Statistical Sciences 2037A/B Lecture Notes - Representativeness Heuristic, Homicide, Risk Perception

• School: Western University
• Department: Statistical Sciences
• Course: Statistical Sciences 2037A/B
• Professor: Emad Mohammad

Document Summary

Chapter 17 psychological influences on personal probability. Personal probabilities are based on how likely an individual thinks an event will occur. Personal probabilities do not have a specific value. They still follow the rules of relative frequency. People like to be guaranteed that something will or will not happen. People are more likely to pay to reduce their risk from a fixed amount to zero than to pay to reduce the risk by the same factor not to zero. The pseudocertainty effect is where you are offered complete reduction on one off and not on the others. Personal probabilities can be distorted by the availability heuristic. This is when an event is more available in your mind. Example: death by diabetes vs. homicides, people think homicide because it is advertised more, but diabetes really has more deaths. It is more available to bring one outcome to your mind than the other.