People typically believe that fires cause more deaths, but statistics reveal that drowning actually causes significantly more deaths than fire. Some researchers argue that we make this error because TV news programs show much more footage of fires than drowning, because fires are more exciting to televise. This presumably makes it much easier for us to call up examples of death by fire. This particular finding is best considered as an example of a judgment error caused by
A)a mental set
B)a confirmation bias
C)the availability heuristic
D)the representativeness heuristic

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. The finding that people overestimate the frequency of death by fire over drowning due to the prevalence of fire footage on TV news illustrates the availability heuristic, as people judge the likelihood of events based on how easily examples come to mind.

People Typically Believe That Fires Cause More Deaths, but Statistics