What are heuristics and biases?

Heuristics and biases are like shortcuts your brain uses to make decisions quickly, but sometimes they lead you astray.

Imagine you're picking between two ice creams, one is a familiar flavor you love, the other is something new you've never tried. Your brain might choose the familiar one because it knows it's good. That’s using a heuristic, a simple rule your brain follows to make choices faster.

Sometimes these shortcuts can trick you. Let’s say you see a big, shiny toy in the store. It looks amazing, so you think it must be really fun to play with, even if you don’t know what it does. That's a bias, when your brain uses a shortcut and makes an incorrect guess.

Your brain is like a busy chef in a kitchen, it wants to make sure everything gets done quickly. So it uses these shortcuts, but sometimes the recipe doesn't turn out exactly right. That’s why you might pick the familiar ice cream or think the shiny toy is super fun, even if it's not!