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risk
You judge risk by how easily you recall stories.
The availability heuristic causes you to overestimate the probability of events that are emotionally vivid or recently publicized.
You rely on the ease with which examples come to mind to determine how common something is. Because dramatic news stories are easy to remember, you assume they are statistically frequent. Your brain mistakes high recall for high frequency.
The news you consume dictates your internal map of danger.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Tversky and Kahneman, 1973, Cognitive Psychology
- What the check found
- The 1973 paper is the correct seminal source. While the specific link to 'emotionally vivid' media coverage is a modern application of the principle, it is a direct extension of the 'retrievability' factor defined in the original study.
- 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.