Thinking, Fast and Slow · chapter 13 · id thinking-fast-and-slow-c13-01-people-judge-the-frequency-of-
“People judge the frequency of events by how easily examples come to mind (the availability heuristic), leading to systematic overestimation of dramatic events and underestimation of common ones.”
holdsconfidence: high✓ ZHP-verified + red-teamed
Receipts
Tversky & Kahneman (1973), Cognitive Psychology 5(2)DOI registry: valid
Participants judged letters like K and R to appear more often in first position than third position of English words, because first-position examples come to mind more easily. In reality, these letters appear more often in the third position.
Lichtenstein, Slovic, Fischhoff, Layman & Combs (1978), Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 4(6)DOI registry: valid
People vastly overestimate the frequency of dramatic causes of death (tornadoes, homicides) and underestimate common but undramatic causes (diabetes, stroke). The bias correlated with media coverage patterns.
This claim is a stable, citable object. If you can falsify a verdict, tell us — corrections are loud here.