Maxwell Nweke

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Heuristics
Week 07
Heuristics Test
Participants

● Participant 1: Colleague, 45 years female, Administrative Assistant

● Participant 2: Colleague, 39 years female, Administrative Assistant
● Participant 3: Colleague, 45 years male, Institute Instructor
● Participant 4: Colleague, 43 years male, Facilities Manager

Procedures

It has been difficult for me to have a number of people gathered around me for this study this

week. However, we had a meeting at the office and had little time to converse and I mentioned to

my colleagues if they would like to be part of a study for my Psychology class and they agreed. I

explained to them that the study was meant to find out about Heuristics in people, however, it is

not meant to test their knowledge but just to see how people respond to questions differently. I

however did not mention to them that I would be looking out for behavioral traits as they answered

the questions. I explained that the questions were similar but with a slight difference, two

participants were going to get the same kind of questions each, they were not allowed to discuss

about the questions between themselves but were to respond individually.

Results

From the data below, all the participants response to Rudy’s occupation is a Trapeze Artist, In the

second question, 2 participants chose the novel’s ending in “ing” while the other 2 chose the words

ending in “n”. All four participants suggested that Mario would be more upset. In the fourth

question, the average number of students enrolled in fewer/more than 80 is 300, while

fewer/more than 200 is 600.

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Table 1
Varied responses to judgment-based scenarios
1. Peculiar cousin Rudy most likely is a... Response
s
A. Farmer 0
B. Librarian 0
C. Trapeze Artist 4
D. Surgeon 0
E. Lawyer 0
2. A best-selling novel is more likely to have words
ending in...
A. ————-ing 2
B. —————n- 2
3. Vito and Mario get shut out of registration, and...
A. Vito is more upset 0
B. Mario is more upset 4
4. How many students are enrolled in St. Edward’s
New College program? (Average guess)
A. Fewer / more than 80 300
B. Fewer / more than 200 600

Discussion

I explained to them that I was looking out for was not just their actions while responding to the

questions but also if they would use any of the forms of heuristics in their responses. This played

out perfectly because they all chose a trapeze artist to be the occupation for Rudy, when I asked

them why they chose that, they mentioned that the other occupations sounded like people who

were more serious minded and too busy to get tattoos drawn on their bodies. When I asked them

what a trapeze artist is, apparently, only one person knows what it actually is, the other three

thought that it was more of a tattoo artist. Their response to the second scenario was more of a

guess because it is too broad a question to be able to get a right response for. In the third scenario,

they all chose that Mario would be more upset and explained that this plays out with all of us, we

get more frustrated and infuriated when we feel that we would have gotten something if we were

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a little earlier and we begin to think about the things that had prevented us from getting it,

especially when it was not as important as what was missed. The fourth scenario was more of a

random guess, however, they mentioned that since it was a college, they assumed that it would

enroll a lot more than the number of students that were suggested.

Implications

From my learning this week, most people want to take the easier route when responding to

questions especially when it does not really have any implication on them. Like I mentioned to

them that the questions were not to test their knowledge, but it was just meant for the study.

Their responses, I think came more from guesses than actual deep thinking to know the best

answers to give, this could probably be because we were preparing to go back to the next phase of

the meeting, and everyone was rushing to go back. This is where heuristics play out generally

because people would naturally look for the shortest cut to provide responses. I observed two

heuristics played out here, the availability and representative heuristics. The availability was

shown more in question 2 while representative heuristics was displayed more in question 1. In this,

they explained that they feel other occupations did not seem like people who had the time for

tattoos, the trapeze artist seems more like someone who would go for such.

A heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make judgments quickly

and efficiently. These rule-of-thumb strategies shorten decision-making time and allow people to

function without constantly stopping to think about their next course of action.

Peer Feedback

I was told about the Turnitin scores which was over 30% which should be below 24% for a full score.

I think this was partly because of the similarities in the paper with others. However, I was able to

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edit most part of it to reduce the Turnitin score. I made correction on some tenses and rephrased

some words. I was also told to follow the requirements in the rubrics, which I have corrected.