Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction – Heuristics and Biases: Then and Now
- PART ONE THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL EXTENSIONS
- 1 Extensional versus Intuitive Reasoning
- 2 Representativeness Revisited: Attribute Substitution in Intuitive Judgment
- 3 How Alike Is It? versus How Likely Is It?: A Disjunction Fallacy in Probability Judgments
- 4 Imagining Can Heighten or Lower the Perceived Likelihood of Contracting a Disease: The Mediating Effect of Ease of Imagery
- 5 The Availability Heuristic Revisited: Ease of Recall and Content of Recall as Distinct Sources of Information
- 6 Incorporating the Irrelevant: Anchors in Judgments of Belief and Value
- 7 Putting Adjustment Back in the Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic
- 8 Self-Anchoring in Conversation: Why Language Users Do Not Do What They “Should”
- 9 Inferential Correction
- 10 Mental Contamination and the Debiasing Problem
- 11 Sympathetic Magical Thinking: The Contagion and Similarity “Heuristics”
- 12 Compatibility Effects in Judgment and Choice
- 13 The Weighing of Evidence and the Determinants of Confidence
- 14 Inside the Planning Fallacy: The Causes and Consequences of Optimistic Time Predictions
- 15 Probability Judgment across Cultures
- 16 Durability Bias in Affective Forecasting
- 17 Resistance of Personal Risk Perceptions to Debiasing Interventions
- 18 Ambiguity and Self-Evaluation: The Role of Idiosyncratic Trait Definitions in Self-Serving Assessments of Ability
- 19 When Predictions Fail: The Dilemma of Unrealistic Optimism
- 20 Norm Theory: Comparing Reality to Its Alternatives
- 21 Counterfactual Thought, Regret, and Superstition: How to Avoid Kicking Yourself
- PART TWO NEW THEORETICAL DIRECTIONS
- PART THREE REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS
- References
- Index
4 - Imagining Can Heighten or Lower the Perceived Likelihood of Contracting a Disease: The Mediating Effect of Ease of Imagery
from PART ONE - THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL EXTENSIONS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction – Heuristics and Biases: Then and Now
- PART ONE THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL EXTENSIONS
- 1 Extensional versus Intuitive Reasoning
- 2 Representativeness Revisited: Attribute Substitution in Intuitive Judgment
- 3 How Alike Is It? versus How Likely Is It?: A Disjunction Fallacy in Probability Judgments
- 4 Imagining Can Heighten or Lower the Perceived Likelihood of Contracting a Disease: The Mediating Effect of Ease of Imagery
- 5 The Availability Heuristic Revisited: Ease of Recall and Content of Recall as Distinct Sources of Information
- 6 Incorporating the Irrelevant: Anchors in Judgments of Belief and Value
- 7 Putting Adjustment Back in the Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic
- 8 Self-Anchoring in Conversation: Why Language Users Do Not Do What They “Should”
- 9 Inferential Correction
- 10 Mental Contamination and the Debiasing Problem
- 11 Sympathetic Magical Thinking: The Contagion and Similarity “Heuristics”
- 12 Compatibility Effects in Judgment and Choice
- 13 The Weighing of Evidence and the Determinants of Confidence
- 14 Inside the Planning Fallacy: The Causes and Consequences of Optimistic Time Predictions
- 15 Probability Judgment across Cultures
- 16 Durability Bias in Affective Forecasting
- 17 Resistance of Personal Risk Perceptions to Debiasing Interventions
- 18 Ambiguity and Self-Evaluation: The Role of Idiosyncratic Trait Definitions in Self-Serving Assessments of Ability
- 19 When Predictions Fail: The Dilemma of Unrealistic Optimism
- 20 Norm Theory: Comparing Reality to Its Alternatives
- 21 Counterfactual Thought, Regret, and Superstition: How to Avoid Kicking Yourself
- PART TWO NEW THEORETICAL DIRECTIONS
- PART THREE REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS
- References
- Index
Summary
Findings from a number of studies (Anderson, 1983; Anderson, Lepper, & Ross, 1980; Carroll, 1978; Gregory, Cialdini, & Carpenter, 1982; Ross, Lepper, Strack, & Steinmetz, 1977; Sherman, Zehner, Johnson, & Hirt, 1983) indicate that when a hypothetical outcome is imagined and/or explained, it becomes subjectively more likely to occur. For example, Gregory et al. (1982) asked subjects to imagine winning a contest or being arrested for a crime. In each case, subjects came to believe more strongly that the event could happen to them. Furthermore, the imagination procedure influenced later compliance behavior as well as probability estimates. Homeowners who imagined watching and enjoying the benefits of a cable television service were subsequently more likely to subscribe to such a service when given the opportunity to do so.
What process underlies these dramatic judgmental and behavioral effects of explaining and imagining hypothetical future events? The work to date indicates an interpretation based on the operation of one of the cognitive heuristics used in judgments under uncertainty, the availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). According to this heuristic principle, one basis for the judgment of the likelihood of an uncertain outcome is cognitive availability; that is, the ease with which this outcome can be pictured or constructed. The more available an outcome is, the more likely it is perceived to be….
What might one expect, however, if the event in question could be imagined only with great difficulty, or if subjects failed in their attempts to imagine or explain it?
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- Heuristics and BiasesThe Psychology of Intuitive Judgment, pp. 98 - 102Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002
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