The availability heuristic refers to a mental process of forming a judgment or making a decision based on information that readily comes to mind rather than a careful analysis of all relevant information.
Psychological scientists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman are credited with the research supporting the existence of the availability heuristic or bias.
People tend to give more weight to recent or easily recalled information instead of searching for all the relevant information when making a decision.
Factors contributing to "availability."
Recency bias- Recent information gets more weight because it is more easily recalled. Obviously, in serious matters, older information may be more or equally relevant.
Consequences- When the consequences or outcomes of an event are easy to remember, those consequences appear greater than do others.
Frequency and probability- When people easily recall information about an event, they are apt to overestimate its frequency or the probability of the event occurring. Airline accidents in the news can lead to seriously overestimating the risk of flying.
Problems with the availability heuristic- When people make a quick decision based on easily available information, they may make a serious mistake. The process of thinking about all the relevant evidence can be too slow and effortful for many people, but in some cases, a careful analysis is critical to health and wellbeing.
Another term: Availability bias
Learn more about heuristics in Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman
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