“Heuristics”: The Mental Shortcuts Of Human Thinking
Vertebrate animals are characterized by face dozens of crucial decisions in our daily lives. When to rest, with whom to interact, when we should flee and when not, what meaning does a visual stimulus have… all this falls within the repertoire of small daily dilemmas whose resolution is an inevitable consequence of living in complex environments.
Furthermore, when the vertebrate animal in question is the Homo sapiens In modern societies, these decisions multiply to become massive waves of issues that require our attention: who to vote for, where to look for work, which managers to delegate tasks to, etc. There are many questions and not all of them are easy to answer and, however, with some exceptions, we solve them with astonishing ease and without having to go into a nervous breakdown. How is this explained? The answer is that, in part, we do not solve these questions as they are presented to us, but rather we take mental shortcuts called heuristics
In psychology, a heuristic is a rule that is followed in a way unconscious to reformulate a problem posed and transform it into a simpler one that can be solved easily and almost automatic In short, it is a kind of mental trick to guide decision-making along easier paths of thought. Let’s think, for example, about the following dilemma, which we will call “original problem”:
For anyone who believes in representative democracy, this is a relatively important decision, which requires deep reflection on several issues (environmental management, gender policy, anti-corruption proposals, etc.) and for which there is a very limited range. of possible responses (abstention, blank vote, null vote or valid vote for one of the candidates). Clearly, reaching the decision of who to vote for according to the different criteria and parameters that appear in the electoral programs is a difficult task. So hard that no one does it Instead of answering the initial question, a particularly seductive heuristic may loom in the minds of some voters:
This is a very different problem than the first. So different, in fact, that it deserves a distinct name: for example, “simplified problem.” This is where heuristic thinking influences. He simplified problem only includes one dimension that must be considered, an evaluation scale that can be expressed from 0 (I really dislike them all) to 10 (this match is not bad) and whose answer will be based only on subjective impressions. However, this second question has a equivalence relation with the previous one: we give you an answer to use to answer the first one.
In this case, the winning option resulting from the heuristic process, which in this case is the name of a political party, will be transported back to the world of thoughtful reflections and will take its seat at the end of the original question as if nothing had happened.
The easy decision is the automatic decision
All of the above occurs without the voter we use for this example noticing what has happened. While this psychological process is guided by the logic of involuntary heuristics it is not even necessary for the voter to set out to transform the original problem into a simplified problem: this will happen automatically, because deciding whether or not to follow this strategy is itself an added setback that the busy conscious mind does not want to deal with.
The existence of this heuristic will make it possible a quick and convenient answer to a complex question and, therefore, will give up the intention of dedicating time and resources to searching for the most exact answer. These mental shortcuts are a kind of lesser evil that is used in the face of the impossibility of addressing each and every one of the problems that must be faced, theoretically, by an awake and rational style of thinking. Therefore, the consequences of letting yourself be guided by them are not always positive.
An example of heuristic thinking
At the end of the eighties, one of the experiments that best exemplified a case of thinking guided by a heuristic was carried out. A team of psychologists asked a series of young Germans two very specific questions:
The interest of this experiment was in studying the possible existence of correlation between the answers to these two questions, that is, if there was any relationship between the answer given to one of the questions and the one given to the other. The results were negative. Both seemed to deliver results regardless of what was answered about the other. However, by reversing the order of the questions and pose them in this way to another group of young people, a very significant correlation did appear. People who responded that they had had a number of dates close to 0 were also more pessimistic when it came to assessing their level of happiness. What had happened?
According to the rules of the heuristic, the most likely explanation is that the people in the second group had extended the answer from the first question, the easiest to answer, to the second, the resolution of which would involve thinking for a while. Thus, while the young people in the first group had no choice but to look for an answer to the question “do you feel happy these days?”, those in the second group unconsciously replaced this question with the one they had answered seconds before, that of the quotes. Thus, for them the happiness that was asked about in the experiment had become a very specific type of happiness, easier to value That of happiness related to love life.
The case of the young Germans is not an isolated case. The question about happiness is also replaced when it is preceded by a question related to the economic situation or family relationships of the experimental subject. In all these cases, the question that is asked first makes it easier to follow the heuristic when answering the second thanks to a priming .
Is the use of heuristics common?
Everything seems to indicate that yes, it is very common. The fact that heuristics respond to pragmatic criteria suggests that, where there is decision-making to which we do not dedicate the effort it deserves, there is a trace of heuristics. This basically means that a large part of our mental processes are discretely guided by this logic. Prejudices, for example, are one of the ways that mental shortcuts can take when dealing with a reality about which we lack data (What is this specific Japanese person like?).
Now, we should also ask ourselves if the use of the heuristic resource is desirable. On this issue there are opposing positions even among experts. One of the great specialists in decision making, psychologist Daniel Kahneman, believes that it is worth reducing the use of these cognitive shortcuts as much as we can, since they lead to biased conclusions. Gerd Gigerenzer, however, embodies a somewhat more moderate position, arguing that heuristics can be a useful and relatively effective way to solve problems that we would otherwise get stuck on.
Of course, there are reasons to be cautious. From a rational perspective, it cannot be justified that our attitudes towards certain people and political options are conditioned by prejudices and light ways of thinking Furthermore, it is worrying to think what can happen if the minds behind large projects and business movements obey the power of heuristics. It is credible, considering that it has been seen how Wall Street stock prices can be influenced by the presence or absence of clouds that block the sun.
In any case, it is clear that the empire of the heuristic is vast and has yet to be explored. The diversity of situations in which a mental shortcut can be applied is practically infinite, and the consequences of following or not following a heuristic also seem to be important. What is certain is that, although our brain is designed like a maze in which our conscious mind tends to get lost in a thousand minute operations, our unconscious has learned to discover and explore many of the secret passages that remain a mystery to us.
