Availability Bias: Easier Thought, Easier Influence

“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”

Joseph Stalin

Thanks to availability bias, your brain considers high profile events in the news to be more likely than they actually are.

Have you ever watched a tragic event on the news and then spent the next day or two worrying that it might happen to you?

Or have you ever felt the urge to buy stocks when the stock market (or Bitcoin) is surging, and sell when it’s collapsing?

Meet availability bias.

As Peter Bevelin explains in Seeking Wisdom, “[t]he more dramatic, salient, personal, entertaining, or emotional some information, event or experience is, the more influenced we are.”

WHAT IS THE AVAILABILITY BIAS?

Thanks to the availability bias, your brain thinks something is more probable if it’s easier for your brain to process.

As you’ve learned about, that’s thanks to evolution; your brain prefers the path of least resistance. So, when choosing between alternatives, your brain will “like” the one that’s easiest to process and give that thing more significance than it should.

As Daniel Kahneman explains in Thinking Fast and Slow:

“People tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory.”

The availability bias explains a lot of human irrationalities. For example, if you ever talk to someone in medical school, they’ll probably be freaking out about all the diseases they have. This “Med Student Syndrome” is partially thanks to the availability bias.

Because med students spend so much time studying and thinking about diseases, their brain more easily processes those diseases and think they’re more likely to happen than they actually are.

And as Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein explain in Nudge,

“[People] assess the likelihood of risks by asking how readily examples come to mind. If people can easily think of relevant examples, they are far more likely to be frightened and concerned than if they cannot.”

HOW DOES AVAILABILITY BIAS WORK?

Humans think events like shark attacks are more common if they’ve read a story or watched a move about them recently.

There’s at least three ways to understand availability bias: salience, timing, and narrative format.

Something will be more “available” in your mind (and thus considered more likely) if:

Salience

Salience refers to how noticeable or prominent something is. Salience is increased by:

• Dramatic Events — The more dramatic an event is, or is perceived to be, the more likely you will be to remember and think about it. As a result, the human brain will judge these events to be more likely.
• Personal Experiences — Personal experiences are more easily processed and recalled.
• Vivid Detail — The more detail and information your brain has about an event, the more likely it will judge that event. This can include vivid pictures, but also vivid descriptions.
• More Imaginable Instances — Your brain will process a scenario that plays on associations that already exist as more likely. For example, it’s easier to imagine a vegetarian yoga participant than a vegetarian accountant.

Timing

Thanks to the Serial-Position Effect, when processing a list, you remember items that are near the beginning, and items that are near the end best. This generally means you overweight the significance of things you have thought/read/heard about recently. For example, think about how much viral news society forgets once they’re no longer new, like “Save Harambe.”

Narrative Format

Humans process stories better than facts and discrete information. As Peter Bevelin writes in Seeking Wisdom, “[w]e are easily influenced when we are told stories because we relate to stories better than to logic or fact.”

DON’T BELIEVE THE NEWS

If you ever watch some dramatic event on the news, the availability bias will make you think it’s more likely than it actually is. An example is tragic events like homicides. As Sunstein and Thaler explain in Nudge, “[h]omicides are more available than suicides, and so people tend to believe, wrongly, that more people die from homicide.”

News media wants your page views, and they’ll focus on dramatic events to get them. Suicides don’t get clicks; school shootings do. But, in truth, America’s homicide rates are falling. It’s the suicide rates are increasing.

Thanks to availability bias and all the stories on homicide that news media runs, though, you probably don’t think that.

HOW YOU WILL LEVERAGE AVAILABILITY

As Scott Adams writes in Win Bigly, “[t]he things that you think about the most will irrationally rise in importance in your mind.”

You can tap into the availability bias to make someone process and think about something irrationally, which makes it seem more important and probable to them.

How? Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Examples — Provide examples that promote the outcome you want. For example, whenever you’re negotiating, provide examples of how the other side’s desired choice could lead to bad outcomes. Then, repeat those possibilities, since repetition makes something seem more probable.
• Pitching/Sales/Copywriting — Discuss hypothetical scenarios that favor your desired outcome. For example, in your copywriting, you can talk about potential examples of how your product/service may improve someone’s life.
• Vivid Details — When trying to persuade someone, provide lots of details about your preferred outcome. For example, when interviewing for a job, provide lots of concrete details about how exactly you would be a valuable asset to that employer. Don’t just discuss how you’re diligent; talk about that one time you recently exercised diligence by going the extra mile to research XYZ.
• Personal Experiences — If you want someone to think an outcome is more likely, ask them if they’ve ever personally experienced it. As Thaler and Sunstein explain in Nudge, “[a] good way to increase people’s fear of a bad outcome is to remind them of a related incident in which things went wrong; a good way to increase people’s confidence is to remind them of a similar situation in which everything worked out for the best.”
• Timing — Mention the things you want someone to remember more first or last.
• Story Format — You should present information in a story format to get others to remember it better.

How have you used or seen others use the availability bias? Share your insights in the comments.

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