As reflected in the amount of controversy, few areas in psychology have undergone such dramatic conceptual changes in the past decade as the emerging science of heuristics. Heuristics are efficient cognitive processes, conscious or unconscious, that ignore part of the information. Because using heuristics saves effort, the classical view has been that heuristic decisions imply greater errors than do “rational” decisions as defined by logic or statistical models. However, for many decisions, the assumptions of rational models are not met, and it is an empirical rather than an a priori issue how well cognitive heuristics function in an uncertain world. To answer both the descriptive question (“Which heuristics do people use in which situations?”) and the prescriptive question (“When should people rely on a given heuristic rather than a complex strategy to make better judgments?”), formal models are indispensable. We review research that tests formal models of heuristic inference, including in business organizations, health care, and legal institutions. This research indicates that (a) individuals and organizations often rely on simple heuristics in an adaptive way, and (b) ignoring part of the information can lead to more accurate judgments than weighting and adding all information, for instance for low predictability and small samples. The big future challenge is to develop a systematic theory of the building blocks of heuristics as well as the core capacities and environmental structures these exploit.

/pdf/heuristic-decision-making-4yjobmwu4i.pdf

Heuristic Decision Making

A DNA test to sex most birds.

A behavioral syndrome is a suite of correlated behaviors expressed either within a given behavioral context (e.g., correlations between foraging behaviors in different habitats) or across different contexts (e.g., correlations among feeding, antipredator, mating, aggressive, and dispersal behaviors). For example, some individuals (and genotypes) might be generally more aggressive, more active or bold, while others are generally less aggressive, active or bold. This phenomenon has been studied in detail in humans, some primates, laboratory rodents, and some domesticated animals, but has rarely been studied in other organisms, and rarely examined from an evolutionary or ecological perspective. Here, we present an integrative overview on the potential importance of behavioral syndromes in evolution and ecology. A central idea is that behavioral correlations generate tradeoffs; for example, an aggressive genotype might do well in situations where high aggression is favored, but might be inappropriate...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/422893

Behavioral syndromes: An integrative overview

The Theory of Monopolistic Competition.

▪ Abstract Lentic freshwater habitats in temperate regions exist along a gradient from small ephemeral ponds to large permanent lakes. This environmental continuum is a useful axis for understanding how attributes of individuals ultimately generate structure at the level of the community. Community structure across the gradient is determined by both (a) physical factors, such as pond drying and winter anoxia, that limit the potential breadth of species distributions, and (b) biotic effects mediated by ecological interactions, principally predation, that determine the realized success of species. Fitness tradeoffs associated with a few critical traits of individuals often form the basis for species turnover along the gradient. Among species that inhabit temporary ponds, distributions are often constrained because traits that enhance developmental rate and competitive ability also increase susceptibility to predators. In permanent ponds, changes in the composition of major predators over the gradient limit ...

/pdf/mechanisms-creating-community-structure-across-a-freshwater-3osigazq5u.pdf

Mechanisms creating community structure across a freshwater habitat gradient

When animals can choose from a range of feeding options, often those options with a higher energetic gain carry a higher risk of predation. This paper analyses the optimal trade-off between food and predation. We are primarily interested in how an animal’s decisions and its state change over time. Our models are very general. They can be applied to growth decisions, such as choice of habitat, in which case we might consider how the state variable size changes over an animal’s lifetime. Equally our models are applicable to short-term foraging decisions, such as vigilance level, in which case we might consider how energy reserves vary over a day. We concentrate on two cases: (i) the animal must reach a fixed state, its fitness depending on when this is attained; (ii) the animal must survive to a fixed time, its fitness depending on its final state. In case (i) minimization of m ortality per unit increase of state is optimal under certain baseline conditions. In case (ii) behaviour is constant over time under baseline conditions (the 9Risk-spreading Theorem’). We analyse how these patterns are modified by complicating factors, e.g. time penalties, premature termination of the food supply, stochasticity in food supply or in metabolic expenditure, and state-dependence in the ability to obtain food, in metabolic expenditure and in predation risk. From this analysis we obtain a variety of possible explanations for why an animal should reduce its intake rate over time (i.e. show satiation). We show how earlier work can be viewed as special cases of our results.

General results concerning the trade-off between gaining energy and avoiding predation

https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_2101028_4/component/file_2101027/JH_Simple_2005.pdf

Simple heuristics and rules of thumb: Where psychologists and behavioural biologists might meet

Biologists have repeatedly rediscovered classical models from physics predicting collision rates in an ideal gas. These models, and their two-dimensional analogues, have been used to predict rates and durations of encounters among animals or social groups that move randomly and independently, given population density, velocity, and distance at which an encounter occurs. They have helped to separate cases of mixed-species association based on behavioural attraction from those that simply reflect high population densities, and to detect cases of attraction or avoidance among conspecifics. They have been used to estimate the impact of population density, speeds of movement and size on rates of encounter between members of the opposite sex, between gametes, between predators and prey, and between observers and the individuals that they are counting. One limitation of published models has been that they predict rates of encounter, but give no means of determining whether observations differ significantly from predictions. Another uncertainty is the robustness of the predictions when animal movements deviate from the model’s assumptions in specific, biologically relevant ways. Here, we review applications of the ideal gas model, derive extensions of the model to cover some more realistic movement patterns, correct several errors that have arisen in the literature, and show how to generate confidence limits for expected rates of encounter among independently moving individuals. We illustrate these results using data from mangabey monkeys originally used along with the ideal gas model to argue that groups avoid each other. Although agent-based simulations provide a more flexible alternative approach, the ideal gas model remains both a valuable null model and a useful, less onerous, approximation to biological reality.

Use, misuse and extensions of “ideal gas” models of animal encounter

Recent studies on humans show that too much choice can make subjects less likely to choose any item. I consider general adaptive and non-adaptive explanations of why such choice aversion, or its converse, might occur in animals. There are three questions: is more choice always preferred, does it ever lead to less consumption (or a lower probability of consumption), and may it result in worse items being selected? A preference for choice is one of the main explanations for lek formation and I draw attention to previously unrecognised parallels with models of human shopping behaviour. There is indeed evidence of female preference for larger leks, although much of the observational data are open to other interpretations. Unfortunately nobody has looked for choice aversion where it is most to be expected, in leks larger than normally occur. Evidence that too much choice of males confuses females is strongest in acoustically advertising frogs, but the widespread decrease of mating skew in larger leks might also have this explanation. A model reanalyses data on skew in black grouse Tetrao tetrix and suggests that considering only a random subset of a large lek may increase the chances of selecting the better males: larger leks are more likely to include better males, but these are less likely to be selected. These opposing effects may lead to an optimum lek size, but only with a sufficient decline in choice accuracy with size. With food choice, very few studies have avoided confounding choice with food quality, by manipulating only flavour. The widespread phenomena of stimulus-specific satiety and novelty seeking imply that monotonous diets are aversive, but no studies test whether animals choose sites where they know food diversity to be greater. Operant experiments that demonstrate mild preferences for free choice concern choice about the means to get food rather than the food itself. In some insect species even moderate choice of diet can be deleterious, and studies on search images and the confusion effect may be evidence of this in vertebrates. Environmental enrichment of captive animals often relies on increasing the options available, but it need not be the choice itself that is beneficial. I consider briefly further areas in biology where choice preference or aversion are potentially important.

John M. C. Hutchinson

Papers

General results concerning the trade-off between gaining energy and avoiding predation

Simple heuristics and rules of thumb: Where psychologists and behavioural biologists might meet

Use, misuse and extensions of “ideal gas” models of animal encounter

Is more choice always desirable? Evidence and arguments from leks, food selection, and environmental enrichment.

Patch leaving in humans: can a generalist adapt its rules to dispersal of items across patches?