Misleading vividness
🧠Psych - 134 / 200
Hello,
December is here! End of the year. Are you ready to embrace it?
Today, we are going to talk about Misleading vividness.
What is it?
A small number of dramatic and vivid events are taken to outweigh a significant amount of statistical evidence.
Where does it occur?
The way that these fallacy works are that there is confusion between recall and occurrence. When an event comes to mind a number of times, each remembering appears as a separate occurrence of the event (even if the person knows well that the event happens infrequently). This biases the person's estimation of probability.
Why do I need to know?
This type of decision is often one where there is a low probability of an event, but where the occurrence of the event would be disastrous or otherwise very unwelcome (sometimes called a 'Black Swan’ event).
In considering the decision, the anticipated pain of the possible event overwhelms the fact of the low probability.
References & Studies: -
http://changingminds.org/disciplines/argument/fallacies/misleading_vividness.htm
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Misleading-Vividness
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