POL_S 428 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Representativeness Heuristic, Fundamental Attribution Error, White Coat
Document Summary
A collective term for the psychological processes involved in the acquisition, understanding, and use of knowledge. The organization of that knowledge which is then used to process information and to learn. All information processing activities of the brain: analysis of immediately important information, assessment of experiences, perception, memory, attention, problem solving, language, imagery. A mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind. As a result, you might judge that those events are more frequent and possible than others. You give greater credence to this information and tend to overestimate the probability and likelihood of similar things happening in the future. The representativeness heuristic is a decision-making shortcut that employs the use of past experiences to guide the decision-making process. Relying on past experiences can be beneficial and allow for quick conclusions to be reached, but the cost of being able to make quick decisions is oftentimes accuracy.
