Recognition heuristic

The recognition heuristic, originally termed the recognition principle, has been used as a model in the psychology of judgment and decision making and as a heuristic in artificial intelligence. The goal is to make inferences about a criterion that is not directly accessible to the decision maker, based on recognition retrieved from memory. This is possible if recognition of alternatives has relevance to the criterion. For two alternatives, the heuristic is defined as:

The recognition heuristic is part of the "adaptive toolbox" of "fast and frugal" heuristics proposed by Gigerenzer and Goldstein. It is one of the most frugal of these, meaning it is simple or economical. In their original experiment, Daniel Goldstein and Gerd Gigerenzer quizzed students in Germany and the United States on the populations of both German and American cities. Participants received pairs of city names and had to indicate which city has more inhabitants. In this and similar experiments, the recognition heuristic typically describes about 80–90% of participants' choices, in cases where they recognize one but not the other object (see criticism of this measure below). Surprisingly, American students scored higher on German cities, while German participants scored higher on American cities, despite only recognizing a fraction of the foreign cities. This has been labeled the "less-is-more effect" and mathematically formalized.

The recognition heuristic is posited as a domain-specific strategy for inference. It is ecologically rational to rely on the recognition heuristic in domains where there is a correlation between the criterion and recognition. The higher the recognition validity α for a given criterion, the more ecologically rational it is to rely on this heuristic and the more likely people will rely on it. For each individual, α can be computed by

where C is the number of correct inferences the recognition heuristic would make, computed across all pairs in which one alternative is recognized and the other is not, and W is the number of wrong inferences. Domains in which the recognition heuristic was successfully applied include the prediction of geographical properties (such as the size of cities, mountains, etc.), of sports events (such as Wimbledon and soccer championships) and elections. Research also shows that the recognition heuristic is relevant to marketing science. Recognition based heuristics help consumers choose which brands to buy in frequently purchased categories. A number of studies addressed the question of whether people rely on the recognition heuristic in an ecologically rational way. For instance, name recognition of Swiss cities is a valid predictor of their population (α = 0.86) but not their distance from the center of Switzerland (α = 0.51). Pohl reported that 89% of inferences accorded with the model in judgments of population, compared to only 54% in judgments of the distance. More generally, there is a positive correlation of r = 0.64 between the recognition validity and the proportion of judgments consistent with the recognition heuristic across 11 studies. Another study by Pachur suggested that the recognition heuristic is more likely a tool for exploring natural rather than induced recognition (i.e. not provoked in a laboratory setting) when inferences have to be made from memory. In one of his experiments, the results showed that there was a difference between participants in an experimental setting vs. a non-experimental setting.

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