Cognitive Miser

Cognitive miser describes the tendency of the human mind to think and solve problems in simpler, less effortful ways rather than more sophisticated and effortful ones, regardless of intelligence, much as a miser seeks to avoid spending money. The cognitive miser theory is an umbrella theory of cognition bringing together earlier research on heuristics and attributional biases to explain when and why people default to mental shortcuts. Psychologists Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor introduced the term in 1984, writing that people are limited in their capacity to process information and so take shortcuts whenever they can; the concept has become important in social cognition theory and has influenced other social sciences, including economics and political science.