Take-the-best heuristic

In <a href="/facts/Psychology/duoqW7Sz">psychology</a>, the take-the-best heuristic is a <a href="/facts/Heuristic/BcBEkv9c">heuristic</a> (a simple strategy for <a href="/facts/Decision-making/NbJYprSw">decision-making</a>) which decides between two alternatives by choosing based on the first cue that discriminates them, where cues are ordered by <a href="/facts/Cue_validity/YB1HxpWN">cue validity</a> (highest to lowest). In the original formulation, the cues were assumed to have binary values (yes or no) or have an unknown value. The logic of the heuristic is that it bases its choice on the best cue (reason) only and ignores the rest.
Psychologists <a href="/facts/Gerd_Gigerenzer/tU4H5r88">Gerd Gigerenzer</a> and <a href="/facts/Daniel_Goldstein/kdymGx5N">Daniel Goldstein</a> discovered that the heuristic did surprisingly well at making accurate <a href="/facts/Inferences/RBbe95bP">inferences</a> in real-world environments, such as inferring which of two cities is larger. The heuristic has since been modified and applied to domains from <a href="/facts/Medicine/2fnp90Je">medicine</a>, <a href="/facts/Artificial_intelligence/lJGauQwX">artificial intelligence</a>, and <a href="/facts/Political_forecasting/W0vtjyPT">political forecasting</a>. The heuristic has been used to accurately model how experts, such as airport customs officers and professional burglars, make decisions; the model often makes better predictions of human behavior than more complex models that assume experts integrate all available cues.

Take-the-best heuristic open-in-new

Take-the-best heuristic