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Definitions: A Activated Node Activation Level Active Span Acuity Agnosia All-Or-None Law Ambiguous Figure Amnesia Amygdala Anarthria Anchoring Anomia Anterior Attention System Anterograde Amnesia Aphasia Apraxia Area V1 Articulatory Rehearsal Loop Association Cortex Associations Atmosphere Pattern Attended Channel Autobiographical Memory Automoaticity Availability Heuristic Axon

Psychology >> Psychology Dictionary >> Decision-Making Heuristics >> Availability Heuristic

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Availability Heuristic

A strategy used to judge the frequency of a certain type of object, or the likelihood of a certain type of event. This strategy begins by assessing the ease with which examples of the object or event come to mind; this 'availability' of examples is then used as an index of frequency or likelihood.

E.g., consider the following question: "Are there more words in the English language that start with the letter S or that have letter S as their third letter?"
People tend to think that there are by far more words starting with letter S, simply because it is easier to search one's memory for words by their first letter than by their third letter.

In fact, the opposite is true: there are fewer words starting with letter S than those that have letter S as their third letter.