economics, 7, 133–159.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast & slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decisions under risk. Econometrica, 47, 263–292.
Larrick, R. P. (2004). Debiasing. In D. J. Kholer & N. Harvey (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of judgment and decision making (chapter 16). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Redelmeier, D. A., & Kahneman, D. (1996). Patients’ memories of painful medical treatments: Real-time and retrospective evaluations of two minimally invasive procedures. Pain, 66, 3–8.
Shefrin, H. (2002). Beyond greed and fear: Understanding behavioral finance and the psychology of investing. New York: Oxford University Press.
Simon, H. A. (1990). Invariants of human behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 41, 1–19.
Slovic, P. (2000). The perception of risk. London: Earthscan Publications.
Slovic, P., Finucane, M., Peters, E., & MacGregor, D. G. (2002). The affect heuristic. In T. Gilovich, D. Griffin, & D. Kahneman (Eds.), Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgments (chapter 23). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Statman, M., Fisher, K. L., & Anginer, D. (2008). Affect in a behavioral asset-pricing model. Financial Analysts Journal, 64, 20–29.
Stiggelbout, A. M., de Vries, M., & Scherer, L. (2015). Medical decision making. In G. Karen & G. Wu (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell handbook of judgment and decision making volume ii (chapter 27). Chichester: Wiley.
Thaler, R. H. (1999). Mental accounting matters. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 12, 183–206.
Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2008). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124–1131.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Rubaltelli, E. (2020). Heuristics. In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_1-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_1-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-98390-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-98390-5
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences