2024 – Representativeness and Availability Heuristics Student s Name Grade Course Tutor s Name Date Representativeness heuristic Representativeness heuristic is a heuristic that is

 

Representativeness and Availability Heuristics

                                                                                      

 

 

 

Student’s Name

 

Grade Course

Tutor’s Name

Date

 

 

 

 

 

Representativeness heuristic

Representativeness heuristic is a heuristic that is used when making the judgment regarding the probability of a happening under uncertainty. The type of heuristics covers the rules that govern decision-making or judgment that were proposed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Trevesky. The authors argue that when people on the representativeness to make the judgments, the people are more likely to judge wrongly because something that is more representative does not make it more likely. The representativeness heuristic can be described as assessing the similarity of various objects and organizing the objects based on the grouping prototype. The representativeness heuristics is used due to its easy computation. People often overestimate the ability of the representativeness heuristics in its way to predict the likelihood of the event (Hayibor, Wasieleski & David, 2008). Hence, the representativeness results in the neglect of relevant base rates and the cognitive biases. When judging the representativeness of the new event of stimulus, people often pay attention to a degree of the similarity that is between the standard/process and the stimulus/event. It is imperative for the factors to be salient. For instance, people believe that a disease symptom should be similar to their treatment and causes. For example, people have had the belief that ulcers are caused by stress, due to the elements of representativeness heuristics, when the fact is that bacteria is the cause of ulcers. The local representativeness and irregularity affect the judgment of randomness. Things that tend not to have any logical meaning are termed as the representative randomness and hence more likely to happen (Shah, Oppenheimer, Daniel, 2008).

Availability heuristics

The availability heuristics is regarded as the mental shortcut that relies on the immediate examples that come to a given individual’s mind when evaluating a particular concept, decision, topic, or method. The type of heuristic works with the notion that if a situation can be recalled, it must be first critical to consider the alternatives solutions that are not readily recalled. Also, under the availability heuristics, individuals tend to weigh their opinions towards more recent information hence, making new ideas that are biased towards the latest news. The availability of various consequences that are linked with a particular action is positively and significantly related to the perception of the magnitude of the consequences brought by the action. In particular, it is easy to evoke the cost of something the larger those consequences are typically perceived. The availability heuristics can be applicable in media. After watching news stories regarding child abductions, someone may judge that the likelihood of the event in the news is greater. The media coverage can help to fuel a person’s example bias with the extensive and widespread coverage of the unusual events like a homicide or an accident involving an airline, and less coverage of extra routine and less sensational occurrences like a car accident or a common disease. For instance, when asked to give a rating of the probability of the variety of causes of death, individuals tend to give a higher rating to the “newsworthy” events since they can recall an example from the memory (Shah, Oppenheimer, Daniel, 2008).

Similarities and differences between representative heuristics and availability heuristics

The availability heuristics is when one makes a judgment regarding something based on how the available examples are in the mind. Hence, the type of heuristic has to do with the memory of a particular instance and what the person is exposed. With the representativeness heuristics, a particular decision tends to be based on how similar is to another thing. The type of heuristics is more of stereotypic. Availability heuristics is to do with the memory of a particular instance; representativeness heuristics is concerned with the memory of the prototype, average or stereotype. The availability heuristics is about the specific example and how readily the example comes to the mind. The representativeness heuristics is less particular about the examples but more about stereotypes (Hayibor, Wasieleski & David, 2008).

            The representativeness and analysis heuristics tend to be similar since when one uses the two types of heuristics, the person uses the information he had in mind before making a guess or decision. An example is when one judges a population of cities when the cities are readily available in the mind; it is common to overestimate the population as the population of New York or the population of Berlin. The overestimation depends on the prior knowledge of representativeness heuristics (Hayibor, Wasieleski & David, 2008).

The use of heuristics in making judgment maximizes the personal potential for applying and developing critical thinking in the real-life decision making. The cognitive heuristics is essential for choosing in what to believe in or what not to believe. For instance, a short exercise makes one apply the critical thinking, especially the skill of self-regulation. The use of heuristics in making judgment has various disadvantages. The use of heuristics encourages stereotyping, rigid, harsh, and divisive decisions. The heuristics characterize human decision making through the expressions and the false dichotomies like reason vs. emotion, heart vs. head. The human decision-making process is never this simplistic (Shah, Oppenheimer, Daniel, 2008).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Hayibor, Sefa; Wasieleski, David M. (2008). “Effects of the Use of the Availability Heuristic on

            Ethical Decision-Making in Organizations”. Journal of Business Ethics 84 (S1): 151–

            165. Print.

Shah, Anuj K.; Oppenheimer, Daniel M. (2008). “Heuristics made easy: An effort-reduction

            framework”. Psychological Bulletin 134 (2): 207–222. Print.