Cognitive heuristics are short-cuts that we can take when making judgements and decisions, these often result in cognitive biases – predictable patterns of decision-making. For example, if you live or have lived in the United Kingdom and were asked to decide whether the UK or Costa Rica has more rainfall per year you would like reply that the UK has the most rainfall. In doing, so you could rely on a decision aid (i.e., cognitive heuristic) to make a quick decision by thinking that the UK is stereotypically wet a lot of the time, this is called the representativeness heuristic. In fact, Costa Rica has on average more rainfall than the UK in the average year.
Such cognitive heuristics and biases can be useful for making decisions and judgements when we are under time pressure, in a noisy environment or are even distracted by something in our environment. We all rely on these decision-making approaches many times everyday.
This list is some of the most relevant cognitive biases in judgement and decision-making. These can be applied to most areas of judgement and decision-making e.g., medical, economics, political and legal.
Note. That there are many cognitive biases with many more discovered yearly. This list is not exhaustive.
drdanedgcumbe.co.uk 