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risk
You gauge risk by the news, not logic.
You estimate the probability of events based on how easily examples arise.
If a story is vivid or recent, you perceive it as more frequent. People rate rare but dramatic deaths as more likely than common but quiet causes. Your mind mistakes ease of recall for actual statistical frequency.
You fear what you can imagine, not what is statistically probable.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Tversky and Kahneman (1973)
- What the check found
- This is the classic definition of the availability heuristic introduced by Tversky and Kahneman in their 1973 paper.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.