their problems, but not their solutions. The corresponding bias can also have a negative impact on society and cause people to judge the actions of others more harshly. Why people process social interactions in these ways is yet to be determined, and quite possibly never will be.People’s social interactions and social behaviors are greatly influenced by their decision making and reasoning skills. As important as these skills are to all people, many times these processes are flawed. One major source of errors in decision making and reasoning are judgment biases. Judgment biases are conclusions one forms about himself and others based on a tendency to perform in a certain way regardless of the information presented ( ). Thus, when employing reasoning or decision making skills, people may form erroneous conclusions based on these judgment biases. Reasoning is the process by which people evaluate and generate arguments and reach conclusions. Errors in reasoning often result from heuristics, which are mental shortcuts by which people reach conclusions. Rather than employ an algorithm, which is a systematic procedure that cannot fail to produce a solution, people instead employ heuristics to obtain the same outcome more quickly. People use heuristics because they are low effort and frequently work. However, heuristics can serve as a source for bias in cognitive processes, which in turn can lead to errors. As discussed by ________, the studies by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1974, 1982) have described three heuristics that people seem to use instinctively in making judgments. One of the three heuristics is the anchoring heuristic. Use of the anchoring heuristic occurs when a person estimates the probability of an event by adjusting an earlier estimate. This beginning estimate biases the final estimate. “It is as if they drop a mental anchor at one hypothesis or estimate and then cannot move very far from that ...
