Heuristic

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A heuristic (/hjʊˈrɪstɪk/; from Ancient Greek εὑρίσκω (heurískō) 'to discover, method of discovery, serving to guide, reveal'),[1] or heuristic technique,[2] is any approach to problem solving that employs a pragmatic method that is not fully optimized, perfected, or rationalized, but is nevertheless "good enough" as an approximation or attribute substitution.[3][4] Where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical, heuristic methods can be used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution.[5] Heuristics can be mental shortcuts that ease the cognitive load of making a decision.[6][7][8]

Overview[edit]

Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier (2011) state that heuristics are a sub-set of strategy.[9]

A heuristic is a strategy that ignores part of the information, with the goal of making decisions more quickly, frugally, and/or accurately than more complex methods (Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier [2011], p. 454; see also Todd et al. [2012], p. 7).[10]

— S. Chow, "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'", The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

Heuristics are strategies based on rules to generate optimal decisions, like lexicographic rules and the utility maximization problem.[11] These strategies depend on using readily accessible, though loosely applicable, information to control problem solving in human beings, machines and abstract issues.[12][13] When an individual applies a heuristic in practice, it generally performs as expected. However it can alternatively create systematic errors.[14]

The most fundamental heuristic is trial and error, which can be used in everything from matching nuts and bolts to finding the values of variables in algebra problems. In mathematics, some common heuristics involve the use of visual representations, additional assumptions, forward/backward reasoning and simplification. Here are a few commonly used heuristics from George Pólya's 1945 book, How to Solve It:[15]

  • If you are having difficulty understanding a problem, try drawing a picture.
  • If you can't find a solution, try assuming that you have a solution and seeing what you can derive from that ("working backward").
  • If the problem is abstract, try examining a concrete example.
  • Try solving a more general problem first (the "inventor's paradox": the more ambitious plan may have more chances of success).

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.[16]

Heuristic rigour models[edit]

One-reason decisions[edit]

One-reason decisions are algorithms that are made of three rules: search rules, confirmation rules (stopping), and decision rules[17][18][19]

Recognition-based decisions[edit]

A class that's function is to determine and filter out superfluous things.[27]

Tracking heuristics[edit]

Tracking heuristics is a class of heuristics.[32]

Trade-off[edit]

Social heuristics[edit]

Social heuristics – Decision-making processes in social environments[37]

Others[edit]

Meta-heuristic[edit]

History[edit]

The study of heuristics in human decision-making was developed in the 1970s and the 1980s, by the psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman,[54] although the concept had been originally introduced by the Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon. Simon's original primary object of research was problem solving that showed that we operate within what he calls bounded rationality. He coined the term satisficing, which denotes a situation in which people seek solutions, or accept choices or judgements, that are "good enough" for their purposes although they could be optimised.[55]

Rudolf Groner analysed the history of heuristics from its roots in ancient Greece up to contemporary work in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence,[56] proposing a cognitive style "heuristic versus algorithmic thinking", which can be assessed by means of a validated questionnaire.[57]

Adaptive toolbox[edit]

The adaptive toolbox contains strategies for fabricating heuristic devices.[58] The core mental capacities are recall (memory), frequency, object permanence, and imitation.[59] Gerd Gigerenzer and his research group argued that models of heuristics need to be formal to allow for predictions of behavior that can be tested.[60] They study the fast and frugal heuristics in the "adaptive toolbox" of individuals or institutions, and the ecological rationality of these heuristics; that is, the conditions under which a given heuristic is likely to be successful.[61] The descriptive study of the "adaptive toolbox" is done by observation and experiment, while the prescriptive study of ecological rationality requires mathematical analysis and computer simulation. Heuristics – such as the recognition heuristic, the take-the-best heuristic and fast-and-frugal trees – have been shown to be effective in predictions, particularly in situations of uncertainty. It is often said that heuristics trade accuracy for effort but this is only the case in situations of risk. Risk refers to situations where all possible actions, their outcomes and probabilities are known. In the absence of this information, that is under uncertainty, heuristics can achieve higher accuracy with lower effort.[62] This finding, known as a less-is-more effect, would not have been found without formal models. The valuable insight of this program is that heuristics are effective not despite their simplicity – but because of it. Furthermore, Gigerenzer and Wolfgang Gaissmaier found that both individuals and organisations rely on heuristics in an adaptive way.[63]

Cognitive-experiential self-theory[edit]

Heuristics, through greater refinement and research, have begun to be applied to other theories, or be explained by them. For example, the cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST) is also an adaptive view of heuristic processing. CEST breaks down two systems that process information. At some times, roughly speaking, individuals consider issues rationally, systematically, logically, deliberately, effortfully, and verbally. On other occasions, individuals consider issues intuitively, effortlessly, globally, and emotionally.[64] From this perspective, heuristics are part of a larger experiential processing system that is often adaptive, but vulnerable to error in situations that require logical analysis.[65]

Attribute substitution[edit]

In 2002, Daniel Kahneman and Shane Frederick proposed that cognitive heuristics work by a process called attribute substitution, which happens without conscious awareness.[66] According to this theory, when somebody makes a judgement (of a "target attribute") that is computationally complex, a more easily calculated "heuristic attribute" is substituted. In effect, a cognitively difficult problem is dealt with by answering a rather simpler problem, without being aware of this happening.[66] This theory explains cases where judgements fail to show regression toward the mean.[67] Heuristics can be considered to reduce the complexity of clinical judgments in health care.[68]

Academic disciplines[edit]

Psychology[edit]

A heuristic is stored in the memory.[69]

Philosophy[edit]

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.[70] Philosophers of science have emphasised the importance of heuristics in creative thought and the construction of scientific theories.[71] Seminal works include Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery and others by Imre Lakatos,[72] Lindley Darden, and William C. Wimsatt.

Law[edit]

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.[73]

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.[74]

Artificial intelligence[edit]

The bias–variance tradeoff gives insight into describing the less-is-more strategy.[75] 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[edit]

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,[76] 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.[77]

Stereotyping[edit]

Stereotyping is a type of heuristic that people use to form opinions or make judgements about things they have never seen or experienced.[78] They work as a mental shortcut to assess everything from the social status of a person (based on their actions),[8] to classifying a plant as a tree based on it being tall, having a trunk, and that it has leaves (even though the person making the evaluation might never have seen that particular type of tree before).

Stereotypes, as first described by journalist Walter Lippmann in his book Public Opinion (1922), are the pictures we have in our heads that are built around experiences as well as what we are told about the world.[79][80]

See also[edit]

Notable[edit]

Figures[edit]

Historical works[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Hughes, Barnabas (1974). "Heuristic Teaching in Mathematics". Educational Studies in Mathematics. 5 (3): 291–99. Retrieved 5 May 2024. The word heuristic is taken directly from the Greek verb, heuriskein, 'to discover'. As a noun it is defined as 'a technique of discovery' and as an adjective, it means 'serving to guide, discover, or reveal'. The more common designation for all of this is 'the discovery method'.
  2. ^ Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Not only is 'heuristic' used in diverse ways across and within disciplines, but its meaning has evolved over the years.
  3. ^ Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Kahneman & Frederick (2002) proposed that a heuristic assesses a target attribute by another property (attribute substitution) that comes more readily to mind.
  4. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd (2005). "I Think, Therefore I Err". Social Research. 72 (1): 195–218. Retrieved 5 May 2024. A good error is a consequence of the adaptation of mental heuristics to the structure of environments. This ecological view is illustrated by visual illusions. Not making good errors would destroy human intelligence.
  5. ^ Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Heuristics are commonly understood as economical shortcut procedures that may not lead to optimal or correct results, but will generally produce outcomes that are in some sense satisfactory or 'good enough'.
  6. ^ Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Shah & Oppenheimer (2008) proposed that all heuristics rely on effort reduction by one or more of the following: (a) examining fewer cues, (b) reducing the effort of retrieving cue values, (c) simplifying the weighting of cues, (d) integrating less information, and (e) examining fewer alternatives.
  7. ^ Myers, David G. (2010). Social psychology (Tenth ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. p. 94. ISBN 978-0-07337-066-8. OCLC 667213323.
  8. ^ a b "Heuristics—Explanation and examples". Conceptually. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021. Retrieved 23 October 2019.
  9. ^ Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Heuristics are a subset of strategies; strategies also include complex regression or Bayesian models.
  10. ^ Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. Retrieved 5 May 2024. In a recent review article written with Wolfgang Gaissmaier, the following definition is proposed:
  11. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd; Brighton, Henry (2009). "Homo Heuristicus: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences". Topics in Cognitive Science. 1 (1): 107–143. doi:10.1111/j.1756-8765.2008.01006.x. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Another negative and substantial consequence was that computational models of heuristics, such as lexicographic rules (Fishburn, 1974) and elimination-by-aspects (Tversky, 1972), became replaced by one-word labels: availability, representativeness, and anchoring.
  12. ^ Pearl, Judea (1983). Heuristics: Intelligent Search Strategies for Computer Problem Solving. New York, NY: Addison-Wesley. p. vii. ISBN 978-0-201-05594-8.
  13. ^ Emiliano, Ippoliti (2015). Heuristic Reasoning: Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-3-319-09159-4. Archived from the original on 2019-07-11. Retrieved 2015-11-24.
  14. ^ Sunstein, Cass (2005). "Moral Heuristics". The Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 28 (4): 531–542. doi:10.1017/S0140525X05000099. PMID 16209802. S2CID 231738548.
  15. ^ Pólya, George (1945) How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02356-5 ISBN 0-691-08097-6
  16. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd (1991). "How to Make Cognitive Illusions Disappear: Beyond "Heuristics and Biases"" (PDF). European Review of Social Psychology. 2: 83–115. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.336.9826. doi:10.1080/14792779143000033. Archived (PDF) from the original on 5 September 2012. Retrieved 14 October 2012.
  17. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd; Brighton, Henry (2009). "Homo Heuristicus: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences". Topics in Cognitive Science. 1 (1): 107–143. doi:10.1111/j.1756-8765.2008.01006.x. Retrieved 6 May 2024. This stopping rule, termed a confirmation rule, works well in situations where (a) the decision maker knows little about the validity of the cues, and (b) the costs of cues are rather low (Karelaia, 2006).
  18. ^ Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. Retrieved 6 May 2024. One-reason decisions: a class of heuristics that bases judgments on one good reason only, ignoring other cues (e.g., take-the-best and hiatus heuristic)
  19. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd; Brighton, Henry (2009). "Homo Heuristicus: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences". Topics in Cognitive Science. 1 (1): 107–143. doi:10.1111/j.1756-8765.2008.01006.x. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Just as there is a class of such tracking heuristics, there is a class of one-good-reason heuristics, of which take-the-best is one member. These heuristics also have three building blocks: search rules, stopping rules, and decision rules.
  20. ^ Todd, P; Dieckmann, A (2004). "Heuristics for Ordering Cue Search in Decision Making". Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems: 13–18. Retrieved 6 May 2024. TTB consists of three building blocks. (1) Search rule: Search through cues in the order of their validity, a measure of accuracy equal to the proportion of correct decisions made by a cue out of all the times that cue discriminates between pairs of options. (2) Stopping rule: Stop search as soon as one cue is found that discriminates between the two options. (3) Decision rule: Select the option to which the discriminating cue points, that is, the option that has the cue value associated with higher criterion values.
  21. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd (2008). "Why Heuristics Work". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3 (1): 20–29. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Take the best (Gigerenzer & Goldstein, 1996). Infer which of two alternatives has the higher value by (a) searching through cues in order of validity, (b) stopping the search as soon as a cue discriminates, (c) choosing the alternative this cue favors.
  22. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd; Brighton, Henry (2009). "Homo Heuristicus: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences". Topics in Cognitive Science. 1 (1): 107–143. doi:10.1111/j.1756-8765.2008.01006.x. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Take-the-best is a member of the one-good-reason family of heuristics because of its stopping rule: Search is stopped after finding the first cue that enables an inference to be made.
  23. ^ Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Wubben & Wangenheim (2008) reported that experienced managers use a simple recency-of-last-purchase rule: 'Hiatus heuristic: If a customer has not purchased within a certain number of months (the hiatus), the customer is classified as inactive; otherwise, the customer is classified as active.'
  24. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd (2008). "Why Heuristics Work". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3 (1): 20–29. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Default heuristic (Johnson & Goldstein, 2003). If there is a default, do nothing about it.
  25. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd; Brighton, Henry (2009). "Homo Heuristicus: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences". Topics in Cognitive Science. 1 (1): 107–143. doi:10.1111/j.1756-8765.2008.01006.x. Retrieved 6 May 2024. The priority heuristic, a one-good-reason heuristic with no free parameters (Brandstätter, Gigerenzer, & Hertwig, 2008; Brandstätter et al., 2006) that has similar building blocks to take-the-best, has been shown to imply (not just have parameter sets that are consistent with) several of the major violations simultaneously, including the Allais paradox and the fourfold pattern (Katsikopoulos & Gigerenzer, 2008).
  26. ^ Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Johnson & Raab (2003) proposed a variant of the fluency heuristic when alternatives are sequentially retrieved rather than simultaneously perceived: 'Take-the-first heuristic: Choose the first alternative that comes to mind.'
  27. ^ Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Recognition-based decisions: a class of heuristics that bases judgments on recognition information only, ignoring other cues (e.g., recognition and fluency heuristic)
  28. ^ Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. Retrieved 6 May 2024. For two alternatives, the heuristic is defined as (Goldstein & Gigerenzer 2002): 'Recognition heuristic: If one of two alternatives is recognized and the other is not, then infer that the recognized alternative has the higher value with respect to the criterion.'
  29. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd (2008). "Why Heuristics Work". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3 (1): 20–29. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Recognition heuristic (Goldstein & Gigerenzer, 2002). If one of two alternatives is recognized, infer that it has the higher value on the criterion.
  30. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd (2008). "Why Heuristics Work". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3 (1): 20–29. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Fluency heuristic (Schooler & Hertwig, 2005). If one alternative is recognized faster than another, infer that it has the higher value on the criterion.
  31. ^ Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. Retrieved 6 May 2024. 'Fluency heuristic: If both alternatives are recognized but one is recognized faster, then infer that this alternative has the higher value with respect to the criterion.' The fluency heuristic builds on earlier work on fluency (Jacoby & Dallas 1981).
  32. ^ a b Gigerenzer, Gerd; Brighton, Henry (2009). "Homo Heuristicus: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences". Topics in Cognitive Science. 1 (1): 107–143. doi:10.1111/j.1756-8765.2008.01006.x. Retrieved 6 May 2024. The gaze heuristic introduced earlier has three building blocks. [...] there is a class of such tracking heuristics[.]
  33. ^ Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Trade-offs: a class of heuristics that weights all cues or alternatives equally and thus makes trade-offs (e.g., tallying and 1/N)
  34. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd (2008). "Why Heuristics Work". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3 (1): 20–29. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Tallying (unit-weight linear model; Dawes, 1979). To estimate a criterion, do not estimate weights but simply count the number of favoring cues.
  35. ^ Swire-Thompson, Briony; Ecker, Ullrich; Lewandowsky, Stephan; Berinsky, Adam (2020). "They Might Be a Liar But They're My Liar: Source Evaluation and the Prevalence of Misinformation". Political Psychology: 21–34. This also could be in accordance with the tallying heuristic where people count the number of arguments (for example, pros and cons) and disregard the relative importance of each argument (Bonnefon, Dubois, Fargier, & Leblois, 2008; Gigerenzer, 2004).
  36. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd (2008). "Why Heuristics Work". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3 (1): 20–29. Retrieved 5 May 2024. 1/N; equality heuristic (DeMiguel et al., 2006). Allocate resources equally to each of N alternatives.
  37. ^ Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. Retrieved 6 May 2024. [Social heuristics] include imitation heuristics, tit-for-tat, the social-circle heuristic, and averaging the judgments of others to exploit the 'wisdom of crowds' (Hertwig & Herzog 2009). Imitate the-successful, for instance, speeds up learning of cue orders and can find orders that excel take-the-best's validity order (Garcia-Retamero et al. 2009).
  38. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd (2008). "Why Heuristics Work". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3 (1): 20–29. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Imitate the majority (Boyd & Richerson, 2005). Look at a majority of people in your peer group, and imitate their behavior. Imitate the successful (Boyd &Richerson, 2005). Look for the most successful person and imitate his or her behavior.
  39. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd (2008). "Why Heuristics Work". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3 (1): 20–29. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Tit-for-tat (Axelrod, 1984). Cooperate first, keep a memory of Size 1, and then imitate your partner's last behavior.
  40. ^ Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. Retrieved 5 May 2024. However, a different meaning of 'heuristic' was invoked in psychology with the Gestalt theorists, and later with Simon's notion of 'satisficing'.
  41. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd (2008). "Why Heuristics Work". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3 (1): 20–29. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Satisficing (Simon, 1955; Todd & Miller, 1999). Search through alternatives, and choose the first one that exceeds your aspiration level.
  42. ^ Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Simon's (1955) satisficing heuristic searches through options in any order, stops as soon the first option exceeds an aspiration level, and chooses this option.
  43. ^ Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. Retrieved 5 May 2024. [T]he representativeness heuristic[:]Probabilities are evaluated by the degree to which one thing or event is representative of (resembles) another; the higher the representativeness (resemblance) the higher the probability estimation[.]
  44. ^ Lu, Yun; Vasko, Francis; Drummond, Trevor; Vasko, Lisa (2014). "Probability & Perception: The Representativeness Heuristic in Action". The Mathematics Teacher. 108 (2): 126–31. Retrieved 5 May 2024. The belief that a sequence such as 11111111111111111111 is less probable than a sequence such as 66234441536125563152 is often referred to as the representativeness heuristic (Kahneman and Tversky 1972; Shaughnessy 1977, 1992).
  45. ^ Kahneman, Daniel; Tversky, Amos (July 1973). "On the psychology of prediction". Psychological Review. 80 (4): 237–251. doi:10.1037/h0034747. ISSN 1939-1471. Archived from the original on 2023-10-28. Retrieved 2023-05-09.
  46. ^ Tversky, Amos; Kahneman, Daniel (1973-09-01). "Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability". Cognitive Psychology. 5 (2): 207–232. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(73)90033-9. ISSN 0010-0285. Archived from the original on 2023-10-28. Retrieved 2023-08-24.
  47. ^ Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. Retrieved 5 May 2024. [T]he availability heuristic[:]The frequency of a class or the probability of an event is assessed according to the ease with which instances or associations can be brought to mind (Tversky and Kahneman [1974])
  48. ^ Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Max Wertheimer, who was a close friend of Einstein, and his fellow Gestalt psychologists spoke of heuristic methods such as 'looking around' to guide search for information.
  49. ^ Wacquant, Loic (1985). "Heuristic Models in Marxian Theory". Social Forces. 64 (1): 17–45. Retrieved 6 May 2024. In building social theory, Marx used not one (as generally regarded) but three heuristic models: base-superstructure, organic totality, and dialectical development.
  50. ^ Hey, Spencer (2016). "Heuristics and Meta-Heuristics in Scientific Judgement". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 67 (2): 471–95. Retrieved 5 May 2024. The continuum limit heuristic is one member of a more general class of heuristics for variable reduction (Wilson [2007], pp. 184-92).
  51. ^ Petersen, Michael (2015). "Evolutionary Political Psychology: On the Origin and Structure of Heuristics and Biases in Politics". Political Psychology. 36 (1): 45–78. Retrieved 5 May 2024. One of the political heuristics that has been most studied from an evolutionary perspective is the deservingness heuristic.[...] the deservingness heuristic is the psychological tendency of people to base their opinions about welfare programs on the efforts of the recipients. Specifically, the heuristic motivates people to support welfare benefits to recipients who are represented as victims of bad luck and reject benefits to recipients who are represented as lazy.
  52. ^ a b c Hart, Sergiu (2005). "Adaptive Heuristics". Econometrica. 73 (5): 1401–30. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Adaptive heuristics commonly appear in behavioral models, such as reinforcement, feedback, and stimulus-response.
  53. ^ Todd, P; Dieckmann, A (2004). "Heuristics for Ordering Cue Search in Decision Making". Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems: 13–18. Retrieved 6 May 2024. The even simpler Minimalist heuristic, which searches through available cues in a random order[.]
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  83. ^ Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Rather, as rules, heuristics are procedures that can be specified and applied in a given situation.
  84. ^ a b c d e Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. Retrieved 5 May 2024. [I]nfluential heuristics researchers, including George Polya, Herbert Simon, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, and Gerd Gigerenzer.
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  86. ^ Hey, Spencer (2016). "Heuristics and Meta-Heuristics in Scientific Judgement". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 67 (2): 471–95. Retrieved 5 May 2024. It is difficult to overstate the influence of Tversky and Kahneman's work and the so-called 'heuristics-and-biases research programme' that followed.
  87. ^ Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. Retrieved 5 May 2024. 'To choose a ripe cantaloupe, press the spot on the candidate cantaloupe where it was attached to the plant and smell it; if the spot smells like the inside of a cantaloupe, it's probably ripe' (Pearl [1984])
  88. ^ Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. Retrieved 5 May 2024. 'Start in the centre square when beginning a game of tic-tac-toe' (Dunbar [1998])
  89. ^ a b c d e Hughes, Barnabas (1974). "Heuristic Teaching in Mathematics". Educational Studies in Mathematics. 5 (3): 291–99. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Mauritz Johnson (1966) observes that the idea is hardly new, and that, ignoring the classical accreditation of its use to Socrates in the Meno, one finds an early discussion of discovery learning by David P. Page in his Theory and Practice of Teaching in 1847 as well as by later writers, Herbert Spencer in 1860, Frank and Charles McMurry in 1897, and William Chandler Babley in 1905.
  90. ^ Zalcman, Lawrence (1975). "A Heuristic Principle in Complex Function Theory". The American Mathematical Monthly. 82 (8): 813–18. Retrieved 5 May 2024.
  91. ^ Hey, Spencer (2016). "Heuristics and Meta-Heuristics in Scientific Judgement". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 67 (2): 471–95. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Lakatos ([1965]) also adopted the term to characterize his methodology of scientific research programmes, which would lead researchers to either avoid or pursue certain lines of inquiry 'negative' and 'positive' heuristics, respectively).
  92. ^ Hey, Spencer (2016). "Heuristics and Meta-Heuristics in Scientific Judgement". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 67 (2): 471–95. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Wimsatt's ([1980], [1981], [2006], [2007]) work on reductionist modelling strategies - also built upon Simon's programme of bounded rationality - provides an alternative starting point that is more useful for understanding the role that heuristics play in science.
  93. ^ Schaffner, Kenneth (2008). "Theories, Models, and Equations in Biology: The Heuristic Search for Emergent Simplifications in Neurobiology". Philosophy of Science. 75 (5): 1008–21. Retrieved 5 May 2024. In a series of papers beginning in 1980 and represented in his 2007 book, Bill Wimsatt analyzed a series of 'heuristics,' thought of as guides or 'rules of thumb,' which are employed when scientists proceed in a reductionist manner (1980, 2007).
  94. ^ a b Schaffner, Kenneth (2008). "Theories, Models, and Equations in Biology: The Heuristic Search for Emergent Simplifications in Neurobiology". Philosophy of Science. 75 (5): 1008–21. Retrieved 5 May 2024. In summary, Hodgkin and Huxley use heuristics in the Wimsatt sense, and the heuristics fall both into what Wimsatt calls reductionistic heuristics and also nonreductionistic heuristics.

Further reading[edit]