To make decisions quickly and economically, our brains rely on cognitive shortcuts known as heuristics. Heuristics allow us to make judgments quickly and often accurately, but they can also lead to fuzzy thinking and poor decisions.To minimize the potential negative impact of heuristics on your decisions, become more aware of them.

Mental Shortcuts Can Trip You Up

People who are told that the risk of something bad happening is lower than they expected, tend to adjust their predictions to match the new information. But they ignore the new information when the risk is higher.Part of this overly optimistic outlook stems from our natural tendency to believe that bad things happen to other people, but not to us.

Being Too Optimistic

A common occurrence of heuristics in which we use an initial starting point as an anchor that is then adjusted to yield a final estimate or value.Example: estimating the value of an object based on the common price of similar objects.

Anchoring Bias

Sometimes we make poor comparisons or the compared items are not representative or equal.We often decide based on rapid comparisons without really thinking about our options. In order to avoid bad decisions, relying on logic and thoughtful examination of the options can sometimes be more important than relying on your immediate "gut reaction."

You Often Make Poor Comparisons

How many decisions do you think you make during the average day? Dozens? Hundreds, perhaps? Psychologists believe that the number is actually in the thousands. Some of these decisions have resounding effects over the course of our lives (like whether or not to go to college, get married, or have kids), while others are relatively trivial (like whether to have a ham or turkey sandwich for lunch).

Mental Shortcuts Can Trip You Up

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Heuristics: Mental Shortcuts