Psychology In
psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules, either learned or inculcated by evolutionary processes. These psychological heuristics have been proposed to explain how people make decisions, come to judgements, and solve problems. These rules typically come into play when people face complex problems or incomplete information. Researchers employ various methods to test whether people use these rules. The rules have been shown to work well under most circumstances, but in certain cases can lead to systematic errors or
cognitive biases.
Philosophy A
heuristic device is used when an entity
X exists to enable understanding of, or knowledge concerning, some other entity
Y. A good example is a
model that, as
it is never identical with what it models, is a heuristic device to enable understanding of what it models. Stories, metaphors, etc., can also be termed heuristic in this sense. A classic example is the notion of
utopia as described in
Plato's best-known work,
The Republic. This means that the "ideal city" as depicted in
The Republic is not given as something to be pursued, or to present an orientation-point for development. Rather, it shows how things would have to be connected, and how one thing would lead to another (often with highly problematic results), if one opted for certain principles and carried them through rigorously.
Heuristic is also often used as a
noun to describe a
rule of thumb, procedure, or method. Philosophers of science have emphasised the importance of heuristics in creative thought and the construction of scientific theories. Seminal works include
Karl Popper's
The Logic of Scientific Discovery and others by
Imre Lakatos,
Lindley Darden, and
William C. Wimsatt.
Law In
legal theory, especially in the theory of
law and economics, heuristics are used in the
law when
case-by-case analysis would be impractical, insofar as "practicality" is defined by the interests of a governing body. The present securities regulation regime largely assumes that all investors act as perfectly rational persons. In truth, actual investors face cognitive limitations from biases, heuristics, and framing effects. For instance, in all states in the United States the
legal drinking age for unsupervised persons is 21 years, because it is argued that people need to be mature enough to make decisions involving the risks of
alcohol consumption. However, assuming people mature at different rates, the specific age of 21 would be too late for some and too early for others. In this case, the somewhat arbitrary delineation is used because it is impossible or impractical to tell whether an individual is sufficiently mature for society to trust them with that kind of responsibility. Some proposed changes, however, have included the completion of an alcohol education course rather than the attainment of 21 years of age as the criterion for legal alcohol possession. This would put youth alcohol policy more on a case-by-case basis and less on a heuristic one, since the completion of such a course would presumably be voluntary and not uniform across the population. The same reasoning applies to
patent law.
Patents are justified on the grounds that inventors must be protected so they have incentive to invent. It is therefore argued that it is in society's best interest that inventors receive a temporary government-granted
monopoly on their idea, so that they can recoup investment costs and make economic profit for a limited period. In the United States, the length of this temporary monopoly is 20 years from the date the patent application was filed, though the monopoly does not actually begin until the application has matured into a patent. However, like the drinking age problem above, the specific length of time would need to be different for every product to be efficient. A 20-year term is used because it is difficult to tell what the number should be for any individual patent. More recently, some, including
University of North Dakota law professor Eric E. Johnson, have argued that patents in different kinds of industries – such as
software patents – should be protected for different lengths of time.
Artificial intelligence The
bias–variance tradeoff gives insight into describing the less-is-more strategy. A
heuristic can be used in
artificial intelligence systems while searching a
solution space. The heuristic is derived by using some function that is put into the system by the designer, or by adjusting the weight of branches based on how likely each branch is to lead to a
goal node.
Behavioural economics Heuristics refers to the cognitive shortcuts that individuals use to simplify decision-making processes in economic situations.
Behavioral economics is a field that integrates insights from psychology and economics to better understand how people make decisions. Anchoring and adjustment is one of the most extensively researched heuristics in behavioural economics. Anchoring is the tendency of people to make future judgements or conclusions based too heavily on the original information supplied to them. This initial knowledge functions as an anchor, and it can influence future judgements even if the anchor is entirely unrelated to the decisions at hand. Adjustment, on the other hand, is the process through which individuals make gradual changes to their initial judgements or conclusions.
Anchoring and adjustment has been observed in a wide range of decision-making contexts, including financial decision-making, consumer behavior, and negotiation. Researchers have identified a number of strategies that can be used to mitigate the effects of anchoring and adjustment, including providing multiple anchors, encouraging individuals to generate alternative anchors, and providing cognitive prompts to encourage more deliberative decision-making. Other heuristics studied in behavioral economics include the
representativeness heuristic, which refers to the tendency of individuals to categorize objects or events based on how similar they are to typical examples, and the
availability heuristic, which refers to the tendency of individuals to judge the likelihood of an event based on how easily it comes to mind. ==Stereotyping==