In a psychology study, people are asked which is more likely: an earthquake that kills 100,000 people or an earthquake in California that kills 100,000 people.Far more people said that the earthquake in California is more likely, even though there are clearly more earthquakes than there are earthquakes in California.This way of thinking is an example of the
A)confirmation bias.
B)framing effect.
C)representativeness heuristic.
D)availability heuristic.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

This is an example of the representativeness heuristic, where people judge the probability of an event by how much it seems to represent, or match, the typical case. In this scenario, specifying "in California" makes the earthquake scenario seem more representative or typical of where people might expect a large earthquake to occur, despite logically being a subset of all possible earthquakes and thus less likely.

In a Psychology Study, People Are Asked Which Is More