representativeness heuristic

a strategy for making categorical judgments about a given person or target based on how closely the exemplar matches the typical or average member of the category. For example, given a choice of the two categories poet and accountant, people are likely to assign a person in unconventional clothes reading a poetry book to the former category; however, the much greater frequency of accountants in the population means that such a person is more likely to be an accountant. The representativeness heuristic is thus a form of the base-rate fallacy. Compare availability heuristic.

Browse dictionary by letter

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Psychology term of the day

December 7th 2024

method of absolute judgment

a psychophysical procedure in which stimuli are presented in random order to a participant, whose task is to place each stimulus in a particular category. The stimuli usually vary along one or two dimensions, such as brightness or loudness. Also called absolute-judgment method.