Fast and frugal thinking among professionals

Usually it is expected of professionals to use all relevant information and weight and combine them appropriately when making decisions. Making a decision by this process is classified as the regression model. This is a very statistical way of thinking, it follows a mathematical sequence. High weight attached to a cue is compensated for a low weight when making a decision using the regression model

However there are other non-statistical and more cognitive simpler way of thinking alternative to the regression model. These are the Franklin's rule and the Matching heuristic. Franklin's rule is similar to the regression model but dissimilar in a way that it doesn't take into account the interactions between the cues.
The matching heuristic on the other hand is non compensatory. Decisions are made by searching through a subset of cues and basing the decision on one cue.

A research report of judges and jurors decision making on whether to bail or jail found that the matching heuristic was a better predictor of judges decision than the Franklin's rule (Dhami, M.K.,2003).  This was a real life cases that went on for 4-month period. They divided the court into two , A and B and had 1 observer for each court. The matching heuristic and the Franklin's rule were used to capture the policies of each court separately because each court differed in the cases presented and the decisions made.
Whereas the Franklin's rule searched through all the 25 cues that were presented the maximum cue that was was searched by the matching heuristic was on average 3.

There is evidence that people switch to non-compensatory strategies  that uses fewer cues as the number of cues increases and the time pressure increases.. It has also been found that group decision involving shared responsibility  tend to use fewer cues (Weldon & Gargano, 1985).

The matching heuristic is therefore known as a simple or fast and frugal heuristic because the decision is based on one cue alone and not altered by the value of other cues. It is also flexible beacuse different cues can be used to make decisions on different  cases.

Reference

Dhami, M.K. (2003).Psychological models of professional decision making. Psychological Science, 14 (2), 175-180.

Weldon, E., Gargano, G.M. (1985). Cognitive effort in additive task groups: The effects of shared responsibility on the quality of multiattribute judgements. Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, 36, 348-361.