In psychology, a heuristic refers to an easy-to-compute procedure or “rule of thumb” that people use when forming beliefs, judgments or decisions. Where an exhaustive search for a solution is impractical, heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution via mental shortcuts to ease the cognitive load of making a decision. Examples of this method include using a rule of thumb, an educated guess, an intuitive judgment, stereotyping, or common sense.