Availability Bias: What It Is And How It Affects Us
Of these two countries, which has the largest population: Ukraine or Uganda?
Human beings work with mental shortcuts, cognitive processes that facilitate the complex and heavy process of thinking. This way of working of our mind helps us judge reality more quickly but has the effect that we sometimes make mistakes due to cognitive biases.
The bias we are going to talk about today is availability bias, which has a lot to do with the question we just asked you. If you want to know both the answer and know what availability bias is all about we invite you to continue reading.
Availability bias, also called availability heuristic, is the tendency we humans have to judge the frequency or probability of an event in terms of how easy it is to think of examples related to it In the use of this mental process, the most important factor for individuals is not the content of the memory, but the ease with which we remember or imagine a certain content.
We can define availability bias as a mental shortcut that is based on immediate examples that come to mind when we evaluate a certain issue, topic, concept, method or a specific decision. So that we understand it better, we are going to talk about the question we asked in the introduction: which country has the most population? Most likely you thought it was Ukraine. If so, you are wrong: the correct answer is Uganda.
The reason you thought about Ukraine is pure availability bias. At the moment, this Eastern European country is in the media spotlight, being a topic of debate in international politics. On the other hand, Uganda is an African country that barely attracts attention in international politics, is not often talked about in the news and is not that famous. In fact, it’s quite likely that you’ll have a hard time locating it on the map.
What is the function of this bias?
As we were saying, the availability bias acts as a shortcut, a psychological process that helps us think quickly and easily This bias serves to help us make decisions quickly, taking into account our own or others’ past experience, recent events and information that we have in our memory.
The availability bias serves as a quick and partially effective strategy (we are not always right) to give the best possible response, or what we believe is the best possible response, in a situation for which we have little information. This phenomenon is greatly influenced by emotional experiences and strong anecdotes which would explain why in many situations human beings trust more in an event or data experienced in a very personal way than in statistical information that they do not understand.
The goal of availability bias is to save time and mental energy. This is confirmed by Scott Plous, a social psychologist and professor of psychology in the Department of Psychology at Wesleyan University, one of the researchers who is most familiar with this heuristic. He himself indicates that The more accessible an event is, the more frequent and probable it will seem to us ; The more vivid the information is, the more convincing and easier to remember it will be and, finally, the more obvious something is to us, the more causal it will seem.
As its name suggests, this bias works based on the information one has available, especially the most recent. Our mind works in such a way that, if something is easily remembered, it interprets it as more important or determining in the situation in which we find ourselves. People tend to orient our judgments largely on the most recent topics, generating new opinions conditioned by the latest news. It would be basically for this reason that one would first think of Ukraine and not of Uganda in the question with which we began the article.
One of the effects that availability bias has is that it influences our intuitions. In fact, we could say that intuitions are based on the most recent information we have or the information we trust the most. Consequently, both our fears and decisions are not guided by calculations or reasoning, but by information, of a marked emotional nature, that we have available. This can make us attach a lot of importance to a situation experienced and be afraid of things we don’t know.
Often, we accept as valid the first thing that comes to mind, without ever analyzing it, much less questioning it Because of this bias, we make decisions without reflecting on them and, while we don’t always have to make mistakes, it certainly increases the possibility of us screwing up.
Availability bias and advertising
In 1970, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman called what they themselves defined as the availability heuristic. They described it as those situations in which, when analyzing a certain topic or issue, we do so using the information that we have most accessible in our minds. We give greater value to the most recent information with the greatest emotional impact, something that is constantly taken advantage of by the marketing world.
Availability bias allows us to understand why advertising works. When we are in the supermarket, when it comes to buying a product, the brand that we have seen on television or on social networks comes to mind Since we have this information available in our minds, we will be more likely to choose products from a brand that we know or that has influenced us emotionally than another more anonymous one, even if it has a cheaper price or better quality.
