Risks of speed dating
13-Jun-2020 19:40
In an attempt to cope with the large amount of information and potential choices that we are presented with on a daily basis, we tend to rely on so-called “heuristics” (rules of thumb) that help guide our decision making.In essence, heuristics are decision-making tools that save effort by ignoring some information; and thus, their essential function is to reduce and simplify the processing of cues and information from our environment. In particular, prior research by Lenton and Francesconi suggests that when the number of potential speed-dating partners goes up, people tend to increasingly rely on heuristics in their decision making strategies.In fact, it can even prevent you from a making a decision in the first place.You might assume that when trying to find a good dating partner, having a large, varied pool of potential candidates available to you is a good thing, but new research indicates that it is not.
To restore access and understand how to better interact with our site to avoid this in the future, please have your system administrator contact [email protected], the author postulates that over millions of years of human evolution, such “smart” and adaptive heuristics have successfully guided our decision making in various (uncertain) environments.In short, we use all kinds of heuristics on a daily basis and apparently we do so for a good reason.At the time, I had just moved to Boston and didn’t know that many people yet, so I figured I would give the speed-dating scene a go.
As it turns out, I like to talk – so much, in fact, that I have a tendency to talk people’s ears off.
It is not that surprising that our decision making system breaks down when the human brain is confronted with too many options.