Familiarity heuristic

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In psychology, a heuristic is an easy-to-compute procedure or rule of thumb that people use when forming beliefs, judgments or decisions. The familiarity heuristic was developed based on the discovery of the availability heuristic by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman; it happens when the familiar is favored over novel places, people, or things. The familiarity heuristic can be applied to various situations that individuals experience in day-to-day life. When these situations appear similar to previous situations, especially if the individuals are experiencing a high cognitive load, they may regress to the state of mind in which they have felt or behaved before. This heuristic is useful in most situations and can be applied to many fields of knowledge; however, there are both positives and negatives to this heuristic as well.

Contents

Origin

Availability heuristic

The familiarity heuristic stems from the availability heuristic, which was studied by Tversky and Kahneman. The availability heuristic suggests that the likelihood of events is estimated based on how many examples of such events come to mind. Thus the familiarity heuristic shows how "bias of availability is related to the ease of recall." [1]

Tversky and Kahneman created an experiment in order to test this heuristic. They devised four lists of 39 names. Each list contained 19 female names and 20 male names. Half of the lists had famous female names, and the other half had famous male names. They showed the lists to two test groups. The first group was shown a list and asked to recall as many names as possible. The second group was shown a list and asked to determine if there were more female or more male names. The subjects who heard the list with famous female names said there were more female names than there were male names. Similarly, the subjects who heard the list with famous male names recalled more male names than female names. Thus the familiarity heuristic is defined as "judging events as more frequent or important because they are more familiar in memory." [1]

The familiarity heuristic is based on using schemas or past actions as a scaffold for behavior in a new (yet familiar) situation. This is useful because it saves time for the subject who is trying to figure out the appropriate behavior for a situation they have experienced before. Individuals automatically assume that their previous behavior will yield the same results when a similar situation arises. This technique is typically useful. However, certain behaviors can be inappropriate when the situation is different from the time before.

Hindsight bias

The hindsight bias is the inclination to see events that have already occurred as being more predictable than they were before they took place. For example, after a situation occurs for the first time, you begin to notice it when it reoccurs and therefore because you have now experienced it, it's more readily available in your consciousness and you pull information and predict aspects of the future because of this and think that you "knew it all along." "Hindsight bias results from a biased reconstruction of the original memory trace, using the outcome as a cue" [2] Hindsight bias can alter memories and therefore future predictions.

Important research

Recent studies have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to demonstrate that people use different areas of the brain when reasoning about familiar and unfamiliar situations. [3] This holds true over different kinds of reasoning problems. Familiar situations are processed in a system involving the frontal and temporal lobes whereas unfamiliar situations are processed in the frontal and parietal lobes. These two similar but dissociated processes provide a biological explanation for the differences between heuristic reasoning and formal logic.

Warm glow heuristic

Corneille, Monin & Pleyers (2004) showed that familiarity of human faces is based on attractiveness. In this study the researchers showed their subjects pictures of faces. The subjects were asked to rate how familiar the face was or was not using visual cues. The visual cues were choosing a picture of a butterfly (attractive) when the subject thought the face was familiar, and choosing a picture of a rat (unattractive) when the subject did not find the face familiar. The result of this study was that the subjects were more familiar when the face was attractive regardless of prior exposure to the picture (or person) itself. [4] This has been referred to as the warm glow effect (Monin 2003). [5] The warm glow effect states that positive stimuli seem more familiar because of the positive emotions they evoke in us. [4]

Applications

The familiarity heuristic increases the likelihood that customers will repeatedly buy products of the same brand. This concept is known as brand familiarity in consumer behavior. Due to the familiarity heuristic, the customers have the rule of thumb that their past behavior of buying this specific brand's product was most likely correct and should be repeated. A study examining the choice of various models of microwave ovens based on the subjects' familiarity with them showed that high familiarity with the features of microwave ovens allowed for a faster and more confident choice. [6]

This effect can also have important implications for medical decision making. Lay people tend to make health decisions that are based on familiarity and availability as opposed to factual knowledge about diseases. This means that they are more likely to take actions and pursue treatment options that have worked in the past, whether they are effective in the current situation or not. This also extends to treatments the patient has not used before but is familiar with. For example, a lay person may request a name-brand medication because they have heard of it before, even though a generic drug may be essentially the same but less expensive. Medical professionals are much more likely to use scientific facts to prescribe treatments. [7]

Current criticisms

There is some criticism of the concept of familiarity heuristic. It mainly focuses on the point that past behavior does influence present behavior but that this inherits from other, and differing contrivances. One study examining multiple possible mechanisms of how previous behavior influences the present found little support for the familiarity heuristic and tends to conclude instead that the influence of past behavior on a present one decreased when subjects were distracted. [8] However, in order for a heuristic to be valid, its effect should be more prevalent when individuals are distracted and their cognitive capacity is highly strained. This result indicates that it is unlikely that a familiarity heuristic was applied during the experiment.

Another limit of familiarity heuristic according to a study by Ouellette & Wood (1998) is that it might not always be applicable. [9] This study showed that the familiarity heuristic might only occur in situations where the target behavior is habitual and occurs in a stable context within the situation. Thus, the familiarity heuristic could be limited to habits and behaviors in routine situations.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognitive bias</span> Systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment

A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality.

A heuristic, or heuristic technique, is any approach to problem solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method that is not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, or rational, but is nevertheless sufficient for reaching an immediate, short-term goal or approximation. Where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical, heuristic methods can be used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Heuristics can be mental shortcuts that ease the cognitive load of making a decision.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amos Tversky</span> Israeli psychologist (1937–1996)

Amos Nathan Tversky was an Israeli cognitive and mathematical psychologist and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Behavioral economics</span> Academic discipline

Behavioral economics studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on the decisions of individuals or institutions, such as how those decisions vary from those implied by classical economic theory.

The availability heuristic, also known as availability bias, is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. This heuristic, operating on the notion that, if something can be recalled, it must be important, or at least more important than alternative solutions not as readily recalled, is inherently biased toward recently acquired information.

Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along phenomenon or creeping determinism, is the common tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they actually were. People often believe that after an event has occurred, they would have predicted or perhaps even would have known with a high degree of certainty what the outcome of the event would have been before the event occurred. Hindsight bias may cause distortions of memories of what was known or believed before an event occurred, and is a significant source of overconfidence regarding an individual's ability to predict the outcomes of future events. Examples of hindsight bias can be seen in the writings of historians describing outcomes of battles, physicians recalling clinical trials, and in judicial systems as individuals attribute responsibility on the basis of the supposed predictability of accidents.

The representativeness heuristic is used when making judgments about the probability of an event under uncertainty. It is one of a group of heuristics proposed by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the early 1970s as "the degree to which [an event] (i) is similar in essential characteristics to its parent population, and (ii) reflects the salient features of the process by which it is generated". Heuristics are described as "judgmental shortcuts that generally get us where we need to go – and quickly – but at the cost of occasionally sending us off course." Heuristics are useful because they use effort-reduction and simplification in decision-making.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trait ascription bias</span>

Trait ascription bias is the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior and mood while viewing others as much more predictable in their personal traits across different situations. More specifically, it is a tendency to describe one's own behaviour in terms of situational factors while preferring to describe another's behaviour by ascribing fixed dispositions to their personality. This may occur because peoples' own internal states are more readily observable and available to them than those of others.

The conjunction fallacy is an inference from an array of particulars, in violation of the laws of probability, that a conjoint set of two or more conclusions is likelier than any single member of that same set. It is a type of formal fallacy.

The anchoring effect is a cognitive bias whereby an individual's decisions are influenced by a particular reference point or 'anchor'. Both numeric and non-numeric anchoring have been reported in research. In numeric anchoring, once the value of the anchor is set, subsequent arguments, estimates, etc. made by an individual may change from what they would have otherwise been without the anchor. For example, an individual may be more likely to purchase a car if it is placed alongside a more expensive model. Prices discussed in negotiations that are lower than the anchor may seem reasonable, perhaps even cheap to the buyer, even if said prices are still relatively higher than the actual market value of the car. Another example may be when estimating the orbit of Mars, one might start with the Earth's orbit and then adjust upward until they reach a value that seems reasonable.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simulation heuristic</span> Mental strategy

The simulation heuristic is a psychological heuristic, or simplified mental strategy, according to which people determine the likelihood of an event based on how easy it is to picture the event mentally. Partially as a result, people experience more regret over outcomes that are easier to imagine, such as "near misses". The simulation heuristic was first theorized by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky as a specialized adaptation of the availability heuristic to explain counterfactual thinking and regret. However, it is not the same as the availability heuristic. Specifically the simulation heuristic is defined as "how perceivers tend to substitute normal antecedent events for exceptional ones in psychologically 'undoing' this specific outcome."

In psychology, the human mind is considered to be a cognitive miser due to the tendency of humans to think and solve problems in simpler and less effortful ways rather than in more sophisticated and effortful ways, regardless of intelligence. Just as a miser seeks to avoid spending money, the human mind often seeks to avoid spending cognitive effort. The cognitive miser theory is an umbrella theory of cognition that brings together previous research on heuristics and attributional biases to explain when and why people are cognitive misers.

Attribute substitution, also known as substitution bias, is a psychological process thought to underlie a number of cognitive biases and perceptual illusions. It occurs when an individual has to make a judgment that is computationally complex, and instead substitutes a more easily calculated heuristic attribute. This substitution is thought of as taking place in the automatic intuitive judgment system, rather than the more self-aware reflective system. Hence, when someone tries to answer a difficult question, they may actually answer a related but different question, without realizing that a substitution has taken place. This explains why individuals can be unaware of their own biases, and why biases persist even when the subject is made aware of them. It also explains why human judgments often fail to show regression toward the mean.

Fuzzy-trace theory (FTT) is a theory of cognition originally proposed by Valerie F. Reyna and Charles Brainerd that draws upon dual-trace conceptions to predict and explain cognitive phenomena, particularly in memory and reasoning. The theory has been used in areas such as cognitive psychology, human development, and social psychology to explain, for instance, false memory and its development, probability judgments, medical decision making, risk perception and estimation, and biases and fallacies in decision making.

Heuristics is the process by which humans use mental short cuts to arrive at decisions. Heuristics are simple strategies that humans, animals, organizations, and even machines use to quickly form judgments, make decisions, and find solutions to complex problems. Often this involves focusing on the most relevant aspects of a problem or situation to formulate a solution. While heuristic processes are used to find the answers and solutions that are most likely to work or be correct, they are not always right or the most accurate. Judgments and decisions based on heuristics are simply good enough to satisfy a pressing need in situations of uncertainty, where information is incomplete. In that sense they can differ from answers given by logic and probability.

<i>Thinking, Fast and Slow</i> 2011 book by Daniel Kahneman

Thinking, Fast and Slow is a 2011 book by psychologist Daniel Kahneman.

Illusion of validity is a cognitive bias in which a person overestimates their ability to interpret and predict accurately the outcome when analyzing a set of data, in particular when the data analyzed show a very consistent pattern—that is, when the data "tell" a coherent story.

Cognitive bias mitigation is the prevention and reduction of the negative effects of cognitive biases – unconscious, automatic influences on human judgment and decision making that reliably produce reasoning errors.

Social heuristics are simple decision making strategies that guide people's behavior and decisions in the social environment when time, information, or cognitive resources are scarce. Social environments tend to be characterised by complexity and uncertainty, and in order to simplify the decision making process, people may use heuristics, which are decision making strategies that involve ignoring some information or relying on simple rules of thumb.

References

  1. 1 2 Ashcraft, M.H. (2006). Cognition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey; Pearson Education Inc. ISBN   013198229X
  2. ↑ Bernstein, D. M.; Erdfelder, E; Meltzoff, A. N.; Peria, W; Loftus, G. R. (2011). "Hindsight bias from 3 to 95 years of age". Journal of Experimental Psychology. 37 (2): 378–391. doi:10.1037/a0021971. PMC   3084020 . PMID   21299327.
  3. ↑ Goel, V; Makale, M; Grafman, J (2004). "The Hippocampal System Mediates Logical Reasoning about Familiar Spatial Environments". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 16 (4): 654–664. doi:10.1162/089892904323057362. PMID   15165354. S2CID   2020044.
  4. 1 2 Corneille, O.; Monin, B.; Pleyers, G. (2004). "Is positivity a cue or a response option? Warm glow vs evaluative matching in the familiarity for attractive and not-so-attractive faces". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 41 (4): 431–437. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2004.08.004.
  5. ↑ Monin, Benoît (2003). "The Warm Glow Heuristic: When Liking Leads to Familiarity". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 85 (6): 1035–48. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.85.6.1035. PMID   14674812.
  6. ↑ Park, C. Whan; Lessig, V. Parker (1981). "Familiarity and its impact on consumer decision biases and heuristics". Journal of Consumer Research. 8 (2): 223–230. doi:10.1086/208859. hdl: 1808/10100 .
  7. ↑ Cytryn, K.N. (2001). Lay reasoning and decision-making related to health and illness. PhD Thesis, McGill University, Canada.
  8. ↑ Albarracín, D; Wyer Jr, R. S. (2000). "The cognitive impact of past behavior: influences on beliefs, attitudes, and future behavioral decisions". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 79 (1): 5–22. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.79.1.5. PMC   4807731 . PMID   10909874.
  9. ↑ Ouellette, Judith A.; Wood, Wendy (1998). "Habit and intention in everyday life: the multiple processes by which past behavior predicts future behavior". Psychological Bulletin. 124: 54–74. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.124.1.54.
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