Participants in a research study judged that the letter k is found more often at the beginning of words than in the third position,based on information that was readily available in memory.This error is judgment is an example of the representativeness heuristic.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The scenario described is an example of the availability heuristic, not the representativeness heuristic. The participants are relying on information that is more readily available in their memory (i.e. words that start with k) to make a judgment about the frequency of k in different positions, rather than using statistical or probabilistic reasoning to make a more accurate judgment based on representative data.

Participants in a Research Study Judged That the Letter K