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Availability Heuristic - The Decision Lab

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The availability heuristic describes our tendency to use information that comes to mind quickly and easily when making decisions about the future. Most of us work & live in environments that aren’t optimized for solid decision-making. We work with organizations of all kinds to identify sources of cognitive bias & develop tailored solutions. Imagine you are a manager considering either John or Jane, two employees at your company, for a promotion. Both have a steady employment record, though Jane has been the highest performer in her department during her tenure. However, in Jane’s first year, she accidentally deleted a company project when her computer crashed. With this incident in mind, you decide to promote John instead. In this hypothetical scenario, the vivid memory of Jane losing that file likely weighed more heavily on your decision than it should have. This unequal evaluation is due to the availability heuristic, which suggests that singular memorable moments have an outsized in

Why do we tend to think that things that happened recently are more likely to happen again? The availability heuristic describes our tendency to use information that comes to mind quickly and easily when making decisions about the future. CategoryMemory Reading time22 min read Where this bias occurs Imagine you are a manager considering either John or Jane, two employees at your company, for a promotion. Both have a steady employment record, though Jane has been the highest performer in her department during her tenure. However, in Jane’s first year, she accidentally deleted a company…

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