Our use of the availability heuristic highlights a basic principle of social thinking.This principle holds that:

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The availability heuristic is the tendency to estimate the likelihood of an event based on how easily instances of it come to mind. The principle of social thinking highlighted by this heuristic is that people are remarkably quick to infer general truth from a vivid instance, as the more easily accessible the instance is in our memory, the more likely we are to believe it is representative of the larger population. This can lead to biases and errors in our thinking, as vivid instances may not always be typical or accurate representations of the larger population or reality.

Our Use of the Availability Heuristic Highlights a Basic Principle