The secret life of mental shortcuts

We frequently rely on biases as heuristics.

The beauty of heuristics is that they are abstractions that help us understand sets of information, and tell us where to put that information, or what actions to take.

Heuristics are mental shortcuts that let us be lazy.

This can be extremely useful. We’re inundated with data and decisions each day— we need abstractions to make sense of it all and to take action quickly.

However, when the premise of a heuristic is faulty or out of date, it can lead us down the wrong path.

A quick example is authority bias and the halo effect. The halo effect is a cognitive bias in which our impression of a person characterizes how we feel about their traits.