The UnAvailability bias

The Modern Peril of the Availability Heuristic

For decades, psychologists have warned us about the availability heuristic – our tendency to judge how likely something is based on how easily examples come to mind. Dramatic events feel more common because they are memorable; familiar patterns feel more probable; and what we can quickly recall or imagine substitutes for statistical data. The availability heuristic was formulated in the previous century, an era of informational scarcity where information was expensive, filtered, or difficult to access. Under those conditions, availability served as a useful, albeit imperfect, proxy for likelihood. People tended to encounter more often what actually occurred more frequently. That world no longer exists. ….[READ]