heuristikákon

Heuristikákon, also known as heuristics, are mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that people use to make decisions and solve problems quickly and efficiently. These strategies simplify complex information, allowing for faster judgments and choices, especially when faced with time constraints or limited cognitive resources. While heuristics are useful for everyday decision-making, they can sometimes lead to systematic errors in judgment, known as cognitive biases.

One common heuristic is the availability heuristic, where people estimate the likelihood of an event based on how easily examples come to mind. For instance, if a person can easily recall instances of airplane crashes, they might overestimate the risk of flying. Another is the representativeness heuristic, which involves judging the probability of something based on how well it matches a stereotype or prototype. This can lead to the gambler's fallacy, where one believes that a streak of a certain outcome makes the opposite outcome more likely in the future.

The anchoring and adjustment heuristic is another significant mental shortcut. In this process, individuals start with an initial piece of information (the anchor) and then adjust it to reach their final estimate. However, these adjustments are often insufficient, leaving the final estimate too close to the original anchor. Understanding heuristics is crucial in fields like psychology, economics, and artificial intelligence, as it sheds light on human reasoning and decision-making processes.