![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/Presents.jpg\" "\\"gifts\\"")
The holiday gift-giving season is here.<\/p>\n
In a world that is short on time but long on merchandise, how can holiday shoppers make quick decisions about what to buy for the people in their lives? Once they make the decision, how do they know if they got it right? According to Darden Professor Yael Grushka-Cockayne, humans apply \u201csimilarity features\u201d associated with certain events or categories to make decisions<\/strong>. Formally, this phenomenon is called the \u201csimilarity heuristic.\u201d<\/strong> Grushka-Cockayne explains that it tends to guide people down the right path in a study published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe field of heuristics examines how people make quick decisions based on prior knowledge or experience in place of carrying out exhaustive research. The similarity heuristic can be used when a classification decision must be made,\u201d Grushka-Cockayne says.<\/p>\n So, let\u2019s say a shopper is buying a gift for someone about to enter business school. They might assume that MBA students enjoy reading business magazines and decide to buy a magazine subscription for their gift recipient.\u201cMuch of the time, we humans make good snap decisions,\u201d Grushka-Cockayne adds.<\/p>\n This may be good news for last minute-holiday shoppers, but in business, decisions are more complex. For instance, hiring managers, like shoppers, must choose from a wide range of possibilities.<\/p>\n One camp in the field of heuristics believes that snap judgments lead to biased decision-making, while another camp asserts its merits. To test these beliefs, Grushka-Cockayne and co-author, Professor Daniel Read of the Warwick Business School in the U.K., randomly assigned 160 volunteers to various experimental conditions. They used artificial stimuli to represent different populations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe provided a mathematical model of the heuristic and tested it on 120 sets. Each set contained two populations of different colored rectangles that were comparable to many natural populations,\u201d she says. \u201cFor example, most cities can be characterized by their population\u2019s ethnic mix.\u201d<\/p>\n The two large populations were made up of a diverse community represented by 100 blue, green and yellow rectangles. There were more blue rectangles than any other color. The researchers paired the two populations to generate smaller samples containing a diverse mix of 25 blue, green and yellow rectangles. The study volunteers had to choose which populations the samples came from based on their mix of colors, much the way a birdwatcher might categorize a species of bird based on its appearance.<\/p>\n The researchers placed the volunteers into one of four groups: two \u201csimilarity\u201d groups and two \u201cchoice groups.\u201d The two similarity groups assessed whether a sample was more similar to population one or population two. This exercise showed whether making \u2018\u2018useful\u2019\u2019 similarity judgments depends on the volunteers knowing why they were making them. One group knew the context for their assessments and the other did not.<\/p>\n The two \u201cchoice\u201d groups included volunteers who chose which of the two populations a sample was drawn from. The study showed whether people use the similarity heuristic and whether prior knowledge about the populations affected their choices and interacted with similarity judgments. One choice group had no knowledge of prior probabilities while the other choice group did.<\/p>\n Grushka-Cockayne and Read uncovered that people successfully made similarity judgments 86 percent of the time, compared to leaving a decision to chance. They suggest that in most instances in life, people do well to make a snap decision.<\/p>\n So what does this mean for hiring managers?<\/p>\n They can trust their instincts. Snap decisions made about candidates using the similarity heuristic are generally accurate.<\/p>\n \u201cIn addition to hiring, this area is pertinent to business activities such as project selection,\u201d says Grushka-Cockayne, who also conducts research in the area of project management decision-making and new product development in the Behavioral Research at Darden (BRAD) Laboratory.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the University of Virginia Darden School of Business press release: The holiday gift-giving season is here. 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