Can we really trust our “instincts” when visiting some company or availing ourselves of some NGO? As we step outside the cave, are we likely to confront some objective reality through our experience, or is the experience itself constantly shifting depending on setting, context, interpersonal relationships and the nature of our own past experience? These questions lead us down a path to constructivism. It is a path that has received considerable attention in recent years by the behavioral economists, who write about the power and potential abuse of a process they call “heuristics.”
The Promise and Perils of Heuristics
What is this thing called a “heuristic?” How do the behavioral economists engage the concept of “heuristics” when relating to these two objectivist perspectives? First, they challenge these two perspectives in a comprehensive manner. This is especially the case with static objectivism which holds sway in most contemporary societies. Behavioral economists suggest that cave dwellers are actually four steps removed for reality. Not only are the cave dwellers (each of us) relying on the interpretation offered inside the cave, they are also doing their own modifications of the interpretations given – making use of a series of conceptual tools that behavioral economists call “heuristics.”
In setting a broad context for this notion of heuristics, we turn first to an important distinction being drawn by one of the founders and leaders of this field, Daniel Kahneman (2011). As the first psychologist to win a Nobel Prize (not counting Pavlov, who was actually a physiologist), Kahneman partnered with Amos Tversky to present a remarkable analysis of the ways in which human beings actually operate in their environment. In essence, Kahneman proposes that there are two ways in which human beings process information and make decisions. He calls these System 1 and System 2:
“System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.
System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.
The labels of System 1 and System 2 are widely used in psychology, but I go further than most in this book, which you can read as a psychodrama with two characters.
When we think of ourselves, we identify with System 2, the conscious, reasoning self that has beliefs, makes choices, and decides what to think about and what to do. Although System 2 believes itself to be where the action is, the automatic System 1 is the hero of the book. I describe System 1 as effortlessly originating impressions and feelings that are the main sources of the explicit beliefs and deliberate choices of System 2. The automatic operations of System 1 generate surprisingly complex patterns of ideas, but only the slower System 2 can construct thoughts in an orderly series of steps. I also describe circumstances in which System 2 takes over, overruling the freewheeling impulses and associations of System 1. You will be invited to think of the two systems as agents with their individual abilities, limitations, and functions.”
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