According to the representativeness heuristic, people make judgments about events according to:
A)their recent experiences with similar events.
B)the populations of events that they appear to depict.
C)how easy it is to find examples of relevant events.
D)their initial views, or presumptions.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The representativeness heuristic is a mental shortcut that helps individuals make decisions by comparing the current situation to their mental representation of a stereotype. People use this heuristic to judge the probability of an event by finding a 'similar' known event and assuming that the probabilities will be similar. As such, when people use the representativeness heuristic, they are making judgments based on how well the event matches their existing stereotypes of the population of events it appears to depict, rather than considering the actual statistical probability.

According to the Representativeness Heuristic, People Make Judgments About Events