The recognition heuristic (Goldstein & Gigerenzer, 2002) is a simple decision-making strategy for inferring which of two objects, one recognized and the other not, has a larger value on some quantitative criterion. If there is a positive correlation between the recognition of objects and their criterion values, the heuristic predicts that recognized objects are larger. The correlation between recognition and the criterion is presumed to arise through mediators in the environment. These make it more likely to encounter, and thus recognize objects with large criterion values.

Resources: PDF