Heuristics: How Our Mental Short Cuts Can Mislead Us

Brains Byte Back

We live busy lives in a hectic world, so to take in every piece of information available in order to make a decision would be a long and laborious task.

That is why our brains use heuristics, a mental shortcut that allows individuals to solve problems and make judgments quickly and efficiently. While these shortcuts allow us to save time, they can often trip us up, causing us to misinterpret information.

In this episode, we are joined by Jillene G. Seiver, a Senior Lecturer of Psychology at Eastern Washington University and active Youtuber, to explore five heuristics that we face in our daily lives.

Seiver breakdown Representativeness (and its relative, the base rate fallacy), availability, framing, anchoring, and the sunk cost fallacy.

You will learn how AI may be impacted by the heuristics used by humans, why Seiver likes to demonstrate the Anchoring bias with her students by asking how long the Mississippi River is, and why a 95% effective rate for condoms tricks our brain into thinking they are more effective than they really are.