“The easiest person to deceive is one’s own self.”
-Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton
Heuristics: Mental shortcuts for solving problems.
On average, an individual makes 35,000 decisions per day. From the menial to the important, the brain(you) makes choices, and since it is impossible to dedicate conscious thought to each and every decision, the brain is heavily equipped with mental shortcuts for determining, or often inferring information, and taking immediate action.
Mental shortcuts reduce cognitive load, allowing individuals to make more decisions in less time. While this rapid process problem solving saves time, and is a vital life function, it comes at price. The tariff paid for these mental shortcuts include bias, compromise, and lack of awareness. Heuristics replace traditional logic, with the intent to arrive at the same conclusion as logic would have dictated. If it were only that easy.
By noticing heuristics in everyday thought processing and decision making, one is equipped to reduce partiality and compromising decisions, opening the gateway to truth through awareness and thereby narrowing the rift between reality and perception.
Six Common Mental Shortcuts
Anchoring
A psychological phenomenon in which an individual's judgements or decisions are influenced by a reference point or "anchor" which can be completely irrelevant. Anchoring bias allows one to rely too heavily on the first piece of information, which will subsequently affect all other decisions.
Confirmation Bias
A tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. Since the individual already “knows” what they know, they simply but unfortunately discard all contradictory information.
Hyperbolic Discounting
A psychological bias where individuals prioritize immediate rewards and satisfaction over future rewards and satisfaction.
Sunk Costs
This is where an individual uses rational past decisions to justify irrational current decisions.
Fundamental Attribution Error
The tendency individuals have to overemphasize personal characteristics and ignore situational factors in judging others' behavior. For example, assigning fixed characteristics to a person due to a singular event such as the conclusion that the appointment is not just late, he’s inconsiderate.
Availability Bias
Immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. Fast, often incorrect, assessments are made based on recalling immediate information. Singular memorable moments have an outsized influence on decisions when compared to less memorable ones.
“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.”
- Eckhart Tolle
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