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The availability heuristic is judging the frequency or probability of an event by the ease with which examples of the event come to mind. A famous 1978 study by Lichtenstein, Slovic, Fischhoff, Layman, and Combs, “Judged Frequency of Lethal Events,” studied errors in quantifying the severity of risks, or judging which of two dangers occurred more frequently.1 Subjects thought that accidents caused about as many deaths as disease; thought that homicide was a more frequent cause of death than suicide. Actually, diseases cause about sixteen times as many deaths as accidents, and suicide is twice as frequent as homicide. An obvious hypothesis to account for these skewed beliefs is that murders are more likely to be talked about than suicides—thus, someone is more likely to recall hearing about a murder than hearing about a suicide. Accidents are more dramatic than diseases—perhaps this makes people more likely to remember, or more likely to recall, an accident. In 1979, a followup study by

Availability Source Markdown · Talk Home About Search Contents Availability ❦ The availability heuristic is judging the frequency or probability of an event by the ease with which examples of the event come to mind. A famous 1978 study by Lichtenstein, Slovic, Fischhoff, Layman, and Combs, “Judged Frequency of Lethal Events,” studied errors in quantifying the severity of risks, or judging which of two dangers occurred more frequently. 1 Subjects thought that accidents caused about as many deaths as disease; thought that homicide was a more frequent cause of death than suicide. Actually, diseas

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