It’s late at night. Rain is pouring. You know you have to catch the next bus, or else you’ll be standing soaking wet for the next hour. You see two ways: one that goes through a dark alley and another along a busy street. Without thinking much, you choose the busy street because it feels safer. In just a split second, your brain made a decision that seems smart and quick – but did it really consider all the facts? This is what happens when we use mental shortcuts, or what psychologists call “heuristics”.

What are heuristics?

Think of them as the brain’s cheat codes for making fast decisions. They are simple strategies that help us solve problems or make choices without using much time or mental energy. This doesn’t mean they always give us perfect answers, though. Let’s go through some common types of heuristics and see how they shape our thinking.

Availability heuristic

Many people feel more scared of flying than driving, even though car accidents are much more frequent than plane crashes. This shortcut – called the availability heuristic – makes us think something is more likely or important simply because it comes to mind first. If we hear about an event a lot, like a plane crash on the news, we think it happens more often than it actually does. The same thing might happen if we had a terrible experience with customer service at some store, and now we avoid going there, even though everything was fine several times before.

Representativeness heuristic

Imagine meeting someone who’s an introvert, doesn’t leave the house a lot and loves video games. If you had to guess their profession, it’s likely that your answer would be “IT”. This is how the representativeness heuristic works – we judge how likely something is based on how close it is to the “typical example” of some category we have in our mind. While it often works, it also leads to thinking in stereotypes.

Primacy and recency effect

Our brains pay the most attention to the first information we receive and the most recent one. The easiest way to test it is by trying to remember a list of words, for example a shopping list. Let’s say you have to buy apples, bread, milk, tomatoes, eggs, flour and cheese. Read this list once, wait a minute and try to say off the top of your head what was on it. There’s a high chance the first things that you recall will be apples and cheese. The primacy effect makes you remember apples, because it’s the first word you saw. On the other hand, you remember cheese because of the recency effect – it’s the freshest information you got, so it’s still vivid in your memory.

Familiarity heuristic

Have you ever chosen a product simply because you recognize the brand name, even if you know nothing about it? When something feels familiar, our brains automatically label it as safe or good. It’s like picking your favourite candy because you’ve had it a hundred times before, even though there might be something tastier or healthier right next to it.

Why do we use heuristics?

Our brains love shortcuts because they save time and energy. Think about all the decisions you make in a day – what to wear, what to eat, how to respond to messages. If we analysed every choice in detail, we’d never get anything done. Heuristics help us handle the daily overload of information and make quick decisions when time is short or when we don’t have all the facts.

However, they can be risky as well. Sometimes they lead to biased thinking and mistakes. For example, we tend to judge an entire group of people based on a few individuals belonging to it, especially if we’ve had a bad experience with them. That’s a quick way to keep the stereotypes going, which can be harmful and not accurate at all.

Heuristics are not entirely good or bad – it’s just how our brains work, and we can’t really avoid it. Being aware of their mechanisms doesn’t change the fact we’re using them, but if you have more time to make a decision or a judgement, you can ask yourself “Am I using a shortcut? And if so, is it the right one for this situation?”.

Anna Wojdziak

Sources:

Tversky, A., Kahneman, D., & Slovic, P. (1982). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.