What you remember most vividly in your past influences your future. That’s the power of personal experience.
The stories, memories, and examples that are easily available to you guide the decisions you make, the stories you tell, and how you position yourself in the world.
This is called “availability bias.” And you can either succumb to this common mental error or learn to use it in your favor…
An idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it is easily available to you.
Memories Of Past Success
People try to repeat what has worked for them in the past. This is so even if the variables have changed significantly since that past success happened.
This occurs in professional sports all the time. General Managers who have won championships in the past bring with them vivid memories not just of the win, but of how they won.
So, naturally, they try to duplicate their prior process and success with their new team.
The problem is that the game may have changed in the interim. Availability bias doesn’t allow them to acknowledge that “this time is different.”
Don’t let vivid stories and experiences of past success stop you from seeing that things have changed. What worked before may well not work now.
How To Avoid Availability Bias
- Use checklists to help counteract mental biases.
- Focus on abstract information rather than concrete data to avoid ignoring disconfirming evidence.
- Actively seek out disconfirming evidence to avoid confirmation and availability bias.
- Consider the consequences if you are wrong, and look for evidence that discounts your previous findings.
- Purposefully under weigh vivid examples that come to mind, and consider less memorable evidence with equal importance.
What Is Availability Bias?
Availability bias (also called the “availability heuristic”) is the impact of your most vivid experiences or memories on decision-making.
It’s a mental shortcut that allows you to easily connect ideas or decisions based on immediate or vivid examples.
You place too much importance on the facts and information you can remember, and less importance on the facts not immediately available to you.
How To Use Availability Bias To Influence Others
Become a great storyteller.
If you want to convince someone of something, tell them an exciting, vivid, story. Or write it down and have them read it.
Stories that use visual language and elicit the senses of the reader are powerful. They can influence how someone thinks about a problem or solution, and you can use stories to push your reader or listener in a particular direction.
Trial lawyers are masterful storytellers. They understand that facts don’t move people, stories do.
So, tell more stories. And keep going.
Examples of Availability Bias: Fear Of Flying
Excessive coverage on the news or social media about plane crashes uses vivid images and stories to elicit an emotional response. That’s why many people develop a fear of flying – they remember those images the next time they fly.
Yet, this fear is entirely in opposition to the statistical danger of flying. The chances of experiencing a plane crash on a commercial airline are incredibly low.
But, data doesn’t usually speak to us emotionally. It’s much easier to remember the vivid images of destruction.
Availability bias makes those images easily accessible, causing an irrational fear of flying.
