Talk:Contagion heuristic

This is a comment, hope it's in the right place.

Elsewhere in Wikipedia, "heuristic" is defined as a rule of thumb for problem-solving, which CAN lead to a cognitive bias. But this page (contagion heurisic) seems to describe a cognitive bias, not a heuristic as defined above...


 * The heuristic article differentiates heuristics as used in psychology, where they are decision-making strategies that can lead to cognitive bias. Of course, the article needs some work otherwise--I'll see if I can make it clearer.  Starryharlequin 06:22, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I was going to say the same thing. A heuristic is a problem solving strategy, nothing to do with a bias, although certain heuristics may have biased outcomes as a result of their strategy. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)

Indeed. I just deleted the offending definition. --Ben Kovitz 22:43, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Removing evaluative/speculative essay
This version of the article is mostly an essay lamenting the existence of the contagion heuristic, and offering some speculations about it. It also doesn't explain what the contagion heuristic is.

I've done a small amount of reading about this, and I haven't found anything to suggest that "contagion heuristic" refers to group-think. (Such writing might be out there; I just haven't found it.) So, for now, I'm removing nearly all of the essay and replacing it with a brief summary of what I found in Heuristics and Biases by Daniel Kahneman.

No doubt I'm deleting some good info. I hope someone will add back the supported info without reintroducing the evaluative writing. If you restore the equation of contagion heuristic with groupthink, please post a note about the source. That equation of terms sounds to me like a likely misinterpretation, but I could be wrong.

--Ben Kovitz 23:22, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Requires attention
None of the material below the lead is actually about the contagion heuristic. Maybe there's room for some of it in the behavioral contagion and emotional contagion articles? -165.234.252.11 (talk) 18:13, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Working on this article
Hi everyone,

I'm a student at the London School of Economics and am taking a module in Psychological Science. As part of my assignment I have to work on a start or stub Wikipedia article on a topic in Psychology to try and improve it. So I'll be working on editing this article for the next few weeks. I'd love to hear your feedback (criticisms and otherwise) as well since this the first time I've done a project like this!

Thanks,

Jinny Lee — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jinny.lee.lse (talk • contribs) 21:02, 3 March 2019 (UTC)