← all facts
reasoning
You ignore statistical data for a single compelling story.
A 1973 study showed that even when given accurate probabilities, participants prioritized specific personality descriptions over general base rates.
When you encounter a narrative, your brain treats it as more representative than raw data. You prefer the comfort of a vivid individual story over the cold accuracy of population statistics.
An anecdote always outweighs a dataset in your mind.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Kahneman and Tversky, 1973
- What the check found
- The 1973 Kahneman and Tversky study (On the Psychology of Prediction) is the seminal work on representativeness. While technically accurate, it is often taught as an absolute flaw rather than a context-sensitive heuristic.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.