09 - Chapter 9: Answering an Easier Question

Chapter 9: Answering an Easier Question

• normally we have intuitive  feelings & opinions abt almost everything that comes our way —and we often hv answ’s to q’s that we do not completely underst.

Substituting Questions

• how we generate intuitive opinions on complex matters
• N.B. substitution — for difficult q’s  w. no immed. answ. S1 provides an answ. to an easier, related q. —“target question” = the answ. you want — “heuristic question” = simpler question answered instead — (def’n heuristic = simple procedure, helps find adequate, but  imperfect, answ’s to difficult q’s) — derives fr. the mental shotgun

• target q’s req. serious thinking, but S2 is lazy, so S1 subst’s heuristic alternative, then uses intensity matching to answ. target q.  — lazy S2 often accepts S1 heuristic answ. w/o noticing

The 3-D Heuristic

•  Question: "As printed on the page, is the figure on the right larger than the figure on the left?" — S1 thinks fig. on r. is larger — S1 replaced the 2-D q. w. a 3-D q: “How tall are the 3 people?” — this heuristic has a bias (objts that appear to be more distant also appear to be larger on the page) —judg’ts based on subst’n are biased in predictable ways — here, unavoidable ß it happens so deep in perceptual system 

The Mood Heuristic for Happiness

• students were asked 1. How happy are you these days? 2. How many dates did you have last month? Answ’s showed no correlation — but correlation huge when change seq (1. How many dates last month? 2. How happy these days?) — 1st case shows dating not impt. to stud’s happiness,  2nd case shows substit’n, gave easy answ. — same result w. relations w. parents, finances
• WYSIATI

The Affect Heuristic

• on emotional issues, S1 conclu’s dominate over S2 argu’ts
• affect heuristic = likes/dislikes deter. beliefs abt the world — favour argu’ts & assess’ts supporting beliefs — e.g. dislike meat à believe risks are high
• with attitudes & emotions, S2 not monitor, not a critic, not active — S2 an apologist for emotions of S1, endorser not enforcer, if search for inform’n & argu’ts mostly for info consistent w. existing beliefs, not to examine them

Speaking of Substitution and Heuristics

• “Do we still remember the question we are trying to answer? Or have we substituted an easier one?”
• “The question we face is whether this candidate can succeed. The question we seem to answer  is whether she interviews well. Let’s not substitute.”
• “He likes the project, so he thinks its costs are low and its benefits are high. Nice example of the affect heuristic.”
• “We are using last year’s performance as a heuristic to predict the value of the firm several years from now. Is this heuristic good enough? What other information do we need?”