Heuristics

Do not let this picture influence you. I visited San Antonio
a few years ago, but do not have a picture of San Diego.

Heuristics is a psychological thought process in which people solve problems and make judgments quickly and efficiently. By thinking heuristically, people can shorten decision-making time and function without constantly stopping to think about the next course of action.

Consider this question posed to students at the University of Chicago and the University of Munich:

Which U.S. city has more inhabitants:  San Diego or San Antonio?

My gut response was San Diego, but then I thought about it. Yes, San Diego was big, but so was San Antonio. I’d been to San Antonio and saw how sprawling it was. Plus, there are two Air Force bases there. It didn’t seem like the most logical answer, but I thought this might be a trick question. We were likely to guess San Diego, weren’t we? And then we’d be surprised to find that San Antonio was the correct answer.

Here’s how the study played out:

62% of the University of Chicago students correctly guessed San Diego

100% of the University of Munich students correctly guessed San Diego

It seems like the U.S. students would have a better idea of these two cities and could correctly determine which had the greater population, but like me, they over-thought it. The University of Munich students relied on a simple heuristic approach: they’d heard of San Diego, but hadn’t heard much about San Antonio and so inferred that San Diego must be bigger.

A lecture on heuristics explained that recognition for heuristic tasks infers that the recognized object has the higher value. More often than not, we should go with our gut.