As one of the psychological processes underlying judgment bias, attribute substitution explains why people rely on heuristics and commit judgment bias. Attribute substitution is a psychological process that is believed to underlie a number of cognitive distortions and perceptual illusions. Attribute substitution is a psychological process underlying a number of cognitive heuristics and perceptual illusions. [Sources: 3, 5, 10]
The heuristic and bias literature argues that substitution bias occurs when we replace a difficult task of judgment with an easier one. Attribute substitution theory brings together a series of distinct explanations of reasoning errors in terms of cognitive heuristics. This happens when people are faced with a computationally complex judgment and, because of its complexity, reformulate the problem into a more easily computable attribute. [Sources: 1, 3, 11]
To reduce this bias, we need to activate the reflective and analytical thinking of System 2; wherever possible, we should rely on artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and systems rather than our heuristics and intuition. However, attribute substitution has also been proposed as an explanation for human judgment errors in other classical reasoning problems, such as the problem of ignoring base rate or the error of conjunction (Kahneman and Frederick, 2002). According to our statements, this suggests that the problem with substitution and judgment bias in general is not that people are not aware that they need to think deeper, but that this deliberate processing is not successful. [Sources: 6, 11]
Like most authors (e.g., Evans, 2010; Frederick, 2005; Kahneman, 2011; Stanovich, 2010), we also believe that the main reason for substitution bias is that reasoners tend to minimize effort. Cognitive and stick to simple intuitive techniques. treatment. This is also known as displacement bias, a psychological process underlying several cognitive biases. This substitution is believed to take place in an intuitive automatic judgment system rather than a more self-conscious reflexive system. These examples illustrate why I argue that substitution bias is a real problem, not for individual decision-makers, but for the analytic community. [Sources: 4, 6, 8, 11]
People sometimes answer a difficult question and replace it with a simpler question. This idea will become the basis of cognitive heuristics. However, these examples are not about how ordinary people become victims of substitution bias. I see that this community is ignoring, belittling and distorting cognitive phenomena and replacing them with formulas that are easier to calculate. This is a classic technique of displacement deviation. [Sources: 9, 11]
This indicates that the subjects did not use the baseline to assess the likelihood, but replaced the more accessible similarity attributes. In a revision of the theory in 2002, Kahneman and Shane Frederick proposed attribute substitution as a potential process for these and other influences. The preconscious and intuitive nature of attribute substitution explains how subjects are affected by stereotyped thinking, that is, they make an honest and fair assessment of the intelligence of others. In a 1974 article, psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman argued that a variety of heuristics (short for information processing) can be used to Explain a lot of bias (judgment and decision-making bias), including accessibility and representativeness. [Sources: 1]
Kahneman proposes to replace the attribute of fear with a calculation of the overall risks of travel. In this study, we focused on the bat and ball problem because it is one of the most proven and paradigmatic examples of human substitution bias (e.g. Bourgeois-Gironde & Vanderhenst, 2009; Kahneman, 2011; Kahneman & Frederick, 2002; Toplak et al., 2011). So, if the subject has a stereotype of the relative intelligence of whites, blacks and Asians, this racial attribute can replace the more intangible attribute of intelligence. They suggested that these biases influence how people think and their judgments. [Sources: 1, 2, 6, 10]
Heuristics are useful in many situations, but they can also lead to cognitive biases. I am not suggesting that analytic researchers deliberately make substitutions. While heuristics can help us solve problems and speed up decision making, they can lead to errors. [Sources: 2, 11]
This is the answer that people must choose if they engage in the postulated replacement process. This bias will later be identified as a representativeness heuristic in which probabilistic judgments are influenced by perceptions of similarity. This idea was developed by Kahneman and Frederick when they argued that the target attribute and the heuristic attribute can be very different in nature. [Sources: 6, 9, 10]
Knowing how heuristics work and the possible biases they introduce can help you make better, more accurate decisions. So when someone answers a difficult question, they may be answering a related but different question without realizing that a substitution has occurred. Simons’ research showed that humans are limited in their ability to make rational decisions, but it was the work of Tversky and Kahnemans that introduced the study of heuristics and specific ways of thinking that people use to make decisions easier. [Sources: 2, 10]
Heuristics are a psychological shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make judgments quickly and effectively. As you can see in the example above, heuristics can lead to inaccurate judgments about how things usually happen and how representative things might be. In other words, the control version is a simpler statement that participants must subconsciously replace. The representative heuristic involves making a decision by comparing the current situation with the most representative psychological prototype. [Sources: 2, 6]
Some theories argue that heuristics are actually more accurate than biased. While the heuristic is imperfect, it can be incredibly effective in making troubleshooting easier. This explains why prejudices are unconscious and persist even when the subject is aware of them. The associated attribute is very accessible. This may be because it is automatically assessed under normal perception, or because it was initiated. [Sources: 2, 9, 10]
When it comes to making judgments, we are not as intelligent as we would like to think. While most of them could certainly calculate the correct answers with pen and paper, there was a bias in the assumptions of these sophisticated participants. [Sources: 3, 9]
Shoppers hope that the store is simple, and the simplest brand thinking and thinking will be the most attractive. Statistics and heuristic regression are better than the average in predicting errors in performance estimates. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. Neurobiological tools such as magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have been used to study the neural correlation of various deviations. In face-to-face conversations with strangers, assessing their intelligence is computationally more difficult than assessing their skin color. [Sources: 4, 7, 9, 10]
— Slimane Zouggari
##### Sources #####
[0]: https://www.encyclo.co.uk/meaning-of-Attribute_substitution
[1]: https://psychology.fandom.com/wiki/Attribute_substitution
[2]: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-heuristic-2795235
[3]: https://www.shortform.com/blog/attribute-substitution/
[4]: https://www.adcocksolutions.com/post/attribute-substitution
[5]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30845187/
[6]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-013-0384-5
[7]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/heuristics-and-biases/0975337F864379F2729EAD873D804BA8
[8]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/1823577
[9]: https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/psychology/biases/
[10]: https://biasandbelief.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/attribute-substitution/
[11]: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/seeing-what-others-dont/202010/the-substitution-trap