REPRESENTATIVENESS

Similar to profiling or stereotyping, “representativeness” is the intuitive leap to make judgments based on how similar something is to something we like without taking into consideration other factors: probability (likelihood), statistics (base rate), or sampling sizes.

Baseball scouts used to recruit players based on how close their appearance resembled other good players. Once players were recruited based on actual statistics the level of gamesmanship improved. Just because we like the design of a book cover doesn’t mean we’ll like the contents. You can’t judge a book by its cover. A start-up restaurant has a low chance of survival regardless of how much you like their food. Many well run companies keep their facilities neat and tidy but a well kept lawn is no guarantee that the occupants inside are organized.

To discipline our lazy intuition we must make judgments based on probability and base rates, and question our analysis of the evidence used to come up with our assumption in the first place. Potential for error: Evaluating a person, place, or thing on how much it resembles something else without taking into account other salient factors.


TOPIC: #CognitiveBiases
SOURCE: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman