What Are Representative Heuristics

The Heuristic-Systematic Model reveals two possible routes that an individual processes information. The route chosen by the perceiver will determine if he or she will be socially influenced by the dominant group. When individuals perceive information systematically, they are assessing and weighing all the information presented by the dominant group; moreover, these individuals use a high level of cognition to make thoughtful judgments about the dominant group. Through the path of heuristics, individuals use shortcuts or cues to process information about the dominant group. Minimal cognition is required for individuals to employ the heuristics into information processing. Here is an example that demonstrates how the heuristic route exerts social influence. In Burning Sands, the pledges experience

In research, there is no right or wrong process; although there are many heuristics that can be passed on. Appropriate use of information requires that we see knowledge acquirement as fluid and varying. (Jones, 1996)

Two phenomena- hindsight bias and judgmental overconfidence- illustrate why we can’t rely solely on intuition and common sense.

Persons (1989) suggested that a case formulation may explain how current problems are being precipitated and how they actually make sense in the light of the hypothesised underlying beliefs and current triggers. These also may suggest origins of the underlying beliefs in the client’s early life. Judith Beck (1995), Melanie Fennell (1989) and others have expanded this view of the cognitive formulation to include Core Beliefs and Assumptions which are linked to the Automatic Thoughts specific to a given situation.

This hybrid model states that clinicians may tend to be more intuitive when rapid or high stakes decisions are required and more analytical when there is less time pressure and more quantifiable data available from which to make a decision. Lastly, Sensemaking is another decision-making approach applied to understand the process of human behavior. Sensemaking acknowledges that the effort required to make a decision involves evolving impressions and dynamic feedback that causes shifts in attention to decipher information. This model can be useful to review an incident to better understand the context in which actions were taken in an effort to help create better conditions for making future

A psychological research suggested that once people begin to form an impression, they unwillingly interpret, seek and begin to create behavioral decision making, and data can verify that (Rassin, Eric; Sommer, Samuel; Miller, Monica; Yaniv, Oren). Even if there is no prior personally relevant reason to confirm a hypothesis, people seem to favor confirmation as the default testing strategy. Further hypothesized that the preference for confirming evidence is influenced by two main factors, Facts v. Perception.

There are 3 different types of Heuristics. I decided to write about the Availability Heuristic. In the book, You Are Not So Smart by, David McRaney he explains how the availability heuristic is making a choice based on an immediate and easy example that comes to mind when evaluating a decision. Usually, this happens when you hear something from a friend or family member and immediately assume it is true without gathering any information, and just stop or continue whatever the problem was. When I was younger, I would always want dark hair. My mom at that time would not let me dye my hair. I remembered my aunt telling me that coffee was a good way to get darker hair. I quickly gathered all the materials and hid

The book defined availability heuristic as the mental shortcut people take to quickly come up with a solution to a situation based on how easily it comes to mind. The example was about if there were more words that began with the letter “k” or words that had “k” in the third position. Most of the participants said that there were more words that began with the letter “k” because we have organized our minds into a linear fashion and it is difficult to look up words with the third letter being “k” and think of words that start with “k.” Even though the book says there are three times more words with “k” in the third position This is important because it allowed me insight on the own shortcuts I take in my thinking, and how I might not be seeing the entire picture.

In Cognitive theory, to know a client’s mental or cognition process contributes to understanding the client. Cognitive theory places emphasis on why and what is causing the behaviors. The correlation between rational and behaviors helps with effectively assisting clients with things like anxiety. According to Walsh, “structural practitioners assert that when a family established appropriate authority, rules, subsystems, and boundaries, the emotional lives and behaviors of its members will develop in ways that are mutually satisfactory” (Walsh 2013).

I have made inappropriate judgments based on availability heuristic many times over the years. I can recall one case in particular from my childhood during the early days of AIDS coming into public view. Around the age of 10, I remember watching a particularly disturbing news report on AIDS, and although the details of the report are lost to me now, at the time they were fighting. I had a very limited understanding of the disease and how it was contracted, and coincidentally I woke up the next morning not feeling well, convinced that I somehow had been infected with the dreaded disease.

The term heuristic comes from the Greek word ‘eurisko’ which means to discover and to learn by doing. Furthermore the term heuristic play has been described by Elinor Goldschmied as an early stage of exploratory play where children enjoy filling and emptying, putting things in and taking them out and using different types of containers. As children grow their curiosity about the world develops and as babies begin to grow out of treasure baskets and are no longer content with simply holding and feeling, heuristic play is the natural progression to allow children to begin to understand what items do. Toddlers begin to have a natural curiosity to understand the different ways objects work and how they interact with each other. For example a toddler

After reading chapter 10, I think that another way to define representativeness heuristic could be looking at information and making a judgement based on part of that information, but not based on any facts. Also, I think this is largely making assumptions and predictions that generally are not correct, simply due to preexisting thoughts and beliefs. I think that an example of this that is not mentioned in this chapter could be if a person is driving and they hit several green lights in a row, they may predict the next time they drive they will hit all red lights. In reality, there is no actual way to predict if you will hit a red or green light, this is just something you deal with as it comes, and it does not matter what occurred previously.

Availability heuristic can be defined as making a choice based on immediate and easy examples that comes to the mind more easily when evaluating a decision. Even though availability heuristic has many pros such as saving time when making a choice, it does come with cons. This is because the availability heuristic distorts our understanding of real threats and risks. For example, Tom is a 10-year-old boy that adores puppies and loves playing with them. One day he saw a puppy bite its owner. Due to this small incident, Tom avoids playing with puppies even though the likelihood of it happening is slim. Since this heuristic draws from immediate and easy examples, it uses system 1 to evaluate our decisions. As we already know system 1 can lead to a lot of incorrect assessments in comparison to system 2.

This technique is also known as proactive technique. This technique is similar to signature based technique, with a difference that instead of searching for a particular signature in the code, the malware detector now searches for the commands or instructions that are not present in the application program. The result is that, here it becomes easy to detect new variants of malware that had not yet been discovered. Different heuristic analysis techniques are:

Anchoring is described as starting the decision-making process at a point that you know or are familiar with, the anchor, and then adjusting in whichever direction you believe to be correct (Thaler and Sunstein 23). The second heuristic, availability, is an assessment of risk based on how quickly an individual can think of examples of a given threat (Thaler and Sunstein 25). The third and final heuristic is representativeness, which is described as the "similarity heuristic". People will often employ stereotypes when asked how similar object A is to object B, and this heuristic is used because it is typically effective (Thaler and Sunstein 26). I'd like to go more in depth on the first heuristic, anchoring, due to the fact that it is heavily rooted in psychology - priming the brain, specifically. Thaler and Sunstein illustrate an experiment in which college students were asked two different questions - the first asking about their personal happiness and the second asking how often the individual was dating (Thaler and Sunstein 24). The correlation had a drastic increase when the dating question was asked initially - priming the brain to associate one's love life with happiness. The dating question gives an individual a "starting point" for the thought process, which gives the interviewer more