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heuristics
You judge how likely something is by your memory.
The ease with which examples come to mind determines your probability assessment.
In a 1973 study, participants overestimated the frequency of events that were vivid or easily recalled, regardless of actual statistical rates. Your brain mistakes mental availability for frequency, leading you to fear rare, dramatic events more than common, quiet risks. If you can picture a danger easily, you assume it is more likely to occur.
What you can imagine most clearly feels like the most likely outcome.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Tversky and Kahneman, 1973
- What the check found
- The 1973 Tversky and Kahneman paper 'Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability' is the correct and widely accepted source for this concept.
- 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.