The Availability Heuristic | Example & Definition
The availability heuristic describes our tendency to evaluate the likelihood of something happening according to how easily we can recall a similar occurrence. It can be seen as a mental shortcut we use to help us process information and respond to the many stimuli around us. An easily remembered event can cause us to mistakenly judge a similar event as more likely to happen.
Statistically, road transport is much more dangerous than air travel. But an airplane crash is given widespread news coverage, and the availability heuristic means that we feel it is the dangerous part of the journey. If there has been a recent disaster, this effect is even more pronounced.
The availability heuristic doesn’t just affect our perception of our safety when traveling but can have serious consequences for research and risk assessment. Understanding research bias can help us avoid it having a negative effect on research and trials.
What is the availability heuristic?
The availability heuristic is a type of cognitive bias. There are many types of cognitive bias that we use in order to make decisions when faced with large amounts of data. They can be seen as a mental shortcut, and they make decisions faster. Unfortunately, they can also cause those decisions to be suboptimal.
With the availability heuristic, easily recalled information (because it is more recent) is misinterpreted as being more probable or more frequent. On the other hand, if information is harder to recall (because it is from longer ago), it is interpreted as being less probable or less frequent. In this way, the availability heuristic skews our perception of events and the world around us.
Availability heuristic examples
The availability heuristic has real-life consequences, of varying degrees of seriousness. The recency of events can make them easier to recall and thereby give them greater importance in our minds as we make decisions.
When a work trip comes up unexpectedly involving a flight, Brian is more anxious and cautious, thinking that the risk of falling sick is greater than the statistics would show.
Because the examples of people falling sick are recent and readily available to Brian, the availability heuristic gives him a distorted view of how much risk there is.
Personal experiences can be powerful in producing the availability heuristic effect in our thinking. Personal experiences that are vivid and very memorable will influence our ability to rationalize the probability of an event taking place.
The vivid personal experience of her accident became more powerful in her mind than decades of never having a car pull out in front of her. The availability heuristic made her feel that every car was about to pull out in front of her.
Availability heuristic vs representativeness heuristic
Both the availability heuristic and the representativeness heuristic are used as mental shortcuts. We use them to help us assess the frequency or the probability of something happening. However, they are distinctly different from each other.
The availability heuristic leads us to base our estimate of how likely it is for an event to occur on how easily we can recall a similar event, whereas with the representativeness heuristic, we estimate the likelihood based on how similar the situation or circumstances are to a known situation. The danger with this is that it can lead to incorrect decisions based on things like stereotyping.
For example, a teacher might expect an Asian student to excel at mathematics because of a stereotype that sees all Asian students as capable mathematicians. This can be to the detriment of the student, as they might not get the help they need in the subject.
What causes the availability heuristic?
The availability heuristic is prompted by the fact that it is easier to recall some events than it is others. And the easy-to-recall events tend to loom larger in our consciousness and therefore influence our decision-making. There are a few factors that can affect why something is more readily recalled:
- Recency: The more recent an event, the easier it is to recall it quickly. This is even more the case if the events were also dramatic or received wide coverage or if they had a profound personal impact. As a result, we might think them more likely to occur again.
- News coverage: Because of their very nature, dramatic events get covered in the media. Natural disasters, plane crashes, or violent crimes all vie for the headlines. These events are given prominence in the news and social media, so we are well aware of them. Consequently, they come to mind easily and can lead us to overestimate the probability of their affecting us.
- Scarcity of information: Sometimes, a lack of easily accessible information can lead us to underestimate the risk of something (in effect, the opposite of availability). For example, in the USA, suicide is one of the top ten causes of early death in the general population, but for a variety of reasons, it doesn’t receive the coverage other causes do (e.g., cancer, road deaths). We are likely then to underestimate its likelihood.
Frequently asked questions about the availability heuristic
- What are some examples of heuristics in psychology?
-
There are quite a few examples of heuristics (mental shortcuts) in psychology. The availability heuristic describes how information that is more easily available to us can have a disproportionate effect on our decisions.
The representativeness heuristic leads us to believe the probability of something based on stereotypes that we carry in our minds.
- What is the difference between confirmation bias and availability bias?
-
The difference between confirmation bias and availability bias is that they refer to two separate ways of processing information.
- Availability bias (or availability heuristic) describes how people tend to make decisions based on information that is readily available to them. This is often because it is more recent or because it has received coverage in the media.
- Confirmation bias describes the tendency to latch on to information that confirms ideas that we already hold.
- What are some examples of the availability heuristic in everyday life?
-
If we cancel a planned flight because of a recent air disaster, we are demonstrating the availability heuristic. Air travel hasn’t suddenly become more dangerous (in fact, the opposite is likely to be true), but our perception of its dangers has changed.
Panic buying can be partly explained by the availability heuristic. Media coverage of panic buying can make us believe that we need to stock up on items that, in reality, we have no shortage of.
