On the Testability of the Availability Heuristic

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the theoretical idea that social judgments are mediated or even determined by the availability of relevant information—that is, by the ease with which different pieces of memorized information come to the judge's mind. The chapter focuses on one empirical phenomenon that has been explained in terms of an availability heuristic—namely, the egocentric bias in responsibility attributions. When the partners in a close personal relationship judge their own and their partner's contribution to various activities, they tend to overestimate their own contribution. This egocentric bias has been explained in the chapter. The chapter describes ways to overcome the methodological difficulties inherent in testing the causal role of differential recall in judgment formation. Egocentric biases are investigated by having the participants perform two cognitive operations: (1) a judgment operation that is having Ss judge the percentage of their own (vs. their partner's) contribution to 20 different activities and (2) an elementary recall operation—that is, having them recall one example for each activity.