By McKenna Gann
As a college student have you ever had a test that you spent hours studying for? You’ve never felt more confident about another test in your life perhaps? But.. It’s now test day, the test is sitting right in front of you, you’re reading over the questions, and you can’t remember anything that you spent all night studying. How can this be happening? How can studying cause a bad grade? Trust me, I’ve been there before too. We all have. Let’s talk about how availability heuristics can affect our studying.
What are heuristics?
Heuristics are any approach to problem solving/thinking that isn’t necessarily perfect, but is sufficient to reach a short term goal. Heuristics are important in our everyday life. If it weren’t for heuristics, decision making would be a very long process for people(2). Our brain relies on these strategies, so that we don’t have to stop and take extra time to make a decision. Let’s start more broadly and identify all three heuristics. The three different types of heuristics are 1. Representativeness that focuses on comparing the present situation to the most representative prototype. 2. Affect that focuses on the emotions you’re feeling when making a decision. 3. The one we’re most focused on, Availability. An availability heuristic is the tendency to use information that comes to mind quickly and easily(3). When you’re faced with the challenge of making an immediate decision, the availability heuristic allows you to come to a quick decision whether it is correct or not. It’s going to be easier for you to retrieve something you’re more familiar with, something that interests you, something that had a larger impact on you, is most recent to you, etc. This is how people make their decisions with this heuristic. This is why you don’t always make the most correct decision.
Availability Heuristics vs. Studying
Although heuristics can help us solve problems we can also start to see some conflict when it comes to things such as studying(5). In high school, you may have been able to look over notes for a couple hours the night before the test, and walk in the next day and get a perfect score on the test. Now you’re in college, and you may be wondering why that isn’t working for you anymore. You look over the notes the night before the test and when you go into class the next day you don’t remember anything that you studied, and ultimately that results in a bad grade for you. This is because you have relied on an existing heuristic you had, and that doesn’t always work. Just because something has worked for you before does not mean that it will work every time, or even that it will work for you ever again. Relying on the availability heuristic method can hinder you from trying to find other methods that work for you which causes you to be stuck in the same cycle because your brain is so familiar with this information, so it doesn’t want to switch it up(1).
How can we avoid this problem?
Now that you understand how it works, you may ask, what are some ways to get around it? Simply understanding how availability heuristic works is not enough to avoid it completely, but it’s a good start. Consider changing the way you do some things (in this case, studying.) If cramming has always worked for you, and it’s not working anymore. Try a new way of studying. Get out of old habits and create new ones. Start studying in advance, so you can study smaller chunks of information at once, and the concepts you’re studying will become more familiar, so when you go to take your test that’s the “quick” information that the availability heuristic provides to you(3). Make new habits for yourself, and get a little out of your comfort zone when studying new information and it will help you tremendously.
Conclusion
Availability heuristic is helpful with decision making in regards to time. Without this heuristic, decision making would be a very time consuming thing. It’s helpful that our brains can pull up familiar information to us quickly, so that we can make a decision when we need to. It’s not always helpful in regards to correct information in order to make a decision or in order to do what’s best. Our brain becomes so familiar with a tendency that we have, and it believes that it might work for every situation, but that isn’t the case. Your studying habits that you used in high school may have worked wonderfully for you in high school, but in college those studying habits might be holding you back. It’s because of the availability heuristic. Go above and beyond, and find new ways to study. Come up with new ways that will work for you. Don’t simply stick to what’s familiar to you.
References
- Availability heuristic – biases & heuristics. The Decision Lab. (2021, September 30). Retrieved November 29, 2021, from https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/availability-heuristic/.
- Cherry, K. (2019, November 18). How the availability heuristic affects your decision making. Verywell Mind. Retrieved November 29, 2021, from https://www.verywellmind.com/availability-heuristic-2794824.
- Cherry, K. (2019, November 18). How the availability heuristic affects your decision making. Verywell Mind. Retrieved November 29, 2021, from https://www.verywellmind.com/availability-heuristic-2794824.
- The availability bias: How to overcome a common cognitive distortion. Farnam Street. (2021, July 9). Retrieved November 29, 2021, from https://fs.blog/availability-bias-cognitive-distortion/.
- The cognitive biases caused by the availability heuristic. BetterUp. (n.d.). Retrieved November 29, 2021, from https://www.betterup.com/blog/the-availability-heuristic.