Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

The priority heuristic: making choices without trade-offs.

Eduard Brandstätter1, Gerd Gigerenzer, Ralph Hertwig

  • 1Department of Psychology, Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Altenbergerstrasse 69, 4040 Linz, Austria. eduard.brandstaetter@jku.at

Psychological Review
|April 28, 2006
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Large language models accurately identify decision reasons in verbal reports.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2026
Same author

Toward a mechanistic understanding of false news sharing: Which interventions work best, for whom, and why.

Journal of experimental psychology. General·2026
Same author

Communicating risks more comprehensively using simulated experience.

Trends in cognitive sciences·2026
Same author

An Updated Polygenic Index Repository: Expanded Phenotypes, New Cohorts, and Improved Causal Inference.

Research square·2025
Same author

Short report: association between self-reported COVID-19 experience and contemptuous beliefs about pandemic management among German citizens and healthcare professionals.

Journal of public health (Oxford, England)·2025
Same author

More than incurious: the development of deliberate ignorance.

Trends in cognitive sciences·2025
Same journal

Perception and action as one: Re-integrating research on human action through event files.

Psychological review·2026
Same journal

Associative learning explains "intuitive statistics" in animals.

Psychological review·2026
Same journal

A reciprocal model of practice and skill: Navigating between dropout and expertise.

Psychological review·2026
Same journal

The relative psychometric function: A general analysis framework for relating psychological processes.

Psychological review·2026
Same journal

A taxonomy of discriminatory behavior.

Psychological review·2026
Same journal

Extreme-value signal detection theory for recognition memory: The parametric road not taken.

Psychological review·2026
See all related articles

This study introduces the priority heuristic, a fast and frugal decision-making model, to explain deviations from expected utility theory in preferences. It accurately predicts various choice anomalies, offering a new framework for understanding decision-making processes.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Behavioral Economics
  • Decision Science

Background:

  • Bernoulli's expected utility theory is a foundational model for decision-making, motivation, and attitudes.
  • Empirical evidence often deviates from expected utility predictions, necessitating alternative frameworks.
  • Fast and frugal heuristics offer a parsimonious approach to understanding judgment and decision-making.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To generalize the framework of fast and frugal heuristics from inference to preferences.
  • To introduce and test the predictive accuracy of the priority heuristic for choices.
  • To compare the priority heuristic's performance against existing heuristics and expected utility modifications.

Main Methods:

  • Generalizing fast and frugal heuristics to model preferences.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Developing the priority heuristic as a predictive model for decision-making.
  • Empirically testing the heuristic's predictions against observed choice anomalies and alternative models.

    • Main Results:

    • The priority heuristic successfully predicts phenomena such as the Allais paradox and various risk preferences for gains and losses.
    • It accounts for certainty and possibility effects, as well as intransitive choices.
    • The heuristic demonstrates competitive predictive accuracy compared to other models.

    Conclusions:

    • The priority heuristic provides a viable alternative to expected utility theory for explaining decision-making under risk.
    • This framework offers valuable insights into the psychological processes underlying preference formation.
    • The study highlights the utility of heuristics in understanding complex human choices.