Suppose participants were given a list of names of academy award winners in over the past five years. After a few minutes of stu
dy they were asked to estimate the number of awards each film won. The participants would probably overestimate the number of awards for films they saw as opposed to those they did not see because of the:single-feature modelelimination-by-aspects modelavailability heuristic.representativeness heuristic.
The availability heuristic is including examples that are immediate and those examples that the person is using while considering some decisions, methods or topics. It is a helpful mental shortcut and people are using it by comparing received pieces of information and prototypes.
Because of the immediate examples that those participants were studying, they will overestimate the films that they saw and not what they didn't.
