Tripped up by availability

We all take shortcuts, its just a fact of life. Life is too fast paced to do everything carefully, so sometimes we all sacrifice accuracy for a little speed. When we take shortcuts cognitively, it is called using a heuristic. Heuristics allow us to make decisions quickly, and generally lead us to correct thoughts. However, every once in a while we do get tripped up by our heuristics. When we make lists of things, we tend to use things which are common around us, which is called the availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973).

I fell prey to a flaw in this heuristic this past week when someone asked me which car i would buy if i could have anything under 30 thousand dollars. My mind immediately went to cars which we see every day, Hondas, Fords, etc. I gave the person a quick answer (i told them a 2009 Subaru STI, in case you were curious). I later realized that even though the suby was a great car, that wouldn't be the car i would pick. What i would actually pick would be a 1988 Pontiac Fiero GT, which i would take the v6 out of, and instead put in a Chevy ls7 v8, basically making the car into a smaller, lighter, more nimble Corvette for about half the price. Why didn't i tell my friend this? Because nobody drives Fieros. I see STIs all of the time, there are at least two cars that share its body on campus, so when asked for a car of choice, my mind went straight to cars i saw frequently because those are the ones most easily thought through.

400+ horsepower in this? Why yes, I think i would.

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5, 207-232.