The metaphor of the iceberg, the guide: only a small part of our choices and our decision-making processes are in fact conscious, most are hidden, underwater, also governed by cognitive biases.
The Cognitive Biases are mental shortcuts that often lead us to make errors of judgment or to lack objectivity in judgments, they are preferences and inclinations that make us decide quickly, but not always correctly. Also, they are often referred to as “systematic” brain errors.
Over time, the human cognitive system has adapted to the demands of the external environment by developing different strategies of reasoning and decision, among which we find the heuristics. The heuristic reasoning, as opposed to the algorithmic one, requires an answer to be reached by relying on intuition rather than following a procedure that we could define as logical.
Although intuitive thinking offers many advantages (speed, lack of effort, etc.) and allows us to decide effectively, there are conditions in which the application of heuristics and mental shortcuts leads us to wrong conclusions about the world around us.
