Last night you saw a documentary about violent crimes. Today someone asked you what percentage of all crimes involve violence and you reply that they must be quite common. Which heuristic did you use when making this decision?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

You used availability heuristics to make your decision.
Availability heuristics involves judging the likelihood of an event based on how easy it is to retrieve relevant information. Since you just saw a documentary about violent crimes they were easy for you to recall. Representative heuristics relies on an event being similar to another population, anchoring refers to basic probabilities around a given baseline, and simulation heuristics refers to being influenced by how easy it is to picture the event.

Last Night You Saw a Documentary About Violent Crimes