ABSTRACT
Individuals are often overwhelmed with information. Under the circumstances of everyday lives, in the current 24/7 world of constant connectivity, most if not all, individuals are subject to some level of time constraint. In an effort to combat such overload, the mind sometimes takes surprising shortcuts toward judgment – more formally referred to as heuristics – as a means to make decisions under time constraints. Heuristics can include associations and priming, judgments, substitution, cognitive bases, stories and causes, and emotions.
This use of heuristics challenges the notion of whether humans are always rational. As Rationalists would argue, all decisions by individuals would include the incorporation of all available information for complete consideration and accurate analysis. In such rational choice theory process, all individuals would constantly calibrate all the available information, weighing all such information to come to a final analysis. But instead, as suggested by Behavioralists through a series of seminal studies, a clash often exists between rationality and reality – in terms of how individuals ought to act in theory and how individuals actually act in the real world. Instead of being uber-Rationalists, individual decision-making and behavior is often subject to, and influenced by, hidden forces – such as heuristics (mental shortcuts), priming, and judgments under uncertainty – when dealing with people and situations.
