HEURISTIC
BIAS
The availability heuristic is a form of cognitive bias and can be thought of as a shortcut of the brain to help us assess our choices. We would waste time and energy if every day we had to write up a pros and cons list of simple decisions such as deciding which brand of cereal to buy or choosing which flavour of ice cream to order.
To avoid this, we tend to use mental shortcuts or heuristics to help us make decisions. by taking information that is recalled quickly and easily and using these to make decisions about the future.
Knowing
HEURISTIC Bias
The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut upon which decisions are made from. The availability heuristic makes it easier for us to make a decision however hinders our ability to precisely make a judgement of how likely events are to take place, as our recalled information is not an accurate tool for predicting outcomes of the future.
Decisions involving chance and probability are especially susceptible to the availability heuristic as past memories or knowledge can aim to replace the tedious and difficult task of calculating chance of the current situation. Some memories may jump out as they are related to the ways in which we process the world around us.
AVAILABILITY
HEURISTIC
Example
A simple example of this is buying a lottery ticket. People buy lottery tickets because they associate this with the luxury and lifestyle that is created by having a winning ticket, as this is what immediately comes to mind easily. However, the probability of having a winning ticket is a tedious and difficult calculation that does not vividly come into mind when a person is at the ticket counter about to purchase a ticket.
It is a common occurrence for people to overestimate risk in some situations. For example, people overestimate risk in events such as plane crashes or shark attacks whilst underestimating the risk of other events such as a car crash. This is because people tend to be more cautious of travelling by plane as opposed to a car. People might even choose to drive instead of fly by plane for the purpose of their personal safety. However, when considering the relative risk, flying is considered to be a safer mode of transport than driving. This estimation of risk is influenced through forms of media and causes those scenarios and images to be vividly and easily engraved in our minds. People tend to be more cautious of planes as the media generally covers more plane crashes and fewer car crashes.
Why
important?
The availability heuristic can result in bad decision making as the information that is easily recalled is likely to be insufficient for the purpose of predicting the chances of those events happening again in the future. This often means that people end up making poorly-informed decisions. We make hundreds of decisions each day and factors like the news and our emotions have a larger influence than what a rational calculation would. Failure to recognise our intrinsic biases can result in logically flawed reasoning and we can unintentionally discriminate against people for these reasons.
The availability heuristic represents our behaviour that comes from mental shortcuts made by our brain in order to process the vast amounts of information within the world. Taking measures to identify and become aware of our biases is the first step to minimising its use. Actively checking for the availability heuristic in our reasoning is a significant step we can take to prevent acts of discrimination or cause unintentional harm. This harm and negative effects of the availability heuristic can be mitigated by consideration of all the present information when making decisions and not just the information which readily comes to mind.