Heuristics

The Representative Heuristic is when you make an assumption based on the knowledge you have at hand. An example would be if you had left your kids with a babysitter, and when you came home all the cookies in the pantry were gone. You would assume that your children ate the cookies because children are sneaky and love treats. This could be a problem if it was the babysitter, and you blamed your kids.

The Availability Heuristic is making a haste decision based on the first thing that comes to your mind. An example would be if you wanted to take a vacation to a tropical island, but it might storm one day so you decide not to because it could be a tsunami. Based off your fear that popped into your head, you cancel the whole trip and miss out on a really fun experience. Making a haste decision can cause you to miss out.

Anchoring heuristic is getting a piece of information and believing it is fact. Imagine your friend told you eating ants would improve your hearing. You could go around telling people, which in turn would make you sound a little crazy, or eating ants. Either way, not a very good outcome. Relying on one piece of information is not always the best way to go, do your research!

The Status Quo Heuristic is having a preference and never straying from it. If you have a specific “type” in men, you could miss out on meeting some really great people, or creating an amazing relationship with someone, just because they didn’t fit all your visual expectations.

 

Self Portrait

I am on the left.

I chose this out of the dozen photos I chose of myself, because I believe this reflects my personality the best. I am not typically the type of person who takes a lot of photos of myself, or has photos taken of me. It was difficult to find photos of just me, but seeing as this is a selfie I thought it would apply to the topic. This photo shows my family orientation, and how important relationships are to me. I am a daughter to my mother, sister to four, aunt to two and girlfriend to one. This also shows a goofy side of myself, that I tend to bring out in others as well. This is a genuine moment of me and my family, which always makes me smile looking back on.

Through my photos I could see that they’re always with the same people, I build strong relationships with friends, family, and my significant other. This shows how dedicated I am which applies to all aspects of my life. I am currently a college student so dedicating myself to my studies is very important. I love trying to understand people and making them feel better, which you can see through the photo. In making people laugh and happy, brings the same to me as well. I plan on becoming a psychologist so helping people along with making them feel better is a big part of the job.