HEURISTICS

- Mental Shortcuts -

PEB
Week 4
This week lecture will
discuss ...
PRIMING

o Take a look at these 2 words.

BANANA VOMIT

o Word generate memories, which raise

emotions, which then evoke facial expressions
and other reactions (tensing up or avoidance
tendencies).

o Simply exposed by a words/concept/images

subtly lead to think about and any words or
association surround it.
PRIMING – continued

If you initially exposed/heard a word of EAT ...

Complete this word fragment S OU

__P

Also, you would most likely think other things associated with
it: fork, table, spoon, bowl, hungry, diet, cookies, etc.
 PRIMING – the experiment 1

o 2 groups of participants are asked to complete a

scrambled sentences with a set of words.

o 1 group was provided with a set of words

associated with old: forgetful, bald, grey, lonely,
wise, etc.; those old words in other group were
replaced with words unrelated to an elderly
stereotype.

o After task completion, participants are asked to

walk down the hall and, unobtrusively, other
experimenter count the time each of participants
moving from the labroom to the designated area.
Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of
personality and social psychology, 71(2), 230.
 PRIMING – the experiment 1
o Experiment 2b is a replication of
experiment 2a.

o Both have significant difference

(between neutral vs elderly group);
t(28) = 2.86, p < .01 and t(28) = 2.16,
p < .05 respectively.

o None of them believed that the

words had an impact on his/her
behaviour!!

Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of
personality and social psychology, 71(2), 230.
 PRIMING – the experiment 2

o A ‘honesty box’ was placed for people to pay for a

tea or coffee they get in an office kitchen.

o A list of suggested price were posted.

o One day a new banner was placed above the price

list; no warning or explanation. Every week the
image was replaced in a period of 10 weeks.

o No one has commented but the donation has

changed significantly on each week.

Bateson, M., Nettle, D., & Roberts, G. (2006). Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting. Biology letters, 2(3), 412-414.
 PRIMING – the experiment 2

Ø On average, the users of the kitchen

contributed almost three times as
much in ‘eye weeks’ as they did in
‘flower weeks’.

Bateson, M., Nettle, D., & Roberts, G. (2006). Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting. Biology letters, 2(3), 412-414.
ANCHORING

o “Make prediction based on a first impression or

an initial judgment (or anchor) and then shift
(adjust or fine-tune) this judgment upward or
downward depending on the implications of
the imagined possibilities.” (Kardes et al., 2011,
p. 112).

o “Occurs when people consider a particular

value for an unknown quantity before
estimating that quantity.” (Kahneman, 2011, p.
119).
ANCHORING as ADJUSTMENT
• Start from an anchoring number, assess
whether it is too high or too low, and
gradually adjust your estimate by mentally
“moving” from the anchor.
• Adjustment is a deliberate attempt to find
reasons to move away from the anchor.
• People adjust less (stay closer to the anchor)
when their mental resources are depleted,
either because their memory is loaded with
digits or because they are slightly drunk.
• Insufficient adjustment is a failure of a weak
or lazy System 2.
ANCHORING as PRIMING EFFECT (1/2)

Consider below questions:

o “Was Gandhi more or less than 114 years old when he

died?”
o “How old was Gandhi when he died?”

OR ...
o “Do you know feel a slight numbness in your left leg?”

Anchoring is a case of suggestion!

ANCHORING as PRIMING EFFECT (2/2)
• A process that resembles
suggestion is indeed at work in
many situations: System 1 tries its
best to construct a world in which
the anchor is the true number.
• Experiment: participants were
asked about the average price of
German cars: luxury brands vs
mass-market cars. How was the
result? Try make a guess!
 ANCHORING INDEX (1/2)

Is the distance between Ubaya and Metropolis more or less than 1,200 m?

• High anchor: 1,200 m 844 m

• Low anchor: 180 m 282 m
• Differences 1,020 m Differences 562 m
• 562/1,020 = 55%
• The anchoring measure would be 100% for people who slavishly adopt the anchor
as an estimate, and zero for people who are able to ignore the anchor altogether.
Even anchors that are obviously random can be just as effective as potentially
informative anchors.
How to face a negotiation with a strong
ANCHOR?
• When the ‘other side’ has made an
outrageous proposal, you should not
counter with an equally outrageous
counteroffer – instead, storm out or
threaten to do so, and make it clear that
you will not continue the negotiation.
• Anchoring effect is reduced or eliminated
when the second mover focuses his
attention on the minimal offer that the
opponent would accept, or on the costs to
the opponent of failing to reach an
agreement – “thinking the opposite”.
 ANCHORING – the experiment

o 55 students were employed in the study.

o Instructed to write down 2 last digits of their social security (SS) number.
o OBJECTIVE: whether this SS number would serve as an anchor or not, and if
yes then would it have a long-term influence.
o Passed out a form and ask them to write their SS no at the top.
Product Price Would you buy?
Cordless Trackball ($ SS no)
Cordless Keyboard ($ SS no)
Design Book ($ SS no)
Neuhaus Chocolates ($ SS no)
1998 Cotes du Rhone ($ SS no)
1996 Hermitage ($ SS no)
Adapted from: Ariely, D. (2009). Predictably Irrational. Great Britain: Harper.
 ANCHORING – result

o All agreed that their ‘bidding’ prices were not based on their SS number.
o In fact, student with highest-ending SS digits (from 80-99) bid highest, those
with lowest-ending (1-20) bid lowest.
Ø Top upper 20% bid 216-346% higher than those lower 20% lowest ending
SS owner.

Adapted from: Ariely, D. (2009). Predictably Irrational. Great Britain: Harper.

ANCHORING – Implication

o Price tag

o Limited purchase promo

o High opening offer

o Public donation
AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC

o Prediction/judgment derived from the ease

with which instances come to mind.

o That ease to retrieve instances then used as a

basis for prediction.
 AVAILABILITY HEURISTICS – continued
o A salient event that attracts your attention will
be easily retrieved from memory.

o A dramatic event temporarily increases the

availability of its category.

o Personal experiences, pictures, and vivid

examples are more available than incidents
that happened to others, or mere words, or
statistics.
 AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC – the experiment
o 40 students in a 2 (assertive vs unassertive
behaviour) x 2 (6 vs 12 examples) factorial
between-subjects design.
o Asked to list down situation in which they
‘behaved very assertively and felt at ease’ or
situation in which they ‘behaved
unassertively and felt insecure.
o Pretest suggested that recalling 12 examples
is tougher than 6 examples.
o Identify their assertiveness in 10-point scales
(higher the more assertive).

Schwarz, N., Bless, H., Strack, F., Klumpp, G., Rittenauer-Schatka, H., & Simons, A. (1991). Ease of retrieval as information: another look at the availability
heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social psychology, 61(2), 195.
 AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC – result

ü Describing 6 examples (for people describing assertive example) lead to a ‘more assertive’
self-rating compared to 12 examples. Similar result for people describing unassertive
example.

ü “When the recall task was difficult, their self-rating was opposite to the implications of
recalled content, despite the fact that more examples had been recalled.”
Schwarz, N., Bless, H., Strack, F., Klumpp, G., Rittenauer-Schatka, H., & Simons, A. (1991). Ease of retrieval as information: another look at the availability
heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social psychology, 61(2), 195.
AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC – implication

This happens in our daily lives. Consider this example:

In daily routine:
o you believe that you use bicycles less often after recalling many rather than few
instances.
In decision making:
o you are less confident in a choice when you are asked to produce more arguments
to support it.
In problem solving:
o you are less confident that an event was avoidable after listing more ways it could
have been avoided.
In purchasing car:
o you are lss impressed by a car after listing many of its advantages.
 REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTICS
• Please fill in this quick online questionnaire.

Left side seats: Right side seats:

https://tinyurl.com/kiri3sept https://tinyurl.com/kanan3sept
Personal Explanation
• Alexander adalah seorang pemikir. Sejak SMA dia terlibat aktif dalam
kegiatan OSIS. Dia suka sekali melihat channel berita di TV maupun
portal berita di handphone. Acara TV yang paling ia sukai adalah
Indonesia Lawyers Club. Ia tidak terlalu berempati dengan orang,
malahan ia cenderung sangat objektif, yang membuat ia disegani
oleh teman-temannya. Dia sangat self-centered tapi di lain hal ia
mengedepankan moralitas.
INSIGHT
• Introducing: base rate – the proportion of
marbles of a particular kind.
• No personal explanations: you will go by the
base rates and guess that he is more likely to be
enrolled in economics, because there are more
students overall in the economics than in any
other fields.
• The task of ranking the nine course is complex
and certainly requires the discipline and
sequential organization of which only System 2
is capable. However, the hints planted in the
description (personal explanations) were
intended to activate an association with a
stereotype, and automatic activity of System 1.
Definition
• … focus exclusively on the similarity of
the description to the stereotypes,
ignoring both the base rates and the
doubts about the veracity of the
description.
• Expression such as:
• “She will win the election; you can see
she is a winner.”
• “He won’t go far as an academic; too
many tattoos.”
Tom W study
And here is Tom personal explanation
THE RANK RESULT
Another Experiment …
• Enhanced activation of System 2 caused a
significant improvement of predictive
accuracy in the Tom W problem.
• Frowning, generally increases the vigilance
of System 2 and reduces both
overconfidence and the reliance on
intuition – it shows more sensitivity to the
base rates.
• Those with neutral expression replicated
the original results: relied exclusively on
representativeness & ignored the base
rates.
Thank You