Heuristics and Biases

The field of judgment and decision-making is characterized by three types of “models”: normative, prescriptive, and descriptive. Normative models provide standards for evaluation of judgments and decisions. Descriptive models are psychological accounts of how people either conform or depart from these models systematically (i.e., have biases). Prescriptive models suggest ways of helping people come closer to the normative models. This chapter reviews the main categories of descriptive models, including the major categories heuristics, such as the ideas of isolation effect, attribute substitution, and two-systems theory. It also discusses alternative approaches such as naive theories. It also describes a general approach to prescription, the idea of actively open-minded thinking, which can reduce some of the biases.