Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive psychology, 5(2), 207-232.
Summary
Availability is the ease with which certain information comes to mind. Frequently encountered items are recalled more easily than infrequent items. The correlation between frequency and availability is manifest in the availability bias. This bias says that items which are easily available are also judged to be more frequent, or “it uses strength of association as a basis for the judgment of frequency.” Like representativeness, this heuristic is likely used because of its high success rate. Also like representativeness, use of this bias can open oneself to systematic bias. For example, after observing a car accident, the perceived probability of an accident might increase. This phenomenon also occurs when estimating co-occurrences of events. It can be heightened by particularly distinctive characteristics (e.g., in a bag with 100 red poker chips and 5 black poker chips, the prevalence of black poker chips will likely be overestimated). Constructing scenarios (or narratives) around certain events also enhanced their salience and availability, leading to their overestimation.
Application
Like representativeness, this is a difficult heuristic to overcome. One way of doing so, as Phil Tetlock suggests, is to keep records, which will provide an objective history to which one may refer. This also seems to have applicability for marketing (simple repetition leads to increased availability).
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