The Plague of Misidentification
Biases, Fallacies, & Heuristics Part 6
Welcome back! In this installment of The Plague of Misidentification series, we will examine the Affect, Availability, & Representativeness Heuristics, and discuss some observations concerning causation and outcropping patterns.
Affect Heuristic
The affect heuristic occurs when a person makes decisions based upon their affect (mental state, mood, or emotional state), all of which are factors that have their influence prior to the decision. I point this out not to be redundant but rather to show that with all of these heuristics, our prior states of awareness are the states that influence the process and that this setup has little to nothing to do with the moment of the decision. When we factor time into the equation concordantly with how the psychological influence of a causal stream propagates, we will then hone in on a critical aspect of how to improve these choices.
This heuristic deals with the unequal weighting of the emotional state as it factors into the decision-making process. In this heuristic, a person relies upon the feeling, giving it improper weight due to the way in which the feeling impresses upon them that X or Y decision should be made. Such a process very often misses the mark as the unequal weighing in favor of the emotional response happens in contradistinction to the proper weighing of the logic that would, if appropriately considered, give the person greater clarity in making a more accurate and, in many psychological situations, a more truthful decision.
Think of this process from the standpoint of a seesaw or the scales of justice. The greater emotional emphasis one is experiencing, the more one will skew in favor of that response, in general, and especially if one is prone to this heuristic. On the other side of the scale is logic. The greater the emphasis or psychological weight that is placed on that side of the scale, the more the scale favors the logical response. This is easy enough to understand, so why is this heuristic ubiquitous? The power of this heuristic is found within the mechanism of errant thinking that we studied earlier as the appeal to emotion fallacy. This, of course, does not answer the question. I could write a book on this answer, but I will save us that for now and make an effort to summarize a few key reasons.
People are generally unaware of the existence of this thinking.
People are aware that it exists but feel they do not commit this thinking error.
People are not educated in logic until later in the educational process, and they often don't make it to that level for whatever reason. This leads to being unaware and is, therefore, a reason as to why they are unaware or a reason as to why, if aware, they give it no merit.
People refuse the logic of this particular heuristic because they think “feeling” has a more powerful substructure with which to discern truth. Whether or not they are correct in this regard periodically is irrelevant because the ignorance of logic is the logic of ignorance. This, in short, is a false dichotomy.
A percentage of the populace has one of the many inhibitors that will prevent them from a) understanding, b) caring, or c) actualizing upon the knowledge even if they can or do understand—aka solipsism, arrogance, self-righteousness, and personality disorders of varying types are all functioning inhibitors.
A percentage of the populace is not inhibited in the above ways, and they could care less.
This is not an exhaustive list, but it is a discouraging one.
Get Ready
My experience with people committing this failed form of thinking is beyond familiar. I run into this every single day while teaching, mentoring, or just existing in whatever capacity that happens to be present at those moments. Note that I do not think myself free of any thinking errors presented within this entire series. Nonetheless, my experiences and the resultant thoughts about them are as follows.
It is a staggering thing to witness people make choices about themselves, others, animals, inanimate objects, etc., that go against every single piece of information, evidence, history, or other form of pertinent data. I have seen relationships of all types ended through this heuristic, business decisions that were catastrophic due to this heuristic, driving decisions that were fatal due to this heuristic, you name it, and I can likely tell you a personal anecdote about many, many more faulty applications of this heuristic that I have witnessed over my career and lifetime.
Have I seen it work out and give the correct response? Yes, I have. What I can say about that answer concerning this topic is that the underpinning logic is clear and understandable and could have, in many situations, been as fast, if not faster, than the application of the affect heuristic. Note that we are about to venture into the psychological underpinnings of why certain choices are made. There will be a lot of that material to come throughout this series, particularly after essay twenty.
Introduction to the Pain Aversion Driver
In many cases, the affect heuristic is chosen to save X person from some sort of unfavorable pain, and this decision is frequently directed toward a known, survivable, and, therefore, more favorable pain. I will set out and prove that pain aversion and pain conversion are two of the greatest and most errant drivers the human race has to offer. For now, let the last few sentences sink in and probe the knowledge within agreeing or disagreeing; think and formulate your positions, and we will come together and let the logic sharpen us all at a later time.
In short, my take is that this needs to be dealt with from an educational standpoint and early in life so that the individual can develop the tool kit that best fits the requirements of the problems. Have you ever wondered why such things are not taught in schools, particularly in middle grades? I have, and I can tell you there is an answer to this question. We will cover that answer and many more that outcrop from it in later essays.
When it comes to inhibitors of the perception of the real, the affect heuristic is in the top tier.
A Few Questions
Do you think you apply the affect heuristic? If so, where do you think it shows up the most? If so, where do you think it is the most destructive to others? Where do you think you have done the most harm to yourself through its presence? Can you see a skewing toward emotionality as being a weakness? Can you see a skewing toward emotionality as being a strength? Please elaborate on the last two answers.
As the Phrontisterium grows, we will have ongoing conversations happening in the hopes of deepening one's understanding of the material and helping to actualize that new knowledge base. Feel free to engage and offer up your answers. Who knows what good can come from such conversations? Exciting!
The Availability Heuristic
The availability heuristic occurs when a person needs to make a decision. They errantly rely upon data that is front of mind, most recently viewed, currently being viewed, or that is, for whatever reason, easily remembered at the moment. They then base the decision upon this data rather than going through a logical process that would yield analysis of proper factors that directly attend the problem. This is chosen in contradistinction to the pertinent information and, therefore, often leads to significant issues within the problem set and its outcroppings.
The prevalence of the availability heuristic can carry extreme weight in many fields. If you consider politics, banking, social media, religious organizations, and the like, the presence of this heuristic would have both capacities for extraordinary impact on the populace and the possibility of the misapprehension and misidentification of information acquired from studies and polls of all sorts. The power and presence of this heuristic, along with its capacity to be used to generate such things as brand loyalty, fallacious choice states of all types, thoughts about the most current ideology given lots of media attention, acceptance of ideas one has never even heard of when presented as if they are a trusted age-old accepted wisdom, you name it, yields a severe situation for those that are unaware of its impact upon their daily lives.
Whatever you want to sell or push into one's psyche, this heuristic can help a human accept it wholesale. It is critical for one to understand that from this vector of approach, this heuristic becomes an exploit of an open door into the human psyche that needs to be shut and controlled well by its owner. To be exceedingly clear, this needs to be done because, with the pushing of certain data pools, with just the right intensity, coverage, and frequency, you can generate thought, at least within a certain percentage of the populace. In many of the instances that this thought is generated, the thinker thinks they did the generating! This is exceedingly dangerous for a person or populace that wishes to think for themselves and values open discourse as a means to intelligent discovery. If you want to observe a real-life potential control mechanism, then look no further. When the availability heuristic is obfuscationally induced, it will gain its hold on a percentage of the populace.
The Representativeness Heuristic
The representativeness heuristic occurs when a person conflates the likelihood of X's probabilistic occurrence with an already extant and readily available prototype. It occurs in the form: What is the probability that object X belongs to class Y? Or what is the probability that event X has its causation in Process Y?
The surface error here is that the extant readily available data may or may not significantly impact the likelihood of X occurrence. The data one has at this time is in no way proven to have a causal connection in the ways it is used within the heuristical form. The heuristic itself is nonetheless a shortcut that remains useful, and as mentioned before, it will only be as useful as its underpinning logic. A simple way to express the error within this heuristic is that people often give similar things more connectivity or causal relationship than are factually present. While that helps, it doesn't nail the whole of the heuristic but do keep it in mind.
This heuristic was discovered by Tversky & Kahneman, and it was brought forward, in part, within the now-famous "Linda Problem."
There is a little nugget of thinking gold present within this heuristic that I want to address briefly. Let's start by giving a classic example that will bring it out.
E.g., Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.
Which is more likely?
Linda is a bank teller.
Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.
In the original experiment, 85% of those asked chose option 2. The answer is option 1.
The why of this will be very helpful in gaining the ability to see reality more clearly. The major thinking error here is the conflation of plausibility with higher probability. The more data given about Linda, the more we feel that the picture of Linda becomes apparent (plausible), and thus, we infer causal links to the specific data points presented. If we feel that this data fits our mental model of "a feminist," we naturally and heuristically conclude to the side of the errant answer.
In reality, more data (within this context) does not equal more significant connections directly regarding the question and its answer. In fact, the probability of Linda being a bank teller is significantly higher than the probability of Linda being a bank teller and a feminist. This heuristic contains within it a fallacy known as the conjunction fallacy. The conjunction fallacy occurs when the rating of two events is seen as probabilistically more likely than the rating of any one event. It is factual that the one event is probabilistically more likely than the two single events once conjoined, thus the conjunction fallacy. We feel that the conjoined data points add a higher probability because they add more options or points of connectivity. If you consider that last statement, it will point directly toward the explanation of the errancy yielding the fallacy. I bet you can sense that this will not be the last time we will be discussing this heuristic within this series.
Note that this heuristic can cause you great trouble when conducting an abductive logical analysis.
For those of you who are more advanced and wish to develop a deeper understanding as well as preview some material that will be coming later in the series, click the following link to APA PsychNet and take a look at the paper, A Quantum Theoretical Explanation for Probability Judgement Errors by Busemeyer, Pothos, Franco, & Trueblood. It is extremely heavy in the quantum mathematics/logic language medium and well worth reading. For those of you who wish to wait, for now, have no fear. I plan to take the paper apart and explain it in detail in later essays.
https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2011-07084-002.html
Thoughts on Heuristics
It is time to do a little summary of heuristics as we have studied them so far.
Heuristics are:
Easily understood at the introductory level as rules of thumb.
Time-saving thinking strategies that, when used well, yield good outcomes that are rapid.
Time-consuming thinking strategies that, when used poorly, yield adverse, rapid outcomes, thus generating a more time-wasting process of recovery from the new problem set generated by the errant application.
Only as good as their underpinning logic and its application to reality.
A component of the natural human thinking processes.
A critical tool to understand and master if one wishes to succeed in thinking well.
A critical tool in learning to perceive reality accurately, succinctly, and with increased lucidity.
A critical tool in learning to defend oneself from unwanted influence upon one's thoughts, behaviors, and life trajectory.
Both offensive and defensive, depending upon one's intended use.
Very helpful in gaining insight into the operations of the human mind, brain, and its physical and neurological structures and their resultant decision-making processes.
Fun to study, learn about, and apply!
Questions
How do you see these essays are helping you? How do you see they are hurting you? Whatever answers you give, take some time and investigate them further by asking why questions. Can you see where you have applied these heuristics? If so, what was the outcome? Have you ever gotten into an argument with a person because one or both of you were operating based on data generated by the use of either of these heuristics? If so, try to elaborate as to how this happened and what you see the ultimate outcroppings of these events generated in both of your lives.
Thanks & Encouragement
Thank you for continuing onward with me in this journey of discovery. There are many more exciting concepts we will cover during this series! With each new concept, keep in mind that they will stand independently and link with other concepts, sometimes nonintuitively. Each of these steps you take forward in building your tool kit will better help you discern the real. This is stupendously important to have as a skill set, and as you grow, the power of that will become more evident over time. Take time to consider how you use your new thinking skills because they can significantly impact your life and the lives of others.
Coming Next
We will discuss More Heuristics, as well as the psychological aspects of the causative structures underpinning their use, plus some other asides, notes, and the like that will help us establish future concepts.
We will continue.
B.S.R.
This is fantastic material!! Such an interesting and personally thought provoking topic. Here are some of my answers to the first set of questions with regard to the affect heuristic
The affect heuristic is one that I have applied numerous times throughout my life, often multiple times per day. I would say that its a true statement that my primary operative frame for decision making was filtered through this heuristic for most, if not all of my twenties.
It seems to show up the most whenever I am faced with a situation where I am able to perceive some kind of judgment from others based on whatever it is I choose to say, be, do, represent myself with/as. anything that could elicit a response from others where there is potential for them to look at me in a n unfavorable light.
It is most destructive to others because I do not allow them to have their own thoughts and feelings about me in any given situation. I prejudge their motives, responses, thoughts, and inner heart desires based on assumptions and biases that I hold rather than allowing them to be who they are. I see this as destructive because it destroys the potential for any meaningful relationship to be formed between myself and much of the world around me. I shut people out before we have a chance to get any steam rolling regarding ways where we might help one another or have any kind of common bond. I see great potential for this to cause pain in other people because, while I may not perceive that I am doing harm, I am very likely cold, curt, cutting, short tempered and generally rude in my interactions all out of a desire to protect my feelings and being motivated from a place of controlling the environment around me to suit my desire to be loved and seen as worthy of love.
In the exact same ways, I do harm to myself. I desire love and relationship, yet applying the affect heuristic in the ways that I have results in very shallow, cold, unloving relationships that all could have been quite different had I chosen to seek truth and understanding rather than move from emotional bias and assumptions.
Yes, I can see being skewed toward emotionality as a weakness because it becomes very easy to cloud truth and reason when we are too consumed by emotional responses. Anger is not a great thing to operate from when we are trying to understand ways to solve problems. That emotional filter has a very high risk of bias and can cause a person to make decisions in a blind rage where they are not able to recognize good, love, empathy, compassion or their own capacity to have misjudged a situation. When I am angry, I am very defensive, I am quick to respond, and its often through a very shallow and spiteful frame of mind. This usually will end up poorly, to say the least.
I can also see that having an understanding of our own emotionality can be very beneficial as it could be signals to us to examine our surroundings in a much deeper way than we had been before. Again, my anger is usually a response to a perceived threat. This may be real and I would do well to examine the situation for any truth to that perception. If a real threat is present, I may apply the affect heuristic and protect myself from danger and harm.
As you've pointed out, skewing towards emotionality as the foundational basis for decision making is errant and a weakness. One that I definitely suffer from. I see this a lot within my comfort seeking behavior. In this, I base decisions off of what would allow me to avoid painful or uncomfortable emotions. In short, seeking happiness only at the expense of all other things (other people/truth/etc.)
However, I could see the skewing towards emotionality as potentially a great strength. As I see it, emotions serve as great indicators of our environment and drivers of our movement. For example, anger could indicate to an individual that there has been a wrong and would be the impetus to seek correction. Feeling sadness deeply can be a driver towards connecting with community or moving towards empathy, particularly in the context of grief. Without that emotion present, one may be able to logically conclude that a wrong has been done or that grieving is appropriate. However, that emotional depth allows for a warmth in communication, particularly from person to person in the form of a shared emotion. Communicating at that level in a healthy way is a great strength and one I hope to nurture. Of course, emotion must always be tested for its truth value using the thinking systems you are outlining within your writings lest we fall victim to the affect heuristic and the delusion it may generate. Awesome essay, Shane!