Melissa is an attractive female who lives in San Diego and loves football. When asked to predict if it was more probable that she was a school teacher or a cheerleader for the San Diego Chargers, most people selected the latter even though there are thousands more school teachers than Charger cheerleaders in San Diego. This is an illustration of:

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The representative heuristic is when people judge the probability of an event by how much it resembles what they consider to be a typical example of that event, rather than using actual statistical information, such as base rates.

Melissa Is an Attractive Female Who Lives in San Diego