We make many decisions daily, ranging from the mundane, such as 'Where should I go for lunch today?' or 'What shall I have for breakfast?', to those requiring complex cognitive processes, such as 'I can save about $2 per day if I walk home from school and exercise at the same time'. Most of these decisions are made quickly and effortlessly.
According to Breckler, Olson, and Wiggins (2006), we make common, everyday decisions based on heuristics, which are informal rules or shortcuts used for making decisions quickly. As we face many daily issues that require some form of decision-making or judgment, we do not resolve each situation with the same amount of energy or resources, lest we get mentally exhausted.
I recently met an international student who is currently studying in the MBA programme at JCUS. We were chatting halfway when he asked me to guess which country he was from. Based on his accent and skin colour, i guessed that he was from the Philippines, or China. However, I got a shock when he finally revealed that he was from India.
Firstly, he did not fit the stereotype of how a person from India should look like(e.g. dark skinned, indian accent). Secondly, using the representativeness heuristic, his facial features fit those of an individual from China, Philippines or other countries with fairer-skinned individuals compared to India, and I interpreted his accent as one from the minority groups in China. Therefore, it came as quite a surprise to me that he was from India instead. Well, it also shows that the heuristics that we use in daily life is not always accurate.
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Hi esther, i think it is logical to make such judgements such in thi wirld, there is really tremoudously too many things to consider. But as what the 'textbook' recommend, we can initially categorise people, but later remember treat them as unique beings when we get to know them more :)
cheng tsuang chih (leovine)
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