Heuristic (Psychology)

A heuristic, from the Ancient Greek word for to find or discover, is the process by which humans use a mental shortcut to arrive at a decision. Heuristics are simple strategies that humans, animals, organizations and even machines use to quickly form judgments, make decisions and find solutions to complex problems, often by focusing on only the most relevant aspects of a problem or situation in order to formulate a workable solution; judgments and decisions reached through a heuristic are not always the most accurate, but are simply good enough to satisfy a pressing need in a situation of uncertainty where the available information is incomplete, differing in that sense from an answer reached through pure logic and probability. The economist and cognitive psychologist Herbert A. Simon introduced the concept of heuristics in the 1950s, arguing that there are real limitations on rational decision-making, and in the 1970s the psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman extended the field further with their own research on cognitive bias, introducing the specific heuristic models that have shaped the field since.