Heuristics or “rule of the thumb”

This paper is about heuristics or “rule of the thumb”. In this paper, the researcher conducted a study to find out what are the results of the test from three different respondents. It also aims to know the reactions of the respondents and lastly to know if heuristics can be applied to all. The hypothesis of this study is all of the three respondents including the researcher will have the same answer and the same reaction. The word heuristics came from a Greek letter “Heurisko” meaning, “I find”.

Applying heuristics to Psychology, it is a process which is considered simple, efficient rules, and hard-coded. This used for explaining how people make decisions, making judgments, and solving a certain problem. This is helpful when one person has encountered a problem which is complex or information that lacks the full information. This rule believed to work most of the time under different circumstances but there are cases this may result to a systematic cognitive bias. Cognitive bias is the effects of the observer which drastically alter the proof of a certain thing or information.

There are types of cognitive bias, and these are: hindsight bias which is tagged as “I-knew-it-all-along” effect; fundamental attribution error which is a tendency wherein what matters is only the explanations coming from one’s own self; confirmation bias is a tendency wherein there is the search and/or interpretation of an information based on what has been perceived, and lastly; self-serving bias which is the tendency wherein there is a minimal attention to the failure thus taking the responsibility to those which have succeed.

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Heuristic is all about the perception of the people under study, they base their answer on what they know and the tendency to neglect the factuality of the information. This also says that people made decisions based on the frequency of the answer they have given, which is the one that occurred most often and the first one which occurred. Heuristics is also for practicality use, because people are particular with what they think is practical, they avoid complexity of things and it is innate to people that they go away with things easily. In this manner, people mostly rely in their common sense.

Method The sample of this study was garnered through purposive sampling, meaning that the I choose the samples based on their availability and my access with them in the time that I have done this. The samples were my friends whom I always spend time with. They are three girls which I hide in the name of Nicole, Richelle, and Mary. Their age is 23, 25, and 24 years old respectively. The procedure went on like this; I asked them if they can drop by my place to do a little favor for me which I will need in class. They were curious so they have asked a lot of questions.

They even joked that I will get them into trouble. There has been a lot of persuading coming from me just to make them agree to be my respondents. I just told them that what they going to do is simple and will just take them 5 minutes of their precious time. Yes, I had to say that because my friends love to be praised or given any compliment. Later on, they agreed and dropped by my place. I brought the three of them to the kitchen and offered some snack because in doing so I can make the study easier because there will be a room for value-free or bias-free answers.

I also told them that whoever go fist, she should keep the whole process in confidence, they agreed. I also instructed them that they should use their better judgment and they should not fabricate their answers for it will make the study unsuccessful. I also instructed them that they will know the answer after they have finished the process. To better secure the confidentiality of the process, I told them to stay at the other room, without saying a word or showing any expression.

My parting words were, “Use your common sense, if you have one… Enjoy! ” They laughed. Results The result of my study is not surprising at all because I tried the test not only once and not even thrice. I got the same results which amazed me in so many ways because for one I do not like mathematics that much. Case 1 is Nicole, she chose the number 4, Case 2 is Richelle, she chose number 9, and Case 3 is Mary, she chose number 2. They all had the difficulty in doing the math, and they were laughing during the process.

As you would notice all of them had chosen small numbers except Richelle who dared to choose the highest number. But the amount of the numbers they have chosen did not affect the result of the test. The three respondents had the same reaction upon knowing that what they chose is what showed up in the screen. They joked that my computer is a genius. After the last take which is done by Mary, I told them that they can share their experiences. So there, they were laughing and amazed with the results, it was then I told them what it is about. Discussion

The results only meant one thing - people often give which is the most common thing, for example is Denmark and elephant. The former is the most common country that starts with letter D and the latter is the most common animal that starts in letter E. But this depends on the culture of the person who done the test, it is based on their preconceptions. The results have met my hypothesis, that all of them will have the same reaction and they will get the same answer despite the differences in their answers in the first instruction/question.

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