The psychological motivation behind all of this is our innate reliance on heuristics. Heuristics are a powerful ability our minds possess that augment our daily decision-making, covering everything from deciding the location of a new home to the simplest tasks such as object recognition. These are heuristics that allow us to quickly draw a picture of our daily environment and resolve problems. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Heuristics are psychological and cognitive shortcuts. When, for example, we see the wheel of a car in an obscured image, we would be prepared, by our past knowledge and associations, to expect to see the rest of the car. This in turn allows us to make the decision to back onto the sidewalk when we spot the car coming around the corner. Heuristics therefore encourage us to anticipate an outcome, taking into account either our past experience, our knowledge of the situation or our expectations in the given context. There is, unfortunately, a downside to this otherwise effective way of making sense of our world. As mentioned in the first paragraph, it is also our reliance on heuristics that leads to overgeneralization of things, as well as stereotyping and stigmatization of people or objects. In our time, for example, it is these stereotypes that lead to hate crimes committed against minorities and the discrimination that refugees face. Added to this are studies that investigate how heuristics develop and are applied. One example is a study showing that people tend to underestimate or overestimate the risk of specific events and incidents, depending on how easily the examples come to mind. In the study, it was found that people overestimated the number of deaths caused by accidents; which are often widely publicized and underestimate the number of deaths caused by common diseases; which are often little publicized. In reality, these diseases cause 15 times more deaths than accidents. Another example would be the stigmatization of psychiatry and psychological disorders. Due, once again, to a persistent and inaccurate media portrayal, a German survey found that 25% of respondents still believed patients were not leaving psychiatric hospitals, and a surprising 50% of respondents thought straitjackets were still in use. Keep in mind: This is just a sample. Get a personalized article from our expert writers now. judgments if we invoke inappropriate contexts. We must therefore be careful not to accept too much generic representations of situations, institutions and people in the media, and try to delve behind the veil to distinguish the representations from reality for ourselves...