Representative Heuristics: Personal Narrative

Today, my friend and I demonstrated representative heuristic. While talking on the phone, we were discussing old classmates/friends of ours and how we thought that they would be in college. During our conversation we talked about how the timid students would not branch out, but pass their classes, and outgoing students would be attending many parties, but have average or below average grades. However, when sharing information about each classmate, we discovered the opposite. Most of our timid classmates were the ones going to parties and somewhat passing their classes and the outgoing students were focusing more on their grades rather than parties or social events. A representative heuristic judges the possibility of an event due to similarities and this experience is a representative heuristic because we judged the probability of our classmates’ college lives due to our previous knowledge of their high school lives.

My residence hall has recently turned on the heat since it was getting colder outside. Because of this, the air conditioner in my room has become a heater instead. Neither my roommate nor I could handle the heat and we did not know what to do. After a few days, my roommate improvised and decided to use the humidifier that keeps her violin from tearing to cool the room. After replacing the air conditioner with the humidifier, our room is now cooler for us to be in. Though, I thought of the humidifier as a way my roommate’s kept her violin moist, she however used the humidifier as an air conditioner which overcame my functional fixedness of her