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Decision-Making Heuristics >> Representativeness Heuristic
Representativeness Heuristic
Representativeness heuristic is a strategy often used in making judgements about categories.
This strategy is broadly equivalent to making the assumption that, in general, each instance of a category will resemble the prototype for that category, and that the prototype resembles each instance.
Accordingly to the representativeness heuristic, the subjective probability or frequency of an event is determined by the degree to which it:
1. is similar in essential characteristics to its parent population,
2. reflects the salient features of the process by which it is generated.
For example, consider which of the following two sequences of tails and heads is more likely:
a. H-H-H-T-T-T
b. H-T-T-H-T-H
People often assume that the sequence b is the more likely one, because it 'looks' more random.
Statistically, however, both sequences are equally likely.
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