Availability bias refers to the tendency for people to rely heavily on easily accessible information when making decisions or forming opinions. This information is often what comes most readily to mind, and is therefore considered to be most important. Daniel Kahneman defines it "as the process of judging frequency by 'the ease with which instances come to mind'". ([[Thinking Fast and Slow]], p.129) When Kahneman and Tversky were researching availability they were the guests of the world-class psychologist Paul Slovic. Slovic conducted a well-known [study](https://ma.tt/2017/11/adam-robinson-on-understanding/) of horse bettors and gave them varying amounts of information and measured the accuracy of their bets. The results of this study showed that the increase in information increased their confidence but not their results. Availability has many dimensions. Already we have seen the existence of information and the ease of its retrieval are two dimensions. A third is the "unexplained unavailability" of information. Kahneman notes that we make an inference: "if I am having so much more trouble than expected coming up with instances of my assertiveness, then I can't be very assertive". **Case Studies** - [CHG Issue #80: Central Banking](https://cedarshillgroup.substack.com/p/issue-80-central-banking) - [CHG Issue #82: Shortening the Feedback Loop](https://cedarshillgroup.substack.com/p/issue-82) Explore Further: [[Decision Making]] | [[Recency Bias]] | [Adam Robinson on Understanding](https://ma.tt/2017/11/adam-robinson-on-understanding/) Tags: #seeds #heuristic Your support for Cedars Hill Group is greatly appreciated <form action="https://www.paypal.com/donate" method="post" target="_top"> <input type="hidden" name="hosted_button_id" value="74PGN8ZXHQVHS" /> <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" title="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!" alt="Donate with PayPal button" /> <img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1" /> </form>