Effort Heuristic

The effort heuristic is our habit of inferring quality from visible effort — when we can’t judge a result directly, we fall back on how hard something looks like it worked. It’s the engine under the labor illusion: a progress bar that crawls feels more trustworthy than an instant answer, even when the answer is identical.

It’s worth knowing because so much AI interface design exploits it. A spinner that performs thinking borrows credibility the output may not have earned, which is fine for feel and dangerous when the job is to settle a fact.