Thinking, Fast and Slow · chapter 13 · id thinking-fast-and-slow-c13-02-it-is-not-the-number-of-exampl

“It is not the number of examples retrieved that drives availability judgments, but the ease with which they come to mind -- listing 12 examples of assertiveness makes people feel less assertive than listing 6.”

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Receipts

Schwarz, Bless, Strack, Klumpp, Rittenauer-Schatka & Simons (1991), JPSP 61(2)DOI registry: valid

Participants asked to list 6 assertive behaviors rated themselves as MORE assertive than those listing 12, because retrieving 6 is easy (feels fluent) while retrieving 12 is difficult.

Groncki et al. (2021), pre-registered replication of Schwarz et al. (1991)paywalled — manual check queued

Pre-registered direct replication of the ease-of-retrieval paradigm found no significant effect (N=659, F(1,657)=1.34, p=.25). Yeager et al. (2019) large national sample (N=1,325) also found no significant ease-of-retrieval effect.

This claim is a stable, citable object. If you can falsify a verdict, tell us — corrections are loud here.