Heuristics, History of

The study of heuristics is an interdisciplinary and time-honored enterprise, with heuristics being examined across a wide range of fields, some focusing on professionals' decision-making. In psychology, two influential research traditions have investigated which cognitive heuristics people use across various tasks. One tradition, which originated in the 1970s, has focused on the circumstances under which heuristics cause deviations from classical norms of rationality. The other, starting in the 1990s, has emphasized that heuristics are neither good nor bad per se, but that their success depends on how they are matched to environmental structures. This view suggests that heuristics, rather than leading to irrationality, enable ecological rationality.