Cognitive heuristics

In the previous chapter we saw how people can be persuaded through argumentation, and also that strong arguments are especially convincing when the person concerned pays attention to the information provided and processes it systematically. Often, however, we lack the time, the ability or the motivation to analyse and digest everything thoroughly. In such cases we tend to process information in a relatively superficial manner, drawing on a number of simple rules of thumb. Those are known as heuristics and they are the subject of this chapter.