Andre is trying to determine the best way to get to his house after work, because his usual route has been blocked by emergency vehicles due to a car accident. He can't "see" a different route, so instead he imagines how he would drive to work from home if he had to take a different route. Andre is using the ________ heuristic.
A) working backward
B) representativeness
C) availability
D) subgoaling

Question

Andre is trying to determine the best way to get to his house after work, because his usual route has been blocked by emergency vehicles due to a car accident. He can't "see" a different route, so instead he imagines how he would drive to work from home if he had to take a different route. Andre is using the ________ heuristic.
A) working backward 
B) representativeness
C) availability
D) subgoaling

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Working backward involves starting from the goal (in this case, getting to his house) and imagining the steps backward from there. This is exactly what Andre is doing when he imagines how he would drive to work from home if he had to take a different route. The representativeness heuristic involves making judgments based on how well a new situation resembles situations we are already familiar with, and the availability heuristic involves making judgments based on how easily we can bring similar situations to mind. Subgoaling involves breaking a larger goal into smaller subgoals to make it more manageable. While these other heuristics may come into play in other situations, working backward seems to be the most applicable in this scenario.

Andre Is Trying to Determine the Best Way to Get