Availability Heuristic: A Shortcut Your Brain

When making an important and sometimes nerve racking decision, such as deciding which college to apply to, certain parts of our brains take over and make the decision for us. The parts of our brains that make decisions perform functions that influence what we do and how we act. These functions are both subconscious and conscious, influencing Ryan when he is deciding on which college to apply to. When making his decision, Ryan is affected by the availability heuristic, his hippocampus, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and self fulfilling prophecy, all of these things coming together to help Ryan make his decision. The Availability Heuristic is a shortcut your brain takes when coming to a conclusion using things happening around you. Based on events happening around Ryan at the time of his decision, he might be more likely to believe that these events are going to happen than they actually are. For example, Ryan probably has friends, and most of his friends are also applying to colleges. When a high percentage of his friends get denied for a certain college, Ryan might think that the same thing will happen to him even though them getting denied has no affect on his acceptance into that college. Because of the availability heuristic, Ryan might not apply to a college
Most of Ryan's decisions are based off of past experiences that he has to access his memory to use. The hippocampus is what stores these past experiences in his mind, saving them for later decisions. When deciding what college he wants to apply to, Ryan must draw upon the knowledge he has gathered over his lifetime about all the colleges he is considering. Once he gathers this knowledge he has to use the hippocampus to update, generalize, and construct new information about the colleges. Whatever decision Ryan makes will be completely decided by the hippocampus using all the information he has gathered and