Representativeness Heuristic

Musical taste and the representativeness heuristic

As human beings, we often use representativeness heuristic to make judgments about other individuals or events based on little information because it is easier and quicker to make an assumption when we face uncertainty. However, those judgments may not always be correct. This study is trying to investigate whether or not the use of representativeness heuristics was present during the research. The authors depict that people use little or biased information to make decisions or assumptions, nonetheless these may or may not be true. For instance, someone might make a remark about a random individual that is competitive and disciplined with muscular and built characteristics and assume he or

she is an athlete. Although in some instances this may not be the correct answer, but it is evident that representativeness heuristic is associated with decision making.
A strength in this research is found in study 2, the authors present an experiment in which the sample were given base-rates estimates and fictional descriptions of the stereotypes of musical taste.

Nevertheless, it was proven that representativeness heuristics was used in study 1 and study 2. Most of the undergraduate students chose the descriptions similar to the stereotyped musical fans over the base-rate estimates, if the students would have chosen the base-rate estimates, we would assume that they were using critical thinking and judged the fictional characters slowly. However, this was not the case, the findings demonstrate that people assume or judge individuals based on their perception rather than statistical data to make decisions.

A weakness is missing one condition in study 1. For instance, a fourth condition would be a personal statement from the fictional character, since description and photograph condition was mostly chosen by the sample, we can assume that description plays a big part in the research. However, the descriptions are explained by someone else, a personal statement would be as if you were listening to the character and what he/she tell you about himself/herself without mentioning the type of musical taste they correspond. This would make the individuals decide quicker, easier and more

accurate.
Overall, after evaluating the article Musical taste and the representativeness heuristic by Adam J. Lonsdale and Adrian C. North this article would have been better with an additional condition to study 1 that included a personal statement to obtain more efficient results. While the three conditions given were good, the undergraduate psychology students would have picked condition number four. Generally, it was a good, well-written, and straightforward article with a great explanation of the use of representativeness heuristic to judge other individuals or occurrences.