Cognitive bias
Availability Heuristic
Judge how common or risky something is by how easily an example comes to mind, not by the actual rate.
Judge how common or risky something is by how easily an example comes to mind, not by the actual rate.
Example
After seeing a shark attack story on the news, ocean swimming feels riskier than driving, when it's actually the opposite.
The availability heuristic estimates how common or risky something is based on how easily examples come to mind, rather than the actual rate. Vivid, recent, or heavily covered events come to mind easily and feel more common than they are.
News coverage makes this worse: rare, dramatic events get disproportionate airtime precisely because they’re rare and dramatic, which then makes them feel frequent.
When judging risk, look for the actual base rate rather than relying on how easily an example comes to mind.