Heuristic

A heuristic is a quick, intuitive strategy for reasoning or decision making, as opposed to more formal methods. Heuristics require much less time and energy to use, but sometimes go awry, producing bias. Common heuristics include:

• Absurdity heuristic
• Affect heuristic
• Strangeness heuristic
• Anchoring and adjustment
• Availability heuristic
• Representativeness heuristic
• Naïve diversification
• Escalation of commitment
• Contagion heuristic
• Effort heuristic
• Familiarity heuristic
• Fluency heuristic
• Gaze heuristic
• Peak-end rule
• Recognition heuristic
• Scarcity heuristic
• Similarity heuristic
• Simulation heuristic
• Social proof
• Take-the-best heuristic

See Also

• Bias

References

Less Wrong Articles