The availability heuristic is an intuitive process or mental label by which a person evaluates the frequency or possibility of an event by ease, based on examples that are easier to remember and come to mind first. This process is considered subjective, as the individual evaluates and predicts the significance of events down to simple judgments or opinions that are based on his own memories. For example, a person assesses the possibility of diabetes in middle-aged people, based on memories of their acquaintances and their stories. What is the availability heuristic?
Let's take a closer look
For example, a person is trying to make some kind of decision, with this decision he associates a number of related events or phenomena that instantly come to mind and help some opinion to firmly gain a foothold in the person’s head. The availability heuristic is especially used in acceptance.management decisions. Simply put, a person will decide that some situations occur more often than others, just because he encountered them in most of his memories. It turns out that people themselves make the information plausible, even if it is not, and begin to overestimate the likelihood of an event occurring in the future. The availability heuristic was introduced in 1973. Psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman came to the conclusion that this process occurs unconsciously. Those memories that come to mind first of all are nothing more than the most common reflection of reality.
Ease of memory
The availability heuristic depends on ease of recall. The latter can be defined as a useful clue when we start to evaluate the frequency or likelihood of an event occurring or not. From this we can conclude that in the first place a person remembers what happened most often. It should be mentioned that such dependence of the assessment on the most frequently occurring events or situations leads to complete bias, as a result of which systematic errors appear.
Biased
Tversky and Kahneman identified several biases in the availability heuristic:
- bias based on finding examples. Depends on close acquaintance with the information, significance and its direct impact, as well as the age of the event.
- bias based on search performance.
- Subjectivity based on the ability to imagine and invent facts.
- Biass based on illusory correlation.
Examples of the availability heuristic are all over the place in everyday life.
Mass culture
Examples of accessibility heuristics can be found in both advertising and the media. For example, many world-famous companies, or even local large organizations, spend fabulous sums on advertising campaigns. An example is the well-known Apple brand. The company spends a lot of money on advertising just because of the availability heuristic. When a person decides to buy a new gadget, he will first of all begin to remember what he heard and saw most often. What comes to mind first? This is an iPhone. The same goes for absolutely any brand. The media also has a great influence. For example, a fair number of people strongly believe that the likelihood of death from a shark attack is higher than death from a plane crash. The numbers tell us that sharks kill 1 in 300,000 people, and 1 in 10,000,000 in plane crashes. The difference seems to be significant, but the second reason kills far more people. Or, for example, a person sees a news report that several cars have been stolen in his city, and he mistakenly believes that cars in his city are stolen twice as often as in the next one. This type of thinking is considered very important in the decision-making process. Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation where the choice needs to be made juicy, and time orWe do not have the resources to analyze the issue in depth. This is where the availability heuristic comes to the rescue, which makes it possible to form a conclusion and make a decision in the shortest possible time. This notion also has a dangerous side. For example, a person sees media reports of a plane crash or a kidnapping. Here we begin to think that such events happen all the time, although this is not at all the case.
Easiest examples
For example, a person will see a report on TV that there has been a reduction in staff at some enterprise, and immediately begin to think that he may also lose his job. We begin to wind ourselves up, to worry, although, in fact, there is no reason for this. Or you read on the Internet that a man was attacked by a shark, and decide for yourself that this happens quite often. On vacation, this thought will haunt you, and you will decide not to swim in the ocean, because the probability of being eaten by a shark is extremely high. Or the most common case: you found out that your distant friend won a car in the lottery, you decide that since such a miracle happened to a person you know, then the probability of hitting the jackpot is high, and immediately go to spend money on lottery tickets.
What is the conclusion?
Constant reflection on the probable outcome of events increases its availability, a person begins to perceive his thoughts as a completely probable scenario. The availability heuristic triggers a mechanism whereby the probabilitythe occurrence of some event, whether it is positive or negative, seems higher than it really is. People rely on what comes to mind only when those thoughts are not questioned due to the difficulty one has in remembering.
