Heuristic

• The availability heuristic: a mental shortcut in which we use the information that we first think of to make a judgement. 
• The availability heuristic:

○uses information which is readily available or easy to imagine

is often influenced by information that is recent, frequent, vivid or emotionally significant

• assumes that information that can be recalled easily must be significant or lead us towards a satisfactory response.
• Consider the following question. Which profession is more dangerous: being a police officer or being a garbage collector?

Garbage collectors are twice as likely to die at work than police officers.

The representative heuristic: a mental shortcut in decision-making where we estimate the likelihood of something occurring or being true based on its similarity to our existing understanding and expectations.

The representative heuristic:

allows us to quickly categorize information

can lead to a biased or inaccurate estimation of probability, often for scenarios that we couldn’t know the answer to

The affect heuristic



○is useful as it allows for decisions to occur quickly and efficiently

○can lead us to make decisions without taking the time to weigh up all relevant information

○leads us to make judgements about certain words, images and objects because of the emotional response they prompt.