Question

When Max talked to his friend Jessica about his undergraduate experience at the University of Minnesota, he said he believed that most of the students at UM majored in Psychology. Max concluded this because when he thought about kinds of majors, he thought about his friends and most of whom were psychology majors. So Max has made a judgment based on how easily he could think of examples. This reasoning error is known as the _______________.
Select one:

a. the either-or fallacy
b. Representativeness heuristic
c. Availability heuristic
d. the bandwagon fallacy

Answer 1

Answer:c. Availability heuristic

Explanation:

When we make decisions based on the first infomation that becomes available in our mind this is referred to as availability heuristic. It allows us to take a short cut to get there however it may result to us making wrong conclusion about certain things.

If you can think of more cases of something more than you can think of the cases of the other thing you are likely to think that the one which you are able to think of more cases is more prevalent than this other one, which may not be the case , it may only be because you are only able to recall more cases of that one than you do with the other issue.

In this case you use availability heuristic to make incorrect conclusion.

You may overestimate the likelihood of something happening just because you judged it based on how many cases popped in your mind when you thought about it.

Max concludes that most undergraduates major in Psychology based on the fact that multiple number of his friends who majored in Psychology come into his mind however this is not the presentation of the vast population of students. He uses that available information to make incorrect conclusion