Example of Availability Heuristic
- After hearing about several home burglaries on the news, Sarah decides to install an expensive security system, even though crime rates in her neighborhood are actually very low.
The news coverage made burglaries seem more common than they are, leading to an overestimation of risk. - A doctor diagnoses a rare disease more frequently after recently treating a patient with that condition.
The recent case is easily recalled, making the diagnosis seem more likely even when symptoms could indicate more common conditions.
Note
This is a common biasAlso known as: Availability Bias. First described by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1973.
