The Framework

Researchers in both the “heuristics and biases” school and the school that extols the use of “fast and frugal” heuristics not only share similar methods but agree that people frequently make perfectly satisfactory judgments using limited information and limited computational abilities. However, those in the H&B school emphasize the degree to which the use of heuristics often prevents us from choosing options that would maximize expected value in the way that conventional rational choice theorists believe we do. Those who think of heuristics as “fast and frugal” techniques to make decisions that achieve an organism’s ends in a given environment are considerably less interested in “biases” than in achievements. Moreover, scholars in the two schools think differently about why using heuristics sometimes leads to mistakes; about the nature of rationality; about how heuristics emerge and operate; and about whether people are less prone to use heuristics when they have certain background traits or have more time or cognitive resources to reach a decision.