Deliberational Route vs. Heuristic Route

Bicchieri (2006, p4) proposed that human beings have two decision routes: deliberational route and heuristic route. We make most of our decisions by the heuristic route, without spending too much time and mental effort. We know how tiring it is to monitoring one’s thoughts, and it must be suffocating to deliberate before each action. The existence of the heuristic route is an evolutionary advantage, because attention is a scarce resource for us, and we’d better use it where it is needed most. Hence, we do not gauge the costs and benefits of each available action under the constraints before reaching a decision. We use simple and useful heuristics, we follow social norms and conventions, and we conform to moral standards. These norms and standards and rules are so inherent in our life that under most circumstances we make decisions without too much thinking.

We don’t make decisions the way neoclassical economists assume. We seldom, if not never, look forward and check the possibility of each outcome of each action, then calculate costs and benefits using backward induction before taking an action.

Deliberational routes when we encounter new situations in which we don’t have previous experience or the behavior of other people to depend on. Instead of looking forward and calculate potential losses and gains to decide which action to take, individuals look back (learn) and look around (imitate) to form expectations and make decisions.