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What do you think is more dangerous flying in an airplane or driving a car? Most people, recalling dramatic plane crashes from the news, would say flying. However, statistics show that car accidents cause far more deaths than plane crashes.
When we need to quickly assess the risk or urgently make a decision, our brain has a set of special strategies to be used. The reason we fear flying more than driving is the availability heuristic availability heuristic – our brains give more weight to vivid, easily recalled events, even if in fact they are less common.
Taking a step back, cognitive biases are systematic faults in thinking that emerge when people process and interpret information that surrounds them, influencing their decisions and judgements.
In general, the human brain is a powerful “device”, nonetheless, it also has limitations. Cognitive biases are often the result of the brain’s attempt to simplify information that is being processed. These processes help a person to understand the surrounding environment and make decisions relatively quickly.
One of the most common cognitive “illusions” is availability bias.
Availability heuristic or bias means that we assess probability of an event on the basis of how easy and fast we remember a range of thoughts or information that is associated with this event. According to the availability theory, information that is available in our memory will be recognized as more likely and meaningful.
This process is affected by a range of different factors such as the intensity of the experience, the novelty of the event, our emotions and the emotional content information. For example, if recently you met several people whose income is higher than average, your perception will be inclined to the belief that wealth is a common phenomenon in the society.
From a psychological point of view such availability of information often can lead to the formation of an assessment or view of the world that actually does not correspond to reality.
The availability bias can generate inaccuracy in several different circumstances, for instance:
- When we are estimating the probability of the event. Under the influence of this phenomenon, we can take into account an event that happened recently or that we heard of to be more likely. For example, after watching news reports on shark attacks, individuals get scared and decide not to go on beach vacation, believing the risk of being attacked is high, despite the fact that shark attacks statistically are extremely rare.
- When we are estimating event frequency. It forces us to believe that there is a higher frequency of events that happened to someone we know. For example, if one’s friend recently had their bag stolen, a person might start believing that thefts are extremely common in the city they live in, even if the crime rates in the city have not actually increased.
- When we are assessing the connection of events. We will consider events to be more closely related to each other, which are easier to imagine to co-happen – illusion of correlation. For example, a person drinks coffee before an important exam and passes it well, he now believes that drinking coffee improves their performance, even though there is no real connection between the two.
Moreover, this heuristic process can cause other forms of the distortion, such as representativeness effect, where we find a representative or a group that has a high degree of similarity within our short-term memory.
Effectively working with cognitive biases, particularly availability heuristic, involves consciously analyzing and rethinking our beliefs and worldviews. It is crucial to use critical thinking, conducting reliability checks and evaluating various sources of information.
Interestingly, availability bias is a fundamental part for propaganda, since this heuristic is identified by a shortage of other additional information as well as the influence of repeated information. Therefore, the ‘victims’ of this effect can analyze only the information they have. After all, “a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth”
Cognitive biases in all of their different forms interfere with the attainment of accurate information because people subconsciously tend to avoid stimuli that they dislike or disagree with, despite it being objective and correct. Although we tend to believe that we are receiving information objectively, our brain unconsciously filters the data, distorting our perception of reality.
By Iryna Falkivska
iryna.falkivska01@icatt.it
Bibliography
- Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1982). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. In D. Kahneman, P. Slovic, & A. Tversky (Eds.), Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (p. 163–189). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Bless, N. Ease of Retrieval as Information: Another Look at the Availability Heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1991 (p. 195-202)
- Fishhoff, B., Slovic, P., & Lichtenstein, S… Knowing with certainty: The appropriateness of extreme confidence // Judgment and decision making: An interdisciplinary reader / Ed. M. R. Oakes, K. R. Hammond. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985. P. 397-415.
- https://www.verywellmind.com/availability-heuristic-2794824
A.P.E. 
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