The Recognition Heuristic: A Review of Theory and Tests

Pachur, Thorsten; Todd, Peter M.; Martignon, Laura; Schooler, Lael J.; Goldstein, Daniel G.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00147

Cited by 71 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 135 publications

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“…It has repeatedly been shown that recognition validity differences between domains are positively correlated with domain-specific RH use Pachur et al, 2011). However, we found no reliable positive relation between individual RH use and the individual recognition validities in any experiment (see Table 4).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 53%

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Individual differences in use of the recognition heuristic are stable across time, choice objects, domains, and presentation formats

Michalkiewicz

Erdfelder

2015

Mem Cogn

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The recognition heuristic (RH) is a simple decision strategy that performs surprisingly well in many domains. According to the RH, people decide on the basis of recognition alone and ignore further knowledge when faced with a recognized and an unrecognized choice object. Previous research has revealed noteworthy individual differences in RH use, suggesting that people have preferences for using versus avoiding this strategy that might be causally linked to cognitive or personality traits. However, trying to explain differences in RH use in terms of traits presupposes temporal and cross-situational stability in use of the RH, an important prerequisite that has not been scrutinized so far. In a series of four experiments, we therefore assessed the stability in RH use across (1) time, (2) choice objects, (3) domains, and (4) presentation formats of the choice objects. In Experiment 1, participants worked on the same inference task and choice objects twice, separated by a delay of either one day or one week. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 using two different object sets from the same domain, whereas Experiment 3 assessed the stability of RH use across two different domains. Finally, in Experiment 4 we investigated stability across verbal and pictorial presentation formats of the choice objects. For all measures of RH use proposed so far, we found strong evidence for both temporal and cross-situational stability in use of the RH. Thus, RH use at least partly reflects a personspecific style of decision making whose determinants await further research.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 53%

“…Hilbig, Pohl, & Bröder, 2009;Newell & Fernandez, 2006;Richter & Späth, 2006). In sum, it is quite well established that participants adjust their RH use according to situational factors (for reviews, see Pachur, Todd, Gigerenzer, Schooler, & Goldstein, 2011;Pohl, 2011).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual differences in use of the recognition heuristic are stable across time, choice objects, domains, and presentation formats

Michalkiewicz

Erdfelder

2015

Mem Cogn

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“…The most basic heuristic shortcut to decision making is memory: When faced with familiar decision problems or choices, people often make memory-based decisions using strategies such as the recognition heuristic (Goldstein & Gigerenzer, 2002; see also Newell & Shanks, 2004;Pachur, Todd, Gigerenzer, Schooler, & Goldstein, 2011;Pohl, 2006), the fluency heuristic (Jacoby & Brooks, 1984;Schooler & Hertwig, 2005;Whittlesea, 1993), and the exemplar-based approach (Juslin, Olsson, & Olsson, 2003;Juslin & Persson, 2002;Nosofsky & Palmeri, 1997). By contrast, when dealing with unfamiliar situations, people appear to take into account the informational structure of the decision problem, such as the relative values and intercorrelations between different sources of information and the cost of acquiring new information, in adopting decision heuristics (Bröder, 2000(Bröder, , 2003Dieckmann & Rieskamp, 2007;Rieskamp & Otto, 2006).…”

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confidence: 99%

Satisficing in split-second decision making is characterized by strategic cue discounting.

Oh¹,

Beck²,

Zhu³

et al. 2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Much of our real-life decision making is bounded by uncertain information, limitations in cognitive resources, and a lack of time to allocate to the decision process. It is thought that humans overcome these limitations through satisficing, fast but "good-enough" heuristic decision making that prioritizes some sources of information (cues) while ignoring others. However, the decision-making strategies we adopt under uncertainty and time pressure, for example during emergencies that demand split-second choices, are presently unknown. To characterize these decision strategies quantitatively, the present study examined how people solve a novel multicue probabilistic classification task under varying time pressure, by tracking shifts in decision strategies using variational Bayesian inference. We found that under low time pressure, participants correctly weighted and integrated all available cues to arrive at near-optimal decisions. With increasingly demanding, subsecond time pressures, however, participants systematically discounted a subset of the cue information by dropping the least informative cue(s) from their decision making process. Thus, the human cognitive apparatus copes with uncertainty and severe time pressure by adopting a "drop-the-worst" cue decision making strategy that minimizes cognitive time and effort investment while preserving the consideration of the most diagnostic cue information, thus maintaining "good-enough" accuracy. This advance in our understanding of satisficing strategies could form the basis of predicting human choices in high time pressure scenarios.

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“…Over the past decade, the RH has attracted significant attention and has generated much controversy (Hilbig, 2010;Marewski, Pohl, & Vitouch, 2010, 2011a, 2011bPachur, Bröder, & Marewski, 2008;Pachur et al, 2011). From a processing perspective, three issues have been particularly pertinent.…”

Section: Ffh Framework: the Recognition Heuristic (Rh)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to this view, "the use of the recognition heuristic involves two processes: first, recognition in order to see whether the heuristic can be applied, and second, evaluation in order to judge whether it should be applied" (Gigerenzer & Brighton, 2009, p. 132). Several conditions-both on the item and domain level-have been proposed to trigger the suspension of the RH during the evaluation stage (for comprehensive overviews, see Pachur, Todd, Gigerenzer, Schooler, & Goldstein, 2011;Pohl, 2011). Among the suspension criteria are the following: (a) A person can retrieve "conclusive criterion knowledge" (Pachur & Hertwig, 2006, p. 997) that allows to answer the comparison question by deduction (i.e., an LMM is constructed; cf.…”

Section: Ffh Framework: the Recognition Heuristic (Rh)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Magnitude comparison extended: How lack of knowledge informs comparative judgments under uncertainty.

Schweickart¹,

Brown²

2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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How do people compare quantitative attributes of real-world objects? (e.g., Which country has the higher per capita GDP, Mauritania or Nepal?). The research literature on this question is divided: Although researchers in the 1970s and 1980s assumed that a 2-stage magnitude comparison process underlies these types of judgments (Banks, 1977), more recent approaches emphasize the role of probabilistic cues and simple heuristics (Gigerenzer, Todd, & The ABC Research Group, 1999). In this article, we review the magnitude comparison literature and propose a framework for magnitude comparison under uncertainty (MaC). Predictions from this framework were tested in a choice context involving one recognized and one unrecognized object, and were contrasted with those based on the recognition heuristic (Goldstein & Gigerenzer, 2002). This was done in 2 paired-comparison studies. In both, participants were timed as they decided which of 2 countries had the higher per capita gross domestic product (GDP). Consistent with the MaC account, we found that response times (RTs) displayed a classic symbolic distance effect: RTs were inversely related to the difference between the subjective per capita GDPs of the compared countries. Furthermore, choice of the recognized country became more frequent as subjective difference increased. These results indicate that the magnitude comparison process extends to choice contexts that have previously been associated only with cue-based strategies. We end by discussing how several findings reported in the recent heuristics literature relate to the MaC framework.

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The Recognition Heuristic: A Review of Theory and Tests

Cited by 71 publications

References 135 publications

Individual differences in use of the recognition heuristic are stable across time, choice objects, domains, and presentation formats

Individual differences in use of the recognition heuristic are stable across time, choice objects, domains, and presentation formats

Satisficing in split-second decision making is characterized by strategic cue discounting.

Magnitude comparison extended: How lack of knowledge informs comparative judgments under uncertainty.

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