Social heuristics

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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. [1] 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.

Contents

The class of phenomena described by social heuristics overlap with those typically investigated by social psychology and game theory. At the intersection of these fields, social heuristics have been applied to explain cooperation in economic games used in experimental research. In the view of the field's academics, cooperation is typically advantageous in daily life, and therefore people develop a cooperation heuristic that gets applied even to one-shot anonymous interactions (the "social heuristics hypothesis" of human cooperation). [2]

Overview

Bounded rationality

In the decision-making process, optimisation is almost always intractable in any implementation, whether machine or neural. [3] Because of this, defined parameters or boundaries must be implemented in the process in order to achieve an acceptable outcome. This method is known as applying bounded rationality, where an individual makes a collective and rational choice that considers “the limits of human capability to calculate, the severe deficiencies of human knowledge about the consequences of choice, and the limits of human ability to adjudicate among multiple goals”. [4] They are essentially incorporating a series of criteria, referred to as alternatives for choice. These alternatives are often not initially given to the decision maker, so a theory of search is also incorporated. [4]

Heuristics

Heuristics are a common alternative, which can be defined as simple strategies for decision making where the actor only pays attention to key pieces of information, allowing the decision to be made quickly and with less cognitive effort. [5]

Israeli psychologist Daniel Kahneman was largely responsible for the advances made in understanding the psychology underpinning human decision making. Daniel Kahneman (3283955327) (cropped).jpg
Israeli psychologist Daniel Kahneman was largely responsible for the advances made in understanding the psychology underpinning human decision making.

Daniel Kahneman and Shane Frederick have advanced the view that heuristics are decision-making processes that employ attribute substitution, where the decision maker substitutes the "target attribute" of the thing he is trying to judge with a "heuristic attribute" that more easily comes to mind. [7] Shah and Daniel M. Oppenheimer have framed heuristics in terms of effort reduction, where the decision maker makes use of techniques that make decisions less effortful, such as only paying attention to some cues or only considering a subset of the available alternatives. [8] Another view of heuristics comes from Gerd Gigerenzer and colleagues, who conceptualize heuristics as "fast and frugal" techniques for decision making that simplify complex calculations and make up part of the "adaptive toolbox" of human capacities for reasoning and inference. [9] Under this framework, heuristics are ecologically rational, meaning a heuristic may be successful if the way it works matches the demands of the environment it is being used in. Researchers in this vein also argue that heuristics may be just as or even more accurate when compared to more complex strategies, such as multiple regression. [10]

Social heuristics

Social heuristics can include heuristics that use social information, operate in social contexts, or both. [11] Examples of social information include information about the behavior of a social entity or the properties of a social system, while nonsocial information is information about something physical. Contexts in which an organism may use social heuristics can include "games against nature" and "social games". In games against nature, the organism strives to predict natural occurrences (such as the weather) or competes against other natural forces to accomplish something. In social games, the organism is making decisions in a situation that involves other social beings. Importantly, in social games, the most adaptive course of action also depends on the decisions and behavior of the other actors. For instance, the follow-the-majority heuristic uses social information as inputs but is not necessarily applied in a social context, while the equity-heuristic uses non-social information but can be applied in a social context such as the allocation of parental resources amongst offspring. [11]

Within social psychology, some researchers have viewed heuristics as closely linked to cognitive biases. [12] Others have argued that these biases result from the application of social heuristics depending on the structure of the environment that they operate in. [13] Researchers in the latter approach treat the study of social heuristics as closely linked to social rationality, a field of research that applies the ideas of bounded rationality and heuristics to the realm of social environments. Under this view, social heuristics are seen as ecologically rational. [1] In the context of evolution, research utilizing evolutionary simulation models has found support for the evolution of social heuristics and cooperation when the outcomes of social interactions are uncertain. [14]

Examples

Examples of social heuristics include: [1] [11]

Relation to other concepts

Dual-process approach

A dual-process approach to human cognition specifies two types of thought processes: one that is fast and happens unconsciously or automatically, and another that is slower and involves more conscious deliberation. [28] In the dominant dual-systems approach in social psychology, heuristics are believed to be automatically and unconsciously applied. [29] The study of social heuristics as a tool of bounded rationality asserts that heuristics may be used consciously or unconsciously. [30]

Social heuristics hypothesis

The social heuristics hypothesis is a theory put forth by Rand and colleagues that explains the link between intuition and cooperation. [2] Under this theory, cooperating in everyday social situations tends to be successful, and as a result, cooperation is an internalized heuristic that is applied in unfamiliar social contexts, even those in which such behavior may not lead to the most personally advantageous result for the actor (such as a lab experiment).

Methods used by researchers to study cooperative behavior in the laboratory include economic games such as: [31]

These economic games all share the condition that, when played in a single round, an individual's payout is maximized if he acts selfishly and chooses not to cooperate. [31] However, over the course of repeated rounds, cooperation can be payout maximizing and thus be a self-interested strategy. [31]

Following a dual-process framework, the social heuristics hypothesis contends that cooperation, which is automatic and intuitive, may be overridden by reflection. The theory is supported by evidence from laboratory and online experiments suggesting that time pressure increases cooperation, [32] though some evidence suggests this may be only among individuals who are not as familiar with the types of economic games typically used in this field of research. [2]

Meta-analytic evidence based on 67 studies that looked at cooperation in the types of economic games described above suggests that cognitive-processing manipulations that encourage intuitive decision-making (such as time pressure or increased cognitive load) increase pure cooperation, where a one-shot action has no future consequences for the actor to consider and not cooperating is the most advantageous option. [31] However, such manipulations do not have an effect on strategic cooperation in situations in which cooperation may be the pay-off maximizing option because of a possibility of future interactions where the actor may be rewarded for cooperation. [31]

Importantly, research suggests that this intuitive cooperation may vary by culture and/or social roles. For instance, one study comparing participants from the US to participants from India found some differences in the patterns and speed of cooperation in online tasks across these groups, suggesting that cultural background may play a role in cooperative behavior. [33] Another study comparing men to women found that promoting intuitive decision making increased cooperative behavior among women but not among men, and the authors link this result to social roles and norms that stereotype women as altruistic. [34]

See also

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, and 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 in a search space. 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.

Bounded rationality is the idea that rationality is limited when individuals make decisions, and under these limitations, rational individuals will select a decision that is satisfactory rather than optimal.

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

The recognition heuristic, originally termed the recognition principle, has been used as a model in the psychology of judgment and decision making and as a heuristic in artificial intelligence. The goal is to make inferences about a criterion that is not directly accessible to the decision maker, based on recognition retrieved from memory. This is possible if recognition of alternatives has relevance to the criterion. For two alternatives, the heuristic is defined as:

If one of two objects is recognized and the other is not, then infer that the recognized object has the higher value with respect to the criterion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerd Gigerenzer</span> German cognitive psychologist

Gerd Gigerenzer is a German psychologist who has studied the use of bounded rationality and heuristics in decision making. Gigerenzer is director emeritus of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC) at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy, both in Berlin.

Daniel G. Goldstein is an American cognitive psychologist known for the specification and testing of heuristics and models of bounded rationality in the field of judgment and decision making. He is an honorary research fellow at London Business School and works with Microsoft Research as a principal researcher.

The gaze heuristic is a heuristic used in directing correct motion to achieve a goal using one main variable. An example of the gaze heuristic is catching a ball. The gaze heuristic is one example of psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer's one good reason heuristic, where human animals and non-human animals are able to process large amounts of information quickly and react, regardless of whether the information is consciously processed.

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 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.

Heuristics is the process by which humans use mental shortcuts 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.

The heuristic-systematic model of information processing (HSM) is a widely recognized model by Shelly Chaiken that attempts to explain how people receive and process persuasive messages. The model states that individuals can process messages in one of two ways: heuristically or systematically. Whereas systematic processing entails careful and deliberative processing of a message, heuristic processing entails the use of simplifying decision rules or ‘heuristics’ to quickly assess the message content. The guiding belief with this model is that individuals are more apt to minimize their use of cognitive resources, thus affecting the intake and processing of messages. HSM predicts that processing type will influence the extent to which a person is persuaded or exhibits lasting attitude change. HSM is quite similar to the elaboration likelihood model, or ELM. Both models were predominantly developed in the early to mid-1980s and share many of the same concepts and ideas.

The rhyme-as-reason effect, or Eaton–Rosen phenomenon, is a cognitive bias whereupon a saying or aphorism is judged as more accurate or truthful when it is rewritten to rhyme.

Intuition in the context of decision-making is defined as a "non-sequential information-processing mode." It is distinct from insight and can be contrasted with the deliberative style of decision-making. Intuition can influence judgment through either emotion or cognition, and there has been some suggestion that it may be a means of bridging the two. Individuals use intuition and more deliberative decision-making styles interchangeably, but there has been some evidence that people tend to gravitate to one or the other style more naturally. People in a good mood gravitate toward intuitive styles, while people in a bad mood tend to become more deliberative. The specific ways in which intuition actually influences decisions remain poorly understood.

Heuristics are simple decision making strategies used to achieve a specific goal quickly and efficiently, and are commonly implemented in sports.

Ecological rationality is a particular account of practical rationality, which in turn specifies the norms of rational action – what one ought to do in order to act rationally. The presently dominant account of practical rationality in the social and behavioral sciences such as economics and psychology, rational choice theory, maintains that practical rationality consists in making decisions in accordance with some fixed rules, irrespective of context. Ecological rationality, in contrast, claims that the rationality of a decision depends on the circumstances in which it takes place, so as to achieve one's goals in this particular context. What is considered rational under the rational choice account thus might not always be considered rational under the ecological rationality account. Overall, rational choice theory puts a premium on internal logical consistency whereas ecological rationality targets external performance in the world. The term ecologically rational is only etymologically similar to the biological science of ecology.

In behavioural sciences, social rationality is a type of decision strategy used in social contexts, in which a set of simple rules is applied in complex and uncertain situations.

The less-is-more effect refers to the finding that heuristic decision strategies can yield more accurate judgments than alternative strategies that use more pieces of information. Understanding these effects is part of the study of ecological rationality.

Intuitive statistics, or folk statistics, is the cognitive phenomenon where organisms use data to make generalizations and predictions about the world. This can be a small amount of sample data or training instances, which in turn contribute to inductive inferences about either population-level properties, future data, or both. Inferences can involve revising hypotheses, or beliefs, in light of probabilistic data that inform and motivate future predictions. The informal tendency for cognitive animals to intuitively generate statistical inferences, when formalized with certain axioms of probability theory, constitutes statistics as an academic discipline.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ralph Hertwig</span> German psychologist

Ralph Hertwig is a German psychologist whose work focuses on the psychology of human judgment and decision making. Hertwig is Director of the Center for Adaptive Rationality at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany. He grew up with his brothers Steffen Hertwig and Michael Hertwig in Talheim, Heilbronn.

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