Name the question your brain is actually answering

When you reach a quick judgment, ask: "What question did I actually just answer?"

Why it works

Substitution is invisible because the answer to the easy question feels like the answer to the hard one. The mechanism is that System 1 produces a confident answer without alerting System 2 that a swap occurred. Explicitly naming the target question ("what I should answer") and the heuristic question ("what I actually answered") forces the comparison into consciousness, where the mismatch becomes detectable.

How to do it

1. After forming a quick judgment, write down the question you were supposed to answer.
2. Then write down the question you probably answered (the easier, more intuitive version).
3. Compare the two: if they’re different, you’ve caught a substitution.

Evidence

Kahneman and Frederick (2002) formalized attribute substitution as the mechanism underlying heuristics and biases. The model is analytically powerful and organizes a wide range of documented biases as instances of substitution. (mechanistic)

Attribute substitution is a theoretical framework that explains the pattern of many biases; it is not itself a single experimentally isolated effect.

Sources

• Kahneman & Frederick (2002), "Representativeness Revisited: Attribute Substitution in Intuitive Judgment," in Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment

Common mistake

Assuming that because your answer felt certain and effortless, you must have answered the right question — fluency signals accuracy even when it shouldn’t.