Availability heuristics
The availability heuristic is judging the likelihood or importance of a phenomenon based on how easily examples come to mind.
Definition
The availability heuristic makes recent, emotional, media or personal events seem more likely than the data indicate. It can help with quick orientation, but it often distorts the assessment in risk decisions. An example is overestimating high-profile risks and underestimating quiet, common problems.
Key ideas
- Easy to recall
- The influence of emotions and media
- Risk of incorrect assessment of probability
Practice and life
When you assess risk, ask: am I basing it on data or the most vivid example I can remember?
Common misconceptions
It is a mistake to confuse the intensity of a memory with its frequency of occurrence. A strong image in your head is not yet a statistic.
> What is easy to recall is not always what happens most often.
> — Guru Element
Questions for self-reflection
- What makes this example come to mind so easily?
- What do real data look like, not just my associations?
- Does this recent event inflate my risk assessment?