Heuristics and Political Elites’ Judgment and Decision-Making
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929917750311 |
| Published date | 01 February 2019 |
| Date | 01 February 2019 |
| Author | Barbara Vis |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
750311PSW0010.1177/1478929917750311Political Studies ReviewVis
research-article2018
Article
Political Studies Review
2019, Vol. 17(1) 41 –52
Heuristics and Political Elites’
© The Author(s) 2018
Judgment and Decision-Making https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929917750311
DOI: 10.1177/1478929917750311
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Barbara Vis
Abstract
It is broadly assumed that political elites (e.g. party leaders) regularly rely on heuristics in
their judgments or decision-making. In this article, I aim to bring together and discuss the
scattered literature on this topic. To address the current conceptual unclarity, I discuss two
traditions on heuristics: (1) the heuristics and biases (H&B) tradition pioneered by Kahneman
and Tversky and (2) the fast and frugal heuristics (F&F) tradition pioneered by Gigerenzer et al.
I propose to concentrate on two well-defined heuristics from the H&B tradition—availability
and representativeness—to empirically assess when political elites rely on heuristics and thereby
understand better their judgments and decisions. My review of existing studies supports the
notion that political elites use the availability heuristic and possibly the representativeness one
for making complex decisions under uncertainty. It also reveals that besides this, we still know
relatively little about when political elites use which heuristic and with what effect(s). Therefore,
I end by proposing an agenda for future research.
Keywords
political decision-making, political judgment, political elites, availability heuristic,
representativeness heuristic, fast and frugal heuristics, heuristics and biases
Accepted: 19 June 2017
Introduction
When taking decisions or making judgments (i.e. assessing situations that oftentimes
precede decision-making; Newell et al., 2015: 20), individuals regularly apply heuristics:
cognitive shortcuts or rules of thumb (see Gilovich et al., 2002). Much literature focuses
on the heuristics voters use, for instance, in their information search (Bartels, 1996;
Redlawsk, 2004) or preference formation (Bang Petersen, 2015). Compared to this large
literature that examines empirically the heuristics voters apply, the body of work studying
empirically the heuristics applied by political elites—for example, members of cabinet,
Utrecht University School of Governance, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Corresponding author:
Barbara Vis, Utrecht University School of Governance, Utrecht University, Bijlhouwerstraat 6, 3511 ZC
Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Email: b.vis@uu.nl
42
Political Studies Review 17 (1)
party leaders, or members of parliament (MPs)—is much more scant (exceptions include
Böhmelt et al., 2016; Jacobs, 2011; Kropp, 2010; Laver and Sergenti, 2012; Weyland,
2007, 2014).1 Political elites make judgments and decisions in an environment that differs
from that of ordinary citizens. Elites typically have more resources and support staff,
which may enable more accurate judgments and decisions (Jacobs, 2011; Weyland, 2014).
Political elites’ motivation to arrive at an accurate judgment may also be higher, stimulat-
ing higher effort reasoning and a more systematic mode of processing (Jacobs, 2011).
Another, related difference is that ordinary citizens usually face too little information to
make a “comprehensively rational” choice (Gilovich and Griffin, 2002: 3), whereas polit-
ical elites regularly face too much information. A large majority (74%)2 of Belgian politi-
cians, for example, are overwhelmed by the information they receive on a daily basis
(Walgrave et al. 2013: 22), making it plausible that they turn to heuristics for managing
this complexity. It goes beyond this article’s scope to explore the differences between
ordinary citizens and elites in more detail. Still, this possible difference is one reason to
concentrate on political elites’ use of heuristics.
Various strands of literature on political elites’ judgment or decision-making pay atten-
tion to some heuristic (e.g. Allison and Zelikov, 1999; Kingdon, 1989; Matthews and
Stimson, 1975). Because these studies vary substantially in how they define the term
heuristic, their findings are difficult to compare. Moreover, instead of empirically testing
whether political elites rely on heuristics, such studies typically assume (for instance,
because of incomplete information) that a heuristic has been employed. Establishing
empirically that political elites have used a heuristic instead of simply assuming that they
have is challenging (cf. Lau and Redlawsk, 2001).
Against this backdrop, my objectives are threefold. First, I address the lack of concep-
tual clarity by discussing two main traditions on heuristics: (1) the heuristics and biases
(H&B) tradition pioneered by Kahneman and Tversky (e.g. Gilovich et al., 2002; Tversky
and Kahneman, 1974) and (2) the fast and frugal heuristics (F&F) tradition pioneered by
Gigerenzer and his colleagues (e.g. Gigerenzer, 2001, 2015; Gigerenzer and Selten,
2001). While both traditions have their merits, I argue that two clearly defined,3 general-
purpose heuristics (Gilovich and Griffin, 2002: 3) from the H&B tradition—availability
and representativeness—are especially relevant to political decision-making. Knowing
more about the conditions under which political elites rely on these heuristics—which
underlie many others—4 will further our understanding of political judgment and deci-
sion-making. It does so because it helps to explain in the face of uncertainty which issues
or proposals are likely to reach to the political agenda (through availability). And which
ones are likely to be perceived as being able to solve the issue at hand (through repre-
sentativeness). My second objective is to bring together and discuss a selection of studies
on political elites’ reliance on heuristics. Hereby, I focus mainly—but not exclusively—
on the availability and representativeness heuristics. This review shows that political
elites indeed rely on these heuristics, but also that we know very little about the condi-
tions under which a specific heuristic is used (except for the general finding that complex-
ity and uncertainty matters). The third and final objective is therefore to bring the
discussion forward by outlining an agenda for future research.
What is a heuristic? Different traditions, different answers
Heuristic is a broad term that, according to Shah and Oppenheimer (2008: 207), “has
been used to describe nearly everything.” In the game-theoretic literature, for example, a
Vis
43
heuristic is defined as “a method or rule for solving problems” (Peyton Young, 2008: 1).
And in the agent-based modeling literature as “decision-making rules of thumb that can
in practice be very effective but can never be proven formally to be the best responses to
any conceivable state of the world” (Laver and Sergenti, 2012: 25). Political scientists
typically state that an individual employs a heuristic if she takes a decision based on any-
thing but full information. Because more information is always possible, “nearly anything
can be construed as a heuristic” (Druckman et al., 2009: 494). This not only makes what
is a heuristic unclear (cf. Shah and Oppenheimer, 2008) but also impairs the accumulation
of knowledge.
So, how to define heuristics? Who may be seen as the founding father of heuristics,
Herbert Simon (1990: 11), defines them as “methods for arriving at satisfactory solutions
with modest amounts of computation.” The two traditions on heuristics mentioned above
each build on Simon’s definition. Let me first discuss the traditions in some more detail.
The H&B tradition emphasizes how and why using heuristics typically results in judg-
ments or decisions that are suboptimal compared to a normative standard. This standard
is oftentimes expected utility theory (Von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1944) or another
variant of comprehensive rationality theory (Gilovich and Griffin, 2002). The F&F tradi-
tion, conversely, is interested in how and why F&F heuristics regularly allow people to
make judgments or decisions that “fit” their environment and that are thereby ecologi-
cally rational (Gigerenzer, 2001; Goldstein and Gigerenzer, 2002).5 Limitations of knowl-
edge and computational capability need not be a disadvantage. In fact, these scholars
argue that if an environment is highly complex, using a heuristic may yield better deci-
sions. Another contrast is that much research in the H&B tradition assumes that heuristics
are used automatically and largely unconsciously, per dual-process theories of mind’s
“system 1” reasoning (Kahneman, 2011; Kahneman and Frederick, 2002: 51–52;
Stanovich and West, 2000). The F&F tradition, conversely, generally assumes that heuris-
tics are employed consciously (Gilovich and Griffin, 2002: 16–17), more in line with
“system 2” reasoning.6
These characteristics are recognizable in the respective definitions employed. The
F&F tradition defines a heuristic as a strategy that ignores “part of the information, with
the goal of making decisions more quickly, frugally, and/or accurately than more complex
methods” (Gigerenzer, 2015: 112). Frugality plays no role in the H&B tradition. Instead,
the latter defines a...
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