The Priority Heuristic.

My immediate reaction to the earlier mentioned article The Priority Heuristic: Making Choices Without Trade-Offs by Brandstätter, Gigerenzer and Hertwig (2006) was confusion. I found the whole experience very different from the Dhami article which I was reading in the week before, and really enjoyed. After reading about the Priority Heuristic over and over again I didn’t get much wiser! It was only on Friday’s lecture that things started falling into place and now I have a bigger understanding about what the Priority Heuristic and the three steps it consists of is about. I also found the explanations of the Utility Theory and the Prospect Theory very helpful to me, but, to be honest, I did find the article very hard. I spent most of my time studying the parts of the text which explained the concept of mathematical expectation, hoping that once I got my head around that bit it would all make sense, and once I focused less on those calculations, and more on the written words and figures, I felt a bit more confident. But it left me wondering: is there anything in the world of Cognitive Psychology that is just logical? But then again, I guess an article based on examples like Richard Branson’s satisfaction if given a thousand pounds would not be appreciated by Cognitive Psychologists worldwide, although it would make my life so much easier.