Bayesian reasoning or heuristics?

Classic economic theories assume that agents make decisions under the beliefs formulated through Bayes’ theorem. However, literature in behavioural economics found that agents used various heuristics to form beliefs. What strategy do agents truly use in Bayesian tasks and what triggers decision makers to change their behaviour? This thesis tested the effect of time limitation on the behaviour of decision makers in Bayesian tasks. We found time pressure decreases the use of Bayesian reasoning and triggered decision makers to switch to the quicker but less accurate heuristics as decision rule. However, the switch did not decrease the average accuracy in the Bayesian tasks due to the low number of Bayesian subject.