Chapter 2 - 6

06 Psychology

The Availability Heuristic

Heuristics are simple, efficient rules.

Learned or inherent, they explain how people make decisions, form judgments, and solve problems.

The availability heuristic is a concept in cognitive psychology.

It states that people tend to judge the probability of a situation by how easy it is to think of its instances or examples through opinion, imagination, or memory.

In short, the easier a situation comes to mind, the more likelyit seems.

The availability heuristic explains that events that come to mind immediately are often judged more likely to occur than they really are.

For instance, the odds of being killed in a plane crash have been estimated at one in twenty-two million, while the odds of being killed in a car crash may be one in 5,000.

The statistical information shows that the chances of a person dying in an auto accident are much higher than dying in a plane crash.

Yet, more people are afraid of air travel than of getting into a car.

Though car accidents occur more frequently, plane crashes are given more media coverage on the rare occasions when they do happen.

Since people easily recall seeing pictures of airplane catastrophes, they might believe that flying carries a higher risk than driving.

Graphic, tragic images often stay in people’s minds and are therefore easier to recall.

Similarly, when a group of people were asked which had a higher incidence of death, strokes or car accidents, the response most given was car accidents.

Strokes is the correct answer, but since there is never a high rate of media attention on stroke victims, people are more easily able to recall reports of car accident fatalities.

A picture of a smashed car on the front page of a newspaper is hard to miss.

However, references to death by stroke in the obituary section of the same paper are easily overlooked and are not at the front of people’s memories.

Another example is when a parent may perceive a higher risk of their own children being abducted after seeing a program on television about kidnapped children.

The likelihood of a child being abducted is very small, but due to media coverage, it can be perceived as higher than it really is.

This may lead parents to worry about something that will probably never happen, instead of worrying about more immediate concerns like poor grades or bad eating habits.

The availability heuristic may also alter the perceptions of a group.

Belonging to a specific group can lead to the belief that a great number of the general population is also part of that group.

When vegetarians were asked to estimate how many people were vegetarians versus non-vegetarians, they commonly responded that the general population contained more vegetarians than non-vegetarians.

Though statistically this is incorrect, vegetarians perceived that there was a higher number of people in their same group.

This is because most of the people they associate with are part of that group.

When pondering the question, vegetarians began to think of all the people they knew who were also vegetarians.

This information was more readily called to their mind than the names of people who were not vegetarians.

Thus, the group numbers seemed larger than they really were.

Also, knowledge stored in short-term memory affects decisions and perceptions.

Thus, having recent contact with other vegetarians would make it seem more likely that the general population contains a large number of vegetarians.

The availability heuristic also claims that the recall of some information may be biased because a person has limited exposure to certain events.

A study of employees was done to determine if cases of employment termination were legal.

It revealed that employees believed they were better protected by labor laws than they really were.

Most workers do not have any legal training in employment law.

Therefore, their knowledge is based on stories, incidents, and assumptions from their own experiences and those of their co-workers.

If a worker knows of several others that were unfairly terminated and then reinstated, he might believe that it is harder to be fired than it really is.

Since he is not exposed to the number of workers who have been permanently released from employment, he does not immediately call these cases to mind and incorrectly thinks he has more rights than he really does.

When the availability heuristic ‘is associated with the objective likelihood of an event, it is trustworthy.

However, the use of the availability heuristic can also lead to errors resulting in poor choices.

It is extremely useful in inductive reasoning or the ability to make a judgment that supports an outcome.

However, it can also cause misinformed decisions if people do not examine their reasoning closely.