PS260 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Representativeness Heuristic, Confirmation Bias, Sinology
Document Summary
The representativeness heuristic is another example of attribute substitution. People often assume when making a judgment about a member of a category, that the instances of the category resemble the prototype for the category and that the prototype resembles each instance. stereotyping. Do you assume anything about someone if you discover that he or she is a lawyer. If you hear an anecdote about a marathon runner who has smoked for decades and is perfectly healthy, does this mean that smoking is safe? use one instance to extrapolate. The representativeness heuristic may lead us to believe that all lawyers or all engineers. We assume that each individual member of a category has the traits we associate with the are homogeneous (a stereotype). category overall. The representativeness heuristic may lead us to believe that the seventh coin toss is more likely to be tails (the gambler"s fallacy), but the odds are still 50-50.
