Description

Tendency for people to judge events' likelihood or frequency based on ease of recall.

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124–1131.

Task

The task is adapted from Lichtenstein et al. (1978). Participants are asked to indicate which of two lethal events is more common (e.g. suicide vs. diabetes).

Items (4)

Which cause of death is more likely?

1. Suicide (less likely) vs. Diabetes

2. Homicide (less likely) vs. Diabetes

3. Commercial airplane crash (less likely) vs. Bicycle-related

4. Shark attack (less likely) vs. Hornet, wasp or bee bite

Scoring

Correct responses are scored 1 and incorrect responses 0. The total availability score is the average of the scores.

Source

Erceg, N., Galić, Z., & Bubić, A. (2022). Normative responding on cognitive bias tasks: Some evidence for a weak rationality factor that is mostly explained by numeracy and actively open-minded thinking. Intelligence, 90, 101619.