An Interdisciplinary Re-Perspectivation of the Study of Heuristics, Biases, and Nudges

Abstract

The following text starts with an assumption that current psychological research is primarily quantitative in nature and – despite its great contributions – misses out on the potentials lying in an interdisciplinary and thereby multi-methodological approach. To highlight these potentials, this text does three things: Primarily, it looks at the study of heuristics and biases, a much debated and researched field, to illustrate the pitfalls awaiting in a one-sided approach as the study of heuristics and biases has been mostly motivated by the inadequacies of the prior paradigm. Secondly, this text presents scholars from outside of mainstream thinking that have also discussed decision-making and – although in a more abstract form – and arrived at similar results. This, in result, highlights the potential of a historically minded interdisciplinary approach towards decision-making. Lastly, these insights are brought forward as valuable future research objects by further contextualizing them with current problems in decision-making science, these problems stem from the field of legal decision-making. The text overall raises awareness for alternative and interdisciplinary approaches towards psychological research questions.