In psychology, the human mind is considered to be a cognitive miser due to the tendency of humans to think and solve problems in simpler and less effortful ways rather than in more sophisticated and effortful ways, regardless of intelligence.[1] Just as a miser seeks to avoid spending money, the human mind often seeks to avoid spending cognitive effort. The cognitive miser theory is an umbrella theory of cognition that brings together previous research on heuristics and attributional biases to explain when and why people are cognitive misers.[2][3]
The term cognitive miser was first introduced by Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor in 1984. It is an important concept in social cognition theory and has been influential in other social sciences such as economics and political science.[2]
People are limited in their capacity to process information, so they take shortcuts whenever they can.[2]
- ^ Stanovich, Keith E. (2009). "The cognitive miser: ways to avoid thinking". What intelligence tests miss: the psychology of rational thought. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 70–85. ISBN 9780300123852. OCLC 216936066. See also other chapters in the same book: "Framing and the cognitive miser" (chapter 7); "A different pitfall of the cognitive miser: thinking a lot, but losing" (chapter 9).
- ^ a b c Fiske, Susan T.; Taylor, Shelley E. (1991) [1984]. Social cognition (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0070211919. OCLC 22810253.
- ^ Toplak, Maggie E.; West, Richard F.; Stanovich, Keith E. (April 2014). "Assessing miserly information processing: an expansion of the Cognitive Reflection Test". Thinking & Reasoning. 20 (2): 147–168. doi:10.1080/13546783.2013.844729. S2CID 53340418.
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