The Availability Heuristic

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut. Your brain guesses how common something is by how easily examples come to mind.

An example that is vivid, dramatic, recent, or all over the news comes to mind fast. So we think that kind of event is more common, or more risky, than it really is.

The shortcut is not foolish. Vivid cases often do track what matters, and recall is fast and cheap. It fails when something other than frequency decides what comes to mind: drama, novelty, repetition in the news, or a story from someone you trust.

The correction is to swap the picture for a count. How many cases were there, out of how many, and who was left out of the sample?

The shark and the coconut

A vivid event: heavy news coverage of a rare shark attack.

The shortcut at work: people cancel ocean vacations because of sharks, even though lightning and rip currents are far more likely to hurt them. The shark story is easy to picture, so it feels like a bigger danger.

Try this today The next time a scary story sticks in your mind, look up how often it really happens.