Availability bias

Availability bias can be defined as a misjudgment of risk. An assessment based on false assumptions. When a person thinks something is more likely than it actually is because they have heard, read, or talked about it a disproportionate number of times. In addition, it may be a situation that happened to someone earlier - and that person therefore projects it into the present or future.

The term availability bias goes back to psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, who coined it in 1973. In their work at the time, they showed that people tend to overestimate the likelihood of a scenario occurring if they could easily imagine or remember it.

Author: Max Bachmann

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References

• Cheng, Z.y., Li, P. and Liu, G.I. (2020). Availability Bias Causes Misdiagnoses by Physicians: Direct Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial. "Internal Medicine (Tokyo, Japan)", 59(24), 3141–3146.