The Affect Heuristic is a clear example of substitution where an answer to a easy question (“What is my impression?”) acts as a response to a much harder question (“What do I think?”). This heuristic simplify our life by creating a much ordered world. In this imaginary world, good technologies have low costs, while bad technologies don’t have advantages and all decisions are easy. In reality this is obviously not true, and a compromise is needed.
See also
- Sistema 1 è automatico e veloce, sistema 2 è lento, deliberato e richiede attenzione — the affect heuristic is a Sistema 1 operation: fast, automatic, effortless substitution of a hard question with an easy one
- Il Cervello è Progettato per Essere Efficiente non Accurato — the imaginary ordered world is the brain’s efficiency shortcut: a coherent but inaccurate model is cheaper to maintain than an accurate one
- Misjudging Reliability and Causality — the affect heuristic produces the same overcoherent world: we build a picture more ordered than the data justifies