Decision Making Bias: Availability
People tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory—and this is largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media.
If a random word is taken from an English text, is it more likely that the word starts with a K, or that K is the third letter?
It is easier to think of words that begin with "K", more than words with "K" as the third letter. Thus, people judge words beginning with a "K" to be a more common occurrence. In reality, however, a typical text contains twice as many words that have "K" as the third letter than "K" as the first letter.
Imagine the following scenarios: (a) A massive flood somewhere in America, in which more than 1,000 people die. (b) An earthquake in California, causing massive flooding in which more than 1,000 people die.
Imagine two people competing for a promotion, one has done excellent work for the past 9 months, and the other has done extraordinary work for the past 3 months.
