Learn more about problemsolving with this collection
How to use storytelling to connect with others
The psychology behind storytelling
How to craft compelling stories
How the availability heuristic misleads us
There is no real link between how memorable something is and how likely it is to happen. In fact, the opposite is often true. Unusual events stand out more and receive more attention than commonplace ones. As a result, the availability heuristic skews our perception of risks in two key ways:
We overestimate the likelihood of unlikely events. And we underestimate the likelihood of likely events.
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224 reads
MORE IDEAS ON THIS
Narratives are more memorable than disjointed facts
There’s a reason why cultures around the world teach important life lessons and values through fables, fairy tales, myths, proverbs, and stories.
104
362 reads
The availability heuristic
We tend to judge the likelihood and significance of things based on how easily they come to mind. The more “available” a piece of information is to us, the more important it seems.
The result is that we give greater weight to information we learned recently because a news...
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299 reads
“The attention which we lend to an experience is proportional to its vivid or interesting character, and it is a notorious fact that what interests us most vividly at the time is, other things equal, what we remember best.”
WILLIAM JAMES
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5.34K reads
How to overcome the availability heuristic
- Always consider base rates when making judgments about probability.
- Whenever possible, base your judgments on trends and patterns—the longer term, the better.
- Take the time to think before making a judgment. Stop and go throu...
109
270 reads
Behavioral economics
It is a field of study bringing together knowledge from psychology and economics to reveal how real people behave in the real world.
- This is in contrast to the traditional economic view of human behavior, which assumed people always behave in accordance with rational,...
106
447 reads
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Other curated ideas on this topic:
The availability heuristic
We tend to judge the likelihood and significance of things based on how easily they come to mind. The more “available” a piece of information is to us, the more important it seems.
The result is that we give greater weight to information we learned recently because a news...
Our selective memory
We tend to overestimate the importance of events we can easily recall and underestimate the importance of events we have trouble recalling.
The easier it is to remember, the more likely we are to create a strong relationship between two things that are weakly related or not related ...
151 Cognitive Biases
Attentional Bias: subconsciously we choose points where we pay attention to. A smoker is more likely to notice other people smoking.
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