Availability Bias: Why You Worry About the Wrong Risks (and How to Fix It)
You are scrolling on social media, and BAM! A video of a guy getting mugged pops up. Suddenly, the world seems like a dangerous place.
Or, you wake up to the news of an accident along the route you take daily to work, and now you take an alternative, longer route to work despite it taking more time.
These are cases of availability bias in action. A phenomenon that explains why we avoid one thing out of fear of an alternative that ends up being objectively riskier.
Often, when we make decisions, rarely do we actively seek out information, and if we seek it out, we tend to pick information easily obtainable. This is because we associate easily recalled information as indicative of its likelihood or truthfulness.
In this article, I discuss availability bias, how it works, how to overcome it, and how to leverage it to influence others.
Understanding Availability Bias.
Our brains are limited in information processing capacity. Therefore, we use cognitive shortcuts to expedite decision-making.
Rightfully so as it frees us from the obligation of sourcing and fact-checking every single piece of information required to make trivial day-to-day decisions, such as what to eat and what to wear.
This becomes problematic when we use a similar framework when making big life-altering decisions such as what to work on, who to work with...
Because of availability bias, we overestimate the risk of dying in a bomb attack or murder and underestimate the risk of dying from a less peculiar means such as choking on a fish bone or AIDS.
Our brains assign importance to big loud events or drama and ignore anything silent or mundane. As a result, we assume our recollections as true and discount anything outside of immediate memory.
How to overcome it.
Now that we’ve explored how availability bias clouds judgment, let’s delve into the strategies for overcoming this bias. The following are ways I’ve found to overcome this heuristic.
1. Look for disconfirming evidence
After you are convinced of something, play the devil's advocate and look for the 'Why Nots', invert the problem. Before putting your convictions out there, first, ask yourself, How am I wrong? Be your own best critic.
2. Be a skeptic.
When on the verge of making life-changing decisions, never take information at face value. Just because something is easy to remember does not mean it is statistically probable.
3. Prioritize new information.
When making pivotal decisions, place less importance on anecdotes and stories and prioritize new sources of information(data and statistics). Numbers have been known to counteract the emotional pull of vivid stories. This allows for a more comprehensive evaluation of the situation and reduces the impact of availability bias.
4. Write.
Putting your thinking down on paper is a sure way to avoid availability bias. By externalizing your reasoning, you gain a clearer more objective assessment of the situation at hand and can make better decisions.
5. Consider base rates.
Base rates are the overall likelihood of something happening that allow us to avoid availability bias. Consider the case of picking balls from a jar of red and blue balls. Availability bias will have you think there are only red balls if you see only red balls being pulled out. The base rate considers all balls in the jar giving us an accurate picture of the situation.
How to leverage it to influence others.
As we have seen, this is a cognitive shortcut most people succumb to including you even without your awareness, and therefore can be used against you or you can use it to influence others.
Lawyers win cases by simply presenting information. It's a game of who can best present the best vivid, easily recalled information. They strategically present evidence and tell captivating stories to skillfully manipulate the jury’s perception and decisions. By emphasizing vivid details and anecdotes, they ensure that certain aspects of the case are at the forefront of the juror’s mind.
In sales and marketing, marketers make people think a product is superior by making it seem hard to get or leveraging social proof. Marketers also use stories to make the product easy to remember. When people think something is recent or easy to find, they are likely to think it's good.
Summary.
Our brains use shortcuts to make quick decisions. This is useful for making trivial day-to-day decisions but is misleading when it comes to making important decisions.
Vivid stories and dramatic events are easily recalled leading us to overestimate their risk.
Writing, being skeptical, seeking disconfirming evidence, seeking new data, and using base rates are strategies you can use to mitigate the risk of availability bias.
You can leverage availability bias to influence others by presenting vivid, easily recalled information to shape perceptions and influence decisions.
Understanding availability bias is crucial for making informed decisions and avoiding cognitive pitfalls in various aspects of life.