Heuristics: Decision-making Shortcuts

What are you more afraid of: boarding a plane, or getting into a car? For many people, flying comes with nervousness or trepidation. Such concerns don’t reflect realistic concerns. Car crashes claim more lives each year by orders of magnitude. But they do reflect something else: a cognitive trap to which almost everyone is susceptible.

Making decisions can be difficult. To help us along, our minds use a number of cognitive shortcuts. These shortcuts, called heuristics, allow us to make more rapid decisions with minimal calculations. Unfortunately, while generally efficient, heuristics can also lead us astray.

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