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Psychological Phenomena

Familiarity Heuristic

Anchoring and Availability Biases

In psychology, a heuristic is an easy-to-compute rule of thumb that people use when forming beliefs, judgments or decisions. The familiarity heuristic, developed out of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman's earlier discovery of the availability heuristic, leads people to favor the familiar over the novel; when a new situation resembles one already experienced, especially under a heavy cognitive load, a person tends to fall back into the state of mind they held or the behavior they used before.

Facts
Classification
Type of Phenomenon
Cognitive Phenomenon 1
Core Claim
The familiar is favored over novel places, people, or things. 1
Connections

Associated With

Amos Tversky, Psychologists

The familiarity heuristic developed out of Tversky and Kahneman's earlier discovery of the availability heuristic.

Daniel Kahneman, Psychologists

The familiarity heuristic developed out of Tversky and Kahneman's earlier discovery of the availability heuristic.

In Branch

Sources
1. Familiarity heuristic, Wikipedia
  • Lead paragraph
    The familiarity heuristic was developed based on the discovery of the availability heuristic by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman; it happens when the familiar is favored over novel places, people, or things.
  • lead section, phenomenon-kind classification
    In psychology, a heuristic is an easy-to-compute procedure or rule of thumb that people use when forming beliefs, judgments or decisions.
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