Ambiguity effect

The ambiguity effect is a cognitive bias where decision making is affected by a lack of information, or
"ambiguity".[1] The effect implies that people tend to select options for which the probability of a
favorable outcome is known, over an option for which the probability of a favorable outcome is
unknown. The effect was first described by Daniel Ellsberg in 1961.
Examples
When buying a house, many people choose a fixed rate mortgage, where the interest rate is set in
stone, over a variable rate mortgage, where the interest rate fluctuates with the market. This is the
case even though a variable rate mortgage has statistically been shown to save more money.
As an example, consider a bucket containing 30 balls. The balls are either red, black or white. Ten of the
balls are red, and the remaining 20 are either black or white, with all combinations of black and white
being equally likely. In option X, drawing a red ball wins a person $100, and in option Y, drawing a black
ball wins them $100. The probability of picking a winning ball is the same for both options X and Y. In
option X, the probability of selecting a winning ball is 1 in 3 (10 red balls out of 30 total balls). In option
Y, despite the fact that the number of black balls is uncertain, the probability of selecting a winning ball
is also 1 in 3. This is because the number of black balls is equally distributed among all possibilities
between 0 and 20. The difference between the two options is that in option X, the probability of a
favorable outcome is known, but in option Y, the probability of a favorable outcome is unknown
("ambiguous").
In spite of the equal probability of a favorable outcome, people have a greater tendency to select a ball
under option X, where the probability of selecting a winning ball is perceived to be more certain. The
uncertainty as to the number of black balls means that option Y tends to be viewed less favorably.
Despite the fact that there could possibly be twice as many black balls as red balls, people tend not to
want to take the opposing risk that there may be fewer than 10 black balls. The "ambiguity" behind
option Y means that people tend to favor option X, even when the probability is the same.
A more realistic example might be the way people invest money. A risk-averse investor might tend to
put their money into "safe" investments such as government bonds and bank deposits, as opposed to
more volatile investments such as stocks and funds. Even though the stock market is likely to provide a
significantly higher return over time, the investor might prefer the "safe" investment in which the return
is known, instead of the less predictable stock market in which the return is not known.[clarification
needed] The ambiguity effect is a possible explanation why people are reluctant to adopt new practices
in the work place.
It is human to avoid ambiguous knowledge - to assume things are knowable when they are not. This is
related to the clustering illusion. When presented with large amounts of confounding variables, people
still tend to claim knowledge of the unknowable. This produces cognitive dissonance which when
avoided leads people to try to change venues to something with more certainty.
Explanation
One possible explanation of the effect is that people have a rule of thumb (heuristic)
to avoid options where information is missing. This will often lead them to seek out
the missing information. In many cases, though, the information cannot be obtained.
The effect is often the result of calling some particular missing piece of information to
the person's attention.
Anchoring or focalism
Anchoring or focalism is a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too
heavily on the first piece of information offered (the "anchor") when making decisions. During decision
making, anchoring occurs when individuals use an initial piece of information to make subsequent
judgments. Once an anchor is set, other judgments are made by adjusting away from that anchor, and
there is a bias toward interpreting other information around the anchor. For example, the initial price
offered for a used car sets the standard for the rest of the negotiations, so that prices lower than the
initial price seem more reasonable even if they are still higher than what the car is really worth.
Focusing effect
The focusing effect (or focusing illusion) is a cognitive bias that occurs when people place too much
importance on one aspect of an event, causing an error in accurately predicting the utility of a future
outcome.
People focus on notable differences, excluding those that are less conspicuous, when making
predictions about happiness or convenience. For example, when people were asked how much happier
they believe Californians are compared to Midwesterners, Californians and Midwesterners both said
Californians must be considerably happier, when, in fact, there was no difference between the actual
happiness rating of Californians and Midwesterners. The bias lies in that most people asked focused on
and overweighed the sunny weather and ostensibly easy-going lifestyle of California and devalued and
underrated other aspects of life and determinants of happiness, such as low crime rates and safety
from natural disasters like earthquakes (both of which large parts of California lack).
A rise in income has only a small and transient effect on happiness and well-being, but people
consistently overestimate this effect. Kahneman et al. proposed that this is a result of a focusing
illusion, with people focusing on conventional measures of achievement rather than on everyday
routine.
Adjustment heuristic
Anchoring and adjustment is a psychological heuristic that influences the way people intuitively assess
probabilities. According to this heuristic, people start with an implicitly suggested reference point (the
"anchor") and make adjustments to it to reach their estimate. A person begins with a first
approximation (anchor) and then makes incremental adjustments based on additional information.
These adjustments are usually insufficient, giving the initial anchor a great deal of influence over future
assessments.
Daniel Kahneman, one of the first researchers to study anchoring.
The anchoring and adjustment heuristic was first theorized by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. In
one of their first studies, participants were asked to compute, within 5 seconds, the product of the
numbers one through eight, either as or reversed as . Because participants did not have enough time
to calculate the full answer, they had to make an estimate after their first few multiplications. When
these first multiplications gave a small answer because the sequence started with small numbers
the median estimate was 512; when the sequence started with the larger numbers, the median
estimate was 2,250. (The correct answer was 40,320.) In another study by Tversky and Kahneman,
participants observed a roulette wheel that was predetermined to stop on either 10 or 65. Participants
were then asked to guess the percentage of the United Nations that were African nations. Participants
whose wheel stopped on 10 guessed lower values (25% on average) than participants whose wheel
stopped at 65 (45% on average).[5] The pattern has held in other experiments for a wide variety of
different subjects of estimation.
As a second example, in a study by Dan Ariely, an audience is first asked to write the last two digits of
their social security number and consider whether they would pay this number of dollars for items
whose value they did not know, such as wine, chocolate and computer equipment. They were then
asked to bid for these items, with the result that the audience members with higher two-digit numbers
would submit bids that were between 60 percent and 120 percent higher than those with the lower
social security numbers, which had become their anchor.
Difficulty of avoiding
Various studies have shown that anchoring is very difficult to avoid. For example, in one study students
were given anchors that were obviously wrong. They were asked whether Mahatma Gandhi died before
or after age 9, or before or after age 140. Clearly neither of these anchors can be correct, but the two
groups still guessed significantly differently (average age of 50 vs. average age of 67).
Other studies have tried to eliminate anchoring much more directly. In a study exploring the causes and
properties of anchoring, participants were exposed to an anchor and asked to guess how many
physicians were listed in the local phone book. In addition, they were explicitly informed that anchoring
would "contaminate" their responses, and that they should do their best to correct for that. A control
group received no anchor and no explanation. Regardless of how they were informed and whether they
were informed correctly, all of the experimental groups reported higher estimates than the control
group. Thus, despite being expressly aware of the anchoring effect, participants were still unable to
avoid it. A later study found that even when offered monetary incentives, people are unable to
effectively adjust from an anchor.
Causes
Several theories have been put forth to explain what causes anchoring, although some explanations are
more popular than others, there is no consensus as to which is best. In a study on possible causes of
anchoring, two authors described anchoring as easy to demonstrate, but hard to explain. At least one
group of researchers has argued that multiple causes are at play, and that what is called "anchoring" is
actually several different effects.
Anchoring-and-adjusting
In their original study, Tversky and Kahneman put forth a view later termed anchoring-as-adjustment.
According to this theory, once an anchor is set, people adjust away from it to get to their final answer;
however, they adjust insufficiently, resulting in their final guess being closer to the anchor than it would
be otherwise. Other researchers also found evidence supporting the anchoring-and-adjusting
explanation.
However, later researchers criticized this model, because it is only applicable when the initial anchor is
outside the range of acceptable answers. To use an earlier example, since Mahatma Gandhi obviously
did not die at age 9, then people will adjust from there. If a reasonable number were given, though,
there would be no adjustment. Therefore, this theory can not, according to its critics, explain the
anchoring effect.
Another study found that the anchoring effect holds even when the anchor is subliminal. According to
Tversky and Kahneman's theory, this is impossible, since anchoring is only the result of conscious
adjustment. Because of arguments like these, anchoring-and-adjusting has fallen out of favor.
Selective accessibility
In the same study that criticized anchoring-and-adjusting, the authors proposed an alternate
explanation regarding selective accessibility, which is derived from a theory called "confirmatory
hypothesis testing". In short, selective accessibility proposes that when given an anchor, a judge (i.e. a
person making some judgment) will evaluate the hypothesis that the anchor is a suitable answer.
Assuming it is not, the judge moves on to another guess, but not before accessing all the relevant
attributes of the anchor itself. Then, when evaluating the new answer, the judge looks for ways in which
it is similar to the anchor, resulting in the anchoring effect. Various studies have found empirical
support for this hypothesis. This explanation assumes that the judge considers the anchor to be a
plausible value so that it is not immediately rejected, which would preclude considering its relevant
attributes.
Attitude change
More recently, a third explanation of anchoring has been proposed concerning attitude change.
According to this theory, providing an anchor changes someone's attitudes to be more favorable to the
particular attributes of that anchor, biasing future answers to have similar characteristics as the anchor.
Leading proponents of this theory consider it to be an alternate explanation in line with prior research
on anchoring-and-adjusting and selective accessibility.
Influencing factors
Mood
A wide range of research has linked sad or depressed moods with more extensive and accurate
evaluation of problems. As a result of this, earlier studies hypothesized that people with more
depressed moods would tend to use anchoring less than those with happier moods. However, more
recent studies have shown the opposite effect: sad people are more likely to use anchoring than people
with happy or neutral mood.
Experience
Early research found that experts (those with high knowledge, experience, or expertise in some field)
were more resistant to the anchoring effect.[8] Since then, however, numerous studies have
demonstrated that while experience can sometimes reduce the effect, even experts are susceptible to
anchoring. In a study concerning the effects of anchoring on judicial decisions, researchers found that
even experienced legal professionals were affected by anchoring. This remained true even when the
anchors provided were arbitrary and unrelated to the case in question.
Personality
Research has correlated susceptibility to anchoring with most of the Big Five personality traits. People
high in agreeableness and conscientiousness are more likely to be affected by anchoring, while those
high in extroversion are less likely to be affected. Another study found that those high in openness to
new experiences were more susceptible to the anchoring effect.
Cognitive ability
The impact of cognitive ability on anchoring is contested. A recent study on willingness to pay for
consumer goods found that anchoring decreased in those with greater cognitive ability, though it did
not disappear. Another study, however, found that cognitive ability had no significant effect on how
likely people were to use anchoring.
In negotiations
In negotiations, anchoring refers to the concept of setting a boundary that outlines the basic
constraints for a negotiation; subsequently, the anchoring effect is the phenomenon in which we set
our estimation for the true value of the item at hand. In addition to the initial research conducted by
Tversky and Kahneman, multiple other studies have shown that anchoring can greatly influence the
estimated value of an object. For instance, although negotiators can generally appraise an offer based
on multiple characteristics, studies have shown that they tend to focus on only one aspect. In this way,
a deliberate starting point can strongly affect the range of possible counteroffers. The process of offer
and counteroffer results in a mutually beneficial arrangement. However, multiple studies have shown
that initial offers have a stronger influence on the outcome of negotiations than subsequent
counteroffers.
An example of the power of anchoring has been conducted during the Strategic Negotiation Process
Workshops. During the workshop, a group of participants is divided into two sections: buyers and
sellers. Each side receives identical information about the other party before going into a one-on-one
negotiation. Following this exercise, both sides debrief about their experiences. The results show that
where the participants anchor the negotiation had a significant effect on their success.
Anchoring affects everyone, even people who are highly knowledgeable in a field. Northcraft and Neale
conducted a study to measure the difference in the estimated value of a house between students and
real-estate agents. In this experiment, both groups were shown a house and then given different listing
prices. After making their offer, each group was then asked to discuss what factors influenced their
decisions. In the follow-up interviews, the real-estate agents denied being influenced by the initial price,
but the results showed that both groups were equally influenced by that anchor.
Anchoring can have more subtle effects on negotiations as well. Janiszewski and Uy investigated the
effects of precision of an anchor. Participants read an initial price for a beach house, then gave the price
they thought it was worth. They received either a general, seemingly nonspecific anchor (e.g.
$800,000) or a more precise and specific anchor (e.g. $799,800). Participants with a general anchor
adjusted their estimate more than those given a precise anchor ($751,867 vs $784,671). The authors
propose that this effect comes from difference in scale; in other words, the anchor affects not only the
starting value, but also the starting scale. When given a general anchor of $20, people will adjust in
large increments ($19, $21, etc.), but when given a more specific anchor like $19.85, people will adjust
on a lower scale ($19.75, $19.95, etc.). Thus, a more specific initial price will tend to result in a final
price closer to the initial one.
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, and intentions to non-human
entities and is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology.
Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to abstract concepts such
as nations, emotions andnatural forces like seasons and the weather.
Both have ancient roots as storytelling and artistic devices, and most cultures have traditional
fables with anthropomorphized animals as characters. People have also routinely attributed human
emotions and behavioural traits to wild as well as domestic animals.

Name
Anthropomorphism derives from its verb form anthropomorphize, itself derived from
the Greek nthrpos (, "human") and morph (, "form"). It is first attested in 1753,
originally in reference to the heresy of applying a human form to the Christian God.
Examples in prehistory
From the beginnings of human behavioural modernity in the Upper Paleolithic, about 40,000 years ago,
examples of zoomorphic (animal-shaped) works of art occur that may represent the earliest evidence
we have of anthropomorphism. One of the oldest known is an ivorysculpture, the Lwenmensch
figurine, Germany, a human-shaped figurine with the head of a lioness or lion, determined to be about
32,000 years old.
It is not possible to say what these prehistoric artworks represent. A more recent example is The
Sorcerer, an enigmatic cave painting from the Trois-Frres Cave, Arige, France: the figure's significance
is unknown, but it is usually interpreted as some kind of great spirit or master of the animals. In either
case there is an element of anthropomorphism.
This anthropomorphic art has been linked by archaeologist Steven Mithen with the emergence of more
systematic hunting practices in the Upper Palaeolithic (Mithen 1998). He proposes that these are the
product of a change in the architecture of the human mind, an increasingfluidity between the natural
history and social intelligences, where anthropomorphism allowed hunters to
identify empathetically with hunted animals and better predict their movements.
In religion and mythology
In religion and mythology, anthropomorphism refers to the perception of a divine being or beings in
human form, or the recognition of human qualities in these beings.
Ancient mythologies frequently represented the divine as deities with human forms and qualities. They
resemble human beings not only in appearance and personality; they exhibited many human behaviors
that were used to explain natural phenomena, creation, and historical events. The deities fell in love,
married, had children, fought battles, wielded weapons, and rode horses and chariots. They feasted on
special foods, and sometimes required sacrifices of food, beverage, and sacred objects to be made by
human beings. Some anthropomorphic deities represented specific human concepts, such as love, war,
fertility, beauty, or the seasons. Anthropomorphic deities exhibited human qualities such as beauty,
wisdom, and power, and sometimes human weaknesses such as greed, hatred, jealousy, and
uncontrollable anger. Greek deities such as Zeus and Apollo often were depicted in human form
exhibiting both commendable and despicable human traits.
Anthropomorphism in this case is referred to as anthropotheism.
From the perspective of adherents to religions in which humans were created in the form of the divine,
the phenomenon may be considered theomorphism, or the giving of divine qualities to humans.
Anthropomorphism has cropped up as a Christian heresy, particularly prominently with the Audians in
third century Syria, but also in fourth century Egypt and tenth century Italy.[9] This often was based on
a literal interpretation of Genesis 1:27: "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God
created He him; male and female created He them".
Criticism
Some religions, scholars, and philosophers objected to anthropomorphic deities. The Greek
philosopher Xenophanes (570480 BCE) argued against the conception of deities as fundamentally
anthropomorphic:
But if cattle and horses and lions had hands
or could paint with their hands and create works such as men do,
horses like horses and cattle like cattle
also would depict the gods' shapes and make their bodies
of such a sort as the form they themselves have.
...
Ethiopians say that their gods are snubnosed [] and black
Thracians that they are pale and red-haired.
He said that "the greatest god" resembles man "neither in form nor in mind".
Both Judaism and Islam reject an anthropomorphic deity, believing that God is beyond human
comprehension. Judaism's rejection of an anthropomorphic deity grew during the Hasmonean period
(circa 300 BCE), when Jewish belief incorporated some Greek philosophy. Judaism's rejection grew
further after the Islamic Golden Agein the tenth century, which Maimonides codified in the twelfth
century, in his thirteen principles of Jewish faith.
Hindus do not reject the concept of a deity in the abstract unmanifested, but note practical problems.
Lord Krishna said in the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 12, Verse 5, that it is much more difficult for people to
focus on a deity as the unmanifested than one with form, using anthropomorphic icons (murtis),
because people need to perceive with their senses.
In Faces in the Clouds, anthropologist Stewart Guthrie proposes that all religions are
anthropomorphisms that originate in the brain's tendency to detect the presence or vestiges of other
humans in natural phenomena.
In literature
Religious texts
There are various examples of personification as a literary device in both Hebrew Bible and Christian
New Testament and also in the texts of some other religions.
Fables
Anthropomorphism, also referred to as personification, is a well established literary device from ancient
times. The story of "The Hawk and the Nightingale" in Hesiod's Works and
Days preceded Aesop's fables by centuries Collections of linked fablesfrom India, the Jataka
Tales and Panchatantra, also employ anthropomorphized animals to illustrate principles of life. Many of
the stereotypes of animals that are recognized today, such as the wily fox and the proud lion, can be
found in these collections.Aesop's anthropomorphisms were so familiar by the first century CE that they
colored the thinking of at least one philosopher:
And there is another charm about him, namely, that he puts animals in a pleasing light and makes
them interesting to mankind. For after being brought up from childhood with these stories, and after
being as it were nursed by them from babyhood, we acquire certain opinions of the several animals and
think of some of them as royal animals, of others as silly, of others as witty, and others as innocent.
Apollonius of Tyana
Apollonius noted that the fable was created to teach wisdom through fictions that are meant to be
taken as fictions, contrasting them favorably with the poets' stories of the deities that are sometimes
taken literally. Aesop, "by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true, told the truth by
the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real events". The same consciousness of the fable as
fiction is to be found in other examples across the world, one example being a traditional Ashanti way
of beginning tales of the anthropomorphic trickster-spider Anansi: "We do not really mean, we do not
really mean that what we are about to say is true. A story, a story; let it come, let it go."
Fairy tales
Anthropomorphic motifs have been common in fairy tales from the earliest ancient examples set in a
mythological context to the great collections of the Brothers Grimmand Perrault. The Tale of Two
Brothers (Egypt, 13th century BCE) features several talking cows and in Cupid and Psyche (Rome, 2nd
century CE) Zephyrus, the west wind, carries Psyche away. Later an ant feels sorry for her and helps her
in her quest.
Modern literature
Building on the popularity of fables and fairy tales, specifically children's literature began to emerge in
the nineteenth century with works such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis
Carroll, The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) by Carlo Collodi and The Jungle Book (1894) by Rudyard
Kipling, all employing anthropomorphic elements. This continued in the twentieth century with many of
the most popular titles having anthropomorphic characters,[20] examples being The Tales ofBeatrix
Potter (1901 onwards), The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame, The Lion, the Witch, and
the Wardrobeby C. S. Lewis and Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) by A. A. Milne. In many of these stories the
animals can be seen as representing facets of human personality and character. As John Rowe
Townsend remarks, discussing The Jungle Book in which the boyMowgli must rely on his new friends the
bear Baloo and the black panther Bagheera, "The world of the jungle is in fact both itself and our world
as well". A notable work aimed at an adult audience is George Orwell's Animal Farm, in which all the
main characters are anthropomorphic animals. Non-animal examples include Rev.W Awdry's children's
stories of Thomas the Tank Engine and other anthropomorphic locomotives.
The fantasy genre developed from mythological, fairy tale, and Romance motifs and characters,
sometimes with anthropomorphic animals. The best-selling examples of the genre are The
Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings(19541955), both by J. R. R. Tolkien, books peopled with talking
creatures such as ravens, spiders, and the dragon Smaug and a multitude of
anthropomorphic goblins and elves. John D. Rateliff calls this the "Doctor Dolittle Theme" in his
book The History of the Hobbit and Tolkien saw this anthropomorphism as closely linked to the
emergence of human language and myth: "...The first men to talk of 'trees and stars' saw things very
differently. To them, the world was alive with mythological beings... To them the whole of creation was
"myth-woven and elf-patterned".'
Richard Adams developed a distinctive take on anthropomorphic writing in the 1970s: his debut
novel, Watership Down (1972), featured rabbits that could talk, with their own distinctive language
(Lapine) and mythology, and included a warren, Efrafa, run along the lines of a police state. Despite
this, Adams Some religions, scholars, and philosophers objected to anthropomorphic deities. The Greek
philosopher Xenophanes (570480 BCE) argued against the conception of deities as fundamentally
anthropomorphic:
But if cattle and horses and lions had hands
or could paint with their hands and create works such as men do,
horses like horses and cattle like cattle
also would depict the gods' shapes and make their bodies
of such a sort as the form they themselves have.
...
Ethiopians say that their gods are snubnosed [] and black
Thracians that they are pale and red-haired.
He said that "the greatest god" resembles man "neither in form nor in mind".
Both Judaism and Islam reject an anthropomorphic deity, believing that God is beyond human
comprehension. Judaism's rejection of an anthropomorphic deity grew during the Hasmonean period
(circa 300 BCE), when Jewish belief incorporated some Greek philosophy. Judaism's rejection grew
further after the Islamic Golden Agein the tenth century, which Maimonides codified in the twelfth
century, in his thirteen principles of Jewish faith.
Hindus do not reject the concept of a deity in the abstract unmanifested, but note practical problems.
Lord Krishna said in the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 12, Verse 5, that it is much more difficult for people to
focus on a deity as the unmanifested than one with form, using anthropomorphic icons (murtis),
because people need to perceive with their senses.
In Faces in the Clouds, anthropologist Stewart Guthrie proposes that all religions are
anthropomorphisms that originate in the brain's tendency to detect the presence or vestiges of other
humans in natural phenomena.
In literature
Religious texts
There are various examples of personification as a literary device in both Hebrew Bible and Christian
New Testament and also in the texts of some other religions.
Fables
Anthropomorphism, also referred to as personification, is a well established literary device from ancient
times. The story of "The Hawk and the Nightingale" in Hesiod's Works and
Days preceded Aesop's fables by centuries. Collections of linked fablesfrom India, the Jataka
Tales and Panchatantra, also employ anthropomorphized animals to illustrate principles of life. Many of
the stereotypes of animals that are recognized today, such as the wily fox and the proud lion, can be
found in these collections.Aesop's anthropomorphisms were so familiar by the first century CE that they
colored the thinking of at least one philosopher:
And there is another charm about him, namely, that he puts animals in a pleasing light and makes
them interesting to mankind. For after being brought up from childhood with these stories, and after
being as it were nursed by them from babyhood, we acquire certain opinions of the several animals and
think of some of them as royal animals, of others as silly, of others as witty, and others as innocent.
Apollonius of Tyana
Apollonius noted that the fable was created to teach wisdom through fictions that are meant to be
taken as fictions, contrasting them favorably with the poets' stories of the deities that are sometimes
taken literally. Aesop, "by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true, told the truth by
the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real events".[18] The same consciousness of the fable
as fiction is to be found in other examples across the world, one example being a traditional Ashanti
way of beginning tales of the anthropomorphic trickster-spider Anansi: "We do not really mean, we do
not really mean that what we are about to say is true. A story, a story; let it come, let it go."
Fairy tales
Anthropomorphic motifs have been common in fairy tales from the earliest ancient examples set in a
mythological context to the great collections of the Brothers Grimmand Perrault. The Tale of Two
Brothers (Egypt, 13th century BCE) features several talking cows and in Cupid and Psyche (Rome, 2nd
century CE) Zephyrus, the west wind, carries Psyche away. Later an ant feels sorry for her and helps her
in her quest.
Modern literature
Building on the popularity of fables and fairy tales, specifically children's literature began to emerge in
the nineteenth century with works such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis
Carroll, The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) by Carlo Collodi and The Jungle Book (1894) by Rudyard
Kipling, all employing anthropomorphic elements. This continued in the twentieth century with many of
the most popular titles having anthropomorphic characters, examples being The Tales ofBeatrix
Potter (1901 onwards), The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame, The Lion, the Witch, and
the Wardrobeby C. S. Lewis and Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) by A. A. Milne. In many of these stories the
animals can be seen as representing facets of human personality and character.[22] As John Rowe
Townsend remarks, discussing The Jungle Book in which the boyMowgli must rely on his new friends the
bear Baloo and the black panther Bagheera, "The world of the jungle is in fact both itself and our world
as well". A notable work aimed at an adult audience is George Orwell's Animal Farm, in which all the
main characters are anthropomorphic animals. Non-animal examples include Rev.W Awdry's children's
stories of Thomas the Tank Engine and other anthropomorphic locomotives.
The fantasy genre developed from mythological, fairy tale, and Romance motifs and characters,
sometimes with anthropomorphic animals. The best-selling examples of the genre are The
Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings(19541955), both by J. R. R. Tolkien, books peopled with talking
creatures such as ravens, spiders, and the dragon Smaug and a multitude of
anthropomorphic goblins and elves. John D. Rateliff calls this the "Doctor Dolittle Theme" in his
book The History of the Hobbit and Tolkien saw this anthropomorphism as closely linked to the
emergence of human language and myth: "...The first men to talk of 'trees and stars' saw things very
differently. To them, the world was alive with mythological beings... To them the whole of creation was
"myth-woven and elf-patterned".'
Richard Adams developed a distinctive take on anthropomorphic writing in the 1970s: his debut
novel, Watership Down (1972), featured rabbits that could talk, with their own distinctive language
(Lapine) and mythology, and included a warren, Efrafa, run along the lines of a police state. Despite
this, Adams attempted to ensure his characters' behaviour mirrored that of wild rabbits, engaging in
fighting, copulating and defecating, drawing on Ronald Lockley's study The Private Life of the Rabbit as
research. Adams returned to anthropomorphic storytelling in his later novels The Plague Dogs (1977)
and Traveller (1988).
By the 21st century, the children's picture book market had expanded massively. Perhaps a majority of
picture books have some kind of anthropomorphism, with popular examples being The Very Hungry
Caterpillar (1969) by Eric Carle and The Gruffalo (1999) by Julia Donaldson.
Anthropomorphism in literature and other media led to a sub-culture known as furry fandom, which
promotes and creates stories and artwork involving anthropomorphic animals, and the examination and
interpretation of humanity through anthropomorphism.
Anthropomorphic characters have also been a staple of the comic book genre. The most prominent one
was Neil Gaiman's the Sandman which had a huge impact on how characters that are physical
embodiments are written in the fantasy genre. Other examples also include the
mature Hellblazer (personified political and moral ideas), Fables and its spin-off series Jack of Fables,
which was unique for having anthropomorphic representation of literary techniques and genres. Various
Japanese manga and anime have used anthropomorphism as the basis of their story. Examples
include Squid Girl (anthropomorphized squid), Hetalia: Axis Powers(personified
countries), Upotte!! (personified guns), Arpeggio of Blue Steel and Kancolle (personified ships).
In film, television, and video games
Film
Some of the most notable examples are the Walt Disney characters the Magic Carpet from Disney's
Aladdin franchise, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit; the Looney
Tunes characters Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig; and an array of others from the 1920s to
present day.
In the films Cars (2006), Cars 2 (2011), Planes (2013) and Planes: Fire & Rescue (2014), all the
characters are anthropomorphic vehicles. Discussing Madagascar, Escape 2 Africa (2008), and Europe's
Most Wanted(2012), Laurie suggests that "social differences based on conflict and contradiction are
naturalized and made less 'contestable' through the classificatory matrix of human and nonhuman
relations".
In the motion picture Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), most of the characters are anthropomorphic animals
very similar to the style seen in the Furry Fandom. They are given especially human characteristics
such as body shape, hands, and clothing among other things.
Most of director Mark Dindal's film projects, Cats Don't Dance (1997), The Emperor's New
Groove (2000), and Chicken Little (2005) feature anthropomorphic animals. The cast of Cats Don't
Dance includes talking animals, The Emperor's New Groove had an Incan turned into a llama,
and Chicken Little had an all animal cast
All of the characters in Walt Disney Animation Studios' Zootopia (2016) are anthropomorphic animals.
An example of a non-Disney film to use anthropomorphic qualities is the acclaimed short French film
"The Red Balloon" (1956). In it, a red balloon is given human qualities, such as freedom of motion, and
is "befriended" by a small boy. The unique story won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay
and was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.
Television
Since the 1960s, anthropomorphism has also been represented in various animated television shows
such as Biker Mice From Mars (19931996) and SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron (19931995). Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles, first aired in 1987, features four pizza-loving anthropomorphic turtles with a great
knowledge of ninjutsu, led by their anthropomorphic rat sensei, Master Splinter.
TUGS (1988) is a British children's series, set in the 1920s, featuring anthropomorphic tugboats. They
moved like real boats but would sometimes perform certain actions without the aid of humans although
not seen. Like real boats they obeyed maritime laws but would sometimes perform actions of their own
will.
In the American animated TV series Family Guy, one of the show's main characters, Brian, is a dog.
Brian shows many human characteristics he walks upright, talks, smokes, and drinks Martinis but
also acts like a normal dog in other ways; for example he cannot resist chasing a ball and barks at the
mailman, believing him to be a threat.
The television series The Emperor's New School (20062008) featured the main characters getting
turned into various animals throughout the entire show, in several episodes.
A CanadianNew Zealand-American animated TV show called Turbo Dogs (2008) starred
anthropomorphized dog characters. In 2010, a French-American animated TV show The Mysteries of
Alfred Hedgehog was mostly consisted of woodland anthropomorphic characters.
A British TV series, Thomas and Friends, features anthropomorphized trains, airplanes, helicopters, and
cars.
Both the YouTube series The Annoying Orange and its American television adaptation The High Fructose
Adventures of Annoying Orange feature anthropomorphized fruits and vegetables.
An AmericanCanadian series, Johnny Test, features a talking dog named Dukey, who is genetically
engineered by the title characters sisters, which they all try to keep a secret from anyone else (except
in a couple of episodes).
Video games
Sonic the Hedgehog, a game released in 1991, features a speedy blue hedgehog as the protagonist.
This series' characters are almost all anthropomorphic animals such as foxes, cats, and other
hedgehogs who are able to speak and walk on their hind legs like normal humans. As with most
anthropomorphisms of animals, clothing is of little or no importance, where some characters may be
fully clothed while some wear only shoes and gloves.
Another example in video games is Super Mario Bros., which was released in 1985. Some of the
characters include Yoshi, a dinosaur who is able to talk, run and jump, and Bowser, a "Koopa" that is
able to perform most human characteristics, with some exceptions, as he can breathe fire.
Radio programs
The Signature Series is a radio program based in Canada that explores the personality traits of the 24
keys of western music by personifying them and giving each key a gender, a story and specific
character traits.
Art history
Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg's soft sculptures are commonly described as anthropomorphic. Depicting common
household objects, Oldenburg's sculptures were considered Pop Art. Reproducing these objects, often at
a greater size than the original, Oldenburg created his sculptures out of soft materials. The
anthropomorphic qualities of the sculptures were mainly in their sagging and malleable exterior which
mirrored the not so idealistic forms of the human body. In "Soft Light Switches" Oldenburg creates a
household light switch out of Vinyl. The two identical switches, in a dulled orange, insinuate nipples.
The soft vinyl references the aging process as the sculpture wrinkles and sinks with time.
Minimalism
In the essay "Art and Objecthood", Michael Fried makes the case that "Literalist art" (Minimalism)
becomes theatrical by means of anthropomorphism. The viewer engages the minimalist work, not as an
autonomous art object, but as a theatrical interaction. Fried references a conversation in which Tony
Smith answers questions about his "six-foot cube, Die."
Q: Why didn't you make it larger so that it would loom over the observer? A: I was not making a
monument. Q: then why didn't you make it smaller so that the observer could see over the top? A: I was
not making an object.
Fried implies an anthropomorphic connection by means of "a surrogate person-that is, a kind of statue."
The minimalist decision of "hollowness" in much of their work, was also considered by Fried, to be
"blatantly anthropomorphic." This "hollowness" contributes to the idea of a separate inside; an idea
mirrored in the human form. Fried considers the Literalist art's "hollowness" to be "biomorphic" as it
references a living organism.
Post Minimalism
Curator Lucy Lippard's Eccentric Abstraction show, in 1966, sets up Briony Fer's writing of a post
minimalist anthropomorphism. Reacting to Fried's interpretation of minimalist art's "looming presence
of objects which appear as actors might on a stage", Fer interprets the artists in Eccentric Abstraction
to a new form of anthropomorphism. She puts forth the thoughts of Surrealist writer Roger Caillous,
who speaks of the "spacial lure of the subject, the way in which the subject could inhabit their
surroundings." Caillous uses the example of an insect who "through camouflage does so in order to
become invisible... and loses its distinctness." For Fer, the anthropomorphic qualities of imitation found
in the erotic, organic sculptures of artists Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois, are not necessarily for
strictly "mimetic" purposes. Instead, like the insect, the work must come into being in the "scopic
field... which we cannot view from outside."
Mascots
For branding, merchandising, and representation, figures known as mascots are now often employed to
personify sports teams,corporations, and major events such as the World's Fair and the Olympics.
These personifications may be simple human or animal figures, such as Ronald McDonald or
the ass that represents the United States's Democratic Party. Other times, they are anthropomorphic
items, such as "Clippy" or the "Michelin Man". Most often, they are anthropomorphic animals such as
theEnergizer Bunny or the San Diego Chicken.
The practice is particularly widespread in Japan, where cities, regions, and companies all have mascots,
collectively known as yuru-chara. Two of the most popular are Kumamon (a bear who
represents Kumamoto Prefecture) and Funassyi (a pear who represents Funabashi, a suburb of Tokyo).
Animals
Other examples of anthropomorphism include the attribution of human traits to animals, especially
domesticated pets such as dogs and cats. Examples of this include thinking a dog is smiling simply
because he is showing his teeth, or a cat is bored because it is not reacting to commands.
In science
In science, the use of anthropomorphic language that suggests animals have intentions and emotions
has traditionally been deprecated as indicating a lack of objectivity.Biologists have been warned to
avoid assumptions that animals share any of the same mental, social, and emotional capacities of
humans, and to rely instead on strictly observable evidence. In 1927 Ivan Pavlov wrote that animals
should be considered "without any need to resort to fantastic speculations as to the existence of any
possible subjective states". More recently, The Oxford companion to animal behaviour (1987) advised
that "one is well advised to study the behaviour rather than attempting to get at any underlying
emotion". Some scientists, like William M Wheeler (writing apologetically of his use of
anthropomorphism in 1911), have used anthropomorphic language in metaphor to make subjects more
humanly comprehensible or memorable.
Despite the impact of Charles Darwin's ideas in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals (Konrad Lorenz in 1965 called him a "patron saint" of ethology) ethology has generally focused
on behavior, not on emotion in animals. Though in other ways Darwin was and is the epitome of
science, his acceptance of anecdote and anthropomorphism[citation needed] stands out in sharp
contrast to the lengths to which later scientists would go to overlook
apparent mindedness, selfhood,individuality, and agency[citation needed]:
Even insects play together, as has been described by that excellent observer, P. Huber,

who saw ants chasing and pretending to bite each other, like so many puppies.
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man[49]
The study of great apes in their own environment and in captivity has changed attitudes to
anthropomorphism. In the 1960s the three so-called "Leakey's Angels",Jane
Goodall studying chimpanzees, Dian Fossey studying gorillas and Birut Galdikas studying orangutans,
were all accused of "that worst of ethological sins anthropomorphism". The charge was brought about
by their descriptions of the great apes in the field; it is now more widely accepted that empathy has an
important part to play in research.
De Waal has written: "To endow animals with human emotions has long been a scientific taboo. But if
we do not, we risk missing something fundamental, about both animals and us." Alongside this has
come increasing awareness of the linguistic abilities of the great apes and the recognition that they are
tool-makers and have individuality and culture.[citation needed]
Writing of cats in 1992, veterinarian Bruce Fogle points to the fact that "both humans and cats have
identical neurochemicals and regions in the brain responsible for emotion" as proof that "it is not
anthropomorphic to credit cats with emotions such as jealousy".
In computing
In science fiction, an artificially-intelligent computer or robot, even though it has not been programmed
with human emotions, often spontaneously experiences those emotions anyway: for example, Agent
Smith in The Matrix was influenced by a "disgust" toward humanity. This is an example of
anthropomorphism: in reality, while an artificial intelligence could perhaps be deliberately programmed
with human emotions, or could develop something similar to an emotion as a means to an ultimate
goal ifit is useful to do so, it would not spontaneously develop human emotions for no purpose
whatsoever, as portrayed in fiction.
One example of anthropomorphism would be to believe that your PC is angry at you because you
insulted it; another would be to believe that an intelligent robot would naturally find a woman sexy and
be driven to mate with her. Scholars sometimes disagree with each other about whether a particular
prediction about an artificial intelligence's behavior is logical, or whether the prediction constitutes
illogical anthropomorphism. An example that might initially be considered anthropomorphism, but is in
fact a logical statement about an artificial intelligence's behavior, would be the Dario
Floreano experiments where certain robots spontaneously evolved a crude capacity for "deception",
and tricked other robots into eating "poison" and dying: here a trait, "deception", ordinarily associated
with people rather than with machines, spontaneously evolves in a type of convergent evolution. The
conscious use of anthropomorphic metaphor is not intrinsically unwise; ascribing mental processes to
the computer, under the proper circumstances, may serve the same purpose as it does when we do it
to other people: it may help us to understand what the computer will do, how our actions will affect the
computer, how to compare computers with ourselves, and conceivably how to design computer
programs. However, inappropriate use of anthropomorphic metaphors can result in false beliefs about
the behavior of computers, for example by causing people to overestimate how "flexible" computers
are. According to Paul R. Cohen and Edward Feigenbaum, in order to differentiate between
anthropomorphization and logical prediction of AI behavior, "the trick is to know enough about how
humans and computers think to say exactly what they have in common, and, when we lack this
knowledge, to use the comparison to suggesttheories of human thinking or computer thinking."
Computers overturn the childhood hierarchical taxonomy of "stones (non-living) plants (living)
animals (conscious) humans (rational)", by introducing a non-human "actor" that appears to regularly
behave rationally. Much of computing terminology derives from anthropomorphic metaphors:
computers can "read", "write", or "catch a virus". Information technology presents no clear
correspondence with any other entities in the world besides humans; the options are either to leverage
a mushy, imprecise human metaphor, or to reject imprecise metaphor and make use of more precise,
domain-specific technical terms.
People often grant an unnecessary social role to computers during interactions. The underlying causes
are debated; Youngme Moon and Clifford Nass propose that humans are emotionally, intellectually and
physiologically biased toward social activity, and so when presented with even tiny social cues, deeply-
infused social responses are triggered automatically. The field of "social computing" attempts to make
computers easier to use by leveraging anthropomorphism as a "language" of human-computer
interaction.
Psychology of anthropomorphism
Foundational research
In psychology, the first empirical study of anthropomorphism was conducted in 1944 by Fritz
Heider and Marianne Simmel. In the first part of this experiment, the researchers showed a 2-and-a-half
minute long animation of several shapes moving around on the screen in varying directions at various
speeds. When subjects were asked to describe what they saw, they gave detailed accounts of the
intentions and personalities of the shapes. For instance, the large triangle was characterized as a bully,
chasing the other two shapes until they could trick the large triangle and escape. The researchers
concluded that when people see objects making motions for which there is no obvious cause, they view
these objects as intentional agents.
Modern psychologists generally characterize anthropomorphism as a cognitive bias. That is,
anthropomorphism is a cognitive process by which people use theirschemas about other humans as a
basis for inferring the properties of non-human entities in order to make efficient judgements about the
environment, even if those inferences are not always accurate. Schemas about humans are used as the
basis because this knowledge is acquired early in life, is more detailed than knowledge about non-
human entities, and is more readily accessible in memory. Anthropomorphism can also function as a
strategy to cope with loneliness when other human connections are not available.
Three-factor theory
Since making inferences requires cognitive effort, anthropomorphism is likely to be triggered only when
certain aspects about a person and their environment are true. Psychologist Adam Waytz and his
colleagues created a Three-Factor Theory of Anthropomorphism to describe these aspects and predict
when people are most likely to anthropomorphize. The three factors are:
Elicited agent knowledge, or the amount of prior knowledge held about an object and the extent to
which that knowledge is called to mind.
Effectance, or the drive to interact with and understand one's environment.
Sociality, the need to establish social connections.
When elicited agent knowledge is low and effectance and sociality are high, people are more likely to
anthropomorphize. Various dispositional, situational, developmental, and cultural variables can affect
these three factors, such as need for cognition, social disconnection, cultural ideologies, uncertainty
avoidance, etc.
Developmental perspective
Children appear to anthropomorphize and use egocentric reasoning from an early age and use it more
frequently than adults. Examples of this are describing a storm cloud as "angry" or drawing flowers with
faces. This penchant for anthropomorphism is likely because children have acquired vast amounts of
socialization, but not as much experience with specific non-human entities, so thus they have less
developed alternative schemas for their environment. In contrast, autistic children tend to describe
anthropomorphized objects in purely mechanical terms because they have difficulties with theory of
mind.
Effect on learning
Anthropomorphism can be used to assist learning. Specifically, anthropomorphized words and
describing scientific concepts with intentionality can improve later recall of these concepts.
In mental health
In people with depression, social anxiety, or other mental illnesses, emotional support animals are a
useful component of treatment partially because anthropomorphism of these animals can satisfy the
patients' need for social connection.
In marketing
Anthropomorphism of inanimate objects can affect product buying behavior. When products seem to
resemble a human schema, such as the front of a car resembling a face, potential buyers evaluate that
product more positively than if they don't anthropomorphize the object.
People also tend to trust robots to do more complex tasks such as driving a car or childcare if the robot
resembles humans in ways such as having a face, voice, and name; mimicking human motions;
expressing emotion; and displaying some variability in behavior.
Attentional bias
Attentional bias is the tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts. For
example, people who frequently think about the clothes they wear pay more attention to the clothes of
others. Attentional bias is an ad hoc scientific term.

Decisions
Several types of cognitive bias occur due to an attentional bias. One example occurs when a person
does not examine all possible outcomes when making a judgment about a correlation or
association. They may focus on one or two possibilities, while ignoring the rest.
The most commonly studied type of decision for attentional bias, is one in which there are two
conditions (A and B), which can be present (P) or not present (N). This leaves four possible combination
outcomes: both are present (AP/BP), both are not present (AN/BN), only A is present (AP/BN), only B is
present (AN/BP). This can be better shown in table form:
In everyday life, people are often subject to this type of attentional bias when asking themselves, "Does
God answer prayers?" Many would say "Yes" and justify it with "many times I've asked God for
something, and He's given it to me." These people would be accepting and overemphasizing the data
from the present/present (top-left) cell, because another person would consider data from the
present/absent cell. "Has God ever given me something that I didn't ask for?" Or "Have I asked God for
something and didn't receive it?" This experiment too supports Smedslund's general conclusion that
subjects tend to ignore part of the table.
Attentional biases can also influence what information people are likely to focus upon. For instance,
patients with anxiety disorders and chronic pain show increased attention to information representing
their concerns (i.e., angry and painful facial expressions respectively) in studies using the dot-probe
paradigm. Furthermore, attention biases toward positive stimuli have been associated with an
abundance of positive outcomes such as increased social engagement, increased prosocial behavior,
decreased externalizing disorders, and decreased emotionally withdrawn behavior. It is important to
note that two different forms of attentional bias may be measured. A within-subjects bias occurs
when an individual displays greater bias towards one type of information (e.g., painful faces) when
compared to different types of information (e.g., neutral faces). A between-subjects bias, alternatively,
occurs when one group of participants displays greater bias than another group of participants (e.g.,
chronic pain patients shown greater bias towards painful expressions than healthy control participants).
These two types of bias therefore arise due to different mechanisms, and both are not always present
in the same sample of participants. Another commonly used paradigm to measure attentional biases is
the Stroop paradigm.
Neurological bias
Attentional bias often seen in eye tracking movements is thought to be an underlying issue of
addiction. Smokers linger on smoking cues compared with neutral cues. Researchers found higher
activation in the insular cortex, the orbitofrontal cortex and the amygdala when presented with
smoking cues. The orbitofrontal cortex is known to be coordinated with drug-seeking behavior and the
insular cortex and amygdala are involved in the autonomic and emotional state of an individual.
Neural activity is also known to decrease upon the beginning of smoking, focusing the smokers
attention on their upcoming cigarette. Therefore, when smoking cues are nearby it is harder for a
smoker to concentrate on other tasks. This is seen in the activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate
cortex, known for focusing attention on relevant stimuli.
Smoking
Recent research has found a strong correlation between smoking cues and attentional bias. These
studies not only illustrate the importance of attentional bias in addiction and cravings but also how we
look at addiction from a scientific standpoint. The behavioral aspects of cravings are extensively
covered; however, the perceptual and neurological aspects of attentional bias and the roles they play
are supported by recent research as significant.
Research using the Stroop paradigm tested the effect of smoking related words such as cigarette, puff,
and smoke, with negative effect words such as sick, pain and guilty and positive effect words such as
safe, glad and hopeful and neutral words such as tool, shovel and hammer. Results showed a strong
correlation in a slower reaction time between smoking related and negative-effect word lists. A slower
reaction time to negative and smoking word lists indicates lingering attention or attentional bias by the
participant. This is significant because the task calls for the participant to focus on the color of the word
rather than meaning, possibly implicating an underlying negative feeling towards their smoking
behavior. Smokers have attentional bias to a subliminal images and therefore are more likely to be
influenced by environmental cues such as seeing other people smoking, ads for cigarettes or triggers
such as coffee or alcohol. This idea further illustrates that influence of smoking cues implicate that
dependence on nicotine is reinforced by attentional bias. Smokers may have underlying negative
feelings toward smoking, when asked to think of the negative consequences of smoking, they showed
less craving than those who were encouraged to smoke. This illustrates the influence of attentional bias
on environmental smoking cues and could contribute to a smokers inability to quit.
Similar Stroop paradigm studies have explained that attentional bias is not dependent on smoking
itself, but rather the person who is the smoker displays attentional bias. A recent study required one
group of smokers to refrain from smoking the night before and another less than an hour before.
Abstinence from smoking created slower reaction time, but a smoke break between study sessions
showed increased reaction time. Researchers say this shows that nicotine dependence intensifies
attention, but does not directly depend on smoking itself due to lack of evidence. The longer reaction
time suggests smokers craving a cigarette linger on smoking related words. Smokers and smokers
attempting to quit displayed the same slower reaction time for smoking related words, supporting
research that implies attentional bias is a behavioral mechanism versus a dependence mechanism, due
to the fact that the smokers were slowed don by smoking related words and negative words, but not
positive and neutral words.
Automation bias
Automation bias sometimes referred to by other terms such as automation-induced complacency or
over-reliance on automation is the propensity for humans to favor suggestions from automated
decision making systems and to ignore contradictory information made without automation, even if it is
correct. This bias takes the form of errors of exclusion and inclusion: an automation bias of exclusion
takes place when humans rely on an automated system that does not inform them of a problem, while
an error of inclusion arises when humans make choices based on incorrect suggestions relayed by
automated systems. Automation bias has been examined across many research fields.
Some factors leading to an over-reliance on automation include inexperience in a task (though
inexperienced users tend to be most benefited by automated decision support systems), lack of
confidence in ones own abilities, a reflexive trust of the automated system, a lack of readily available
alternative information, or as a way of saving time and effort on complex tasks or high workloads.
Automation bias can be mitigated by the design of automated systems, such as reducing the
prominence of the display, decreasing detail or complexity of information displayed, or couching
automated assistance as supportive information rather than as directives or commands. Training on an
automated system which includes introducing deliberate errors has been shown to be significantly more
effective at reducing automation bias than just informing users that errors can occur. However,
excessive checking and questioning automated assistance can increase time pressures and complexity
of tasks thus reducing the benefits of automated assistance, so design of an automated decision
support system can balance positive and negative effects rather than attempt to eliminate negative
effects.
Availability heuristic
The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given
person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision. The
availability heuristic operates on the notion that if something can be recalled, it must be important, or
at least more important than alternative solutions which are not as readily recalled. Subsequently,
under the availability heuristic, people tend to heavily weigh their judgments toward more recent
information, making new opinions biased toward that latest news.
The availability of consequences associated with an action is positively related to perceptions of the
magnitude of the consequences of that action. In other words, the easier it is to recall the
consequences of something the greater those consequences are often perceived to be. Most notably,
people often rely on the content of their recall if its implications are not called into question by the
difficulty that they experience in bringing the relevant material to mind.
Overview and history
Prior to the work of Kahneman and Tversky, the predominant view in the field of human judgment was
that humans are rational actors. However, in the late 1960s and early 1970s Amos Tversky and Daniel
Kahneman began work on a series of papers examining "heuristic and biases" used in judgment under
uncertainty. They explained that judgment under uncertainty often relies on a limited number of
simplifying heuristics rather than extensive algorithmic processing. Soon this idea spread beyond
academic psychology, into law, medicine, and political science. This research questioned the
descriptive adequacy of idealized models of judgment, and offered insights into the cognitive processes
that explained human error without invoking motivated irrationality. One simplifying strategy people
may rely on is the tendency to make a judgment about the frequency of an event based on how many
similar instances are brought to mind. In 1973, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman first studied this
phenomenon and labeled it the "availability heuristic". An availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that
relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic,
concept, method or decision. As follows, people tend to use a readily available facet to base their
beliefs about a comparably distant concept.There has been much research done with this heuristic, but
studies on the issue are still questionable with regard to the underlying process. Studies illustrate that
manipulations intended to increase the subjective experience of ease of recall are also likely to affect
the amount of recall. Furthermore, this makes it difficult to determine if the obtained estimates of
frequency, likelihood, or typicality are based on participants phenomenal experiences or on a biased
sample of recalled information.
However, some textbooks have chosen the latter interpretation introducing the availability heuristic as
"one's judgments are always based on what comes to mind." For example, if a person is asked whether
there are more words in the English language that begin with a t or k, the person will probably be able
to think of more words that begin with the letter t, concluding that t is more frequent than k.
Research
Chapman (1967) described a bias in the judgment of the frequency with which two events co-occur.
This demonstration showed that the co-occurrence of paired stimuli resulted in participants
overestimating the frequency of the pairings. To test this idea, participants were given information
about several hypothetical mental patients. The data for each patient consisted of a clinical diagnosis
and a drawing made by the patient. Later, participants estimated the frequency with which each
diagnosis had been accompanied by various features of the drawing. The subjects vastly overestimated
the frequency of this co-occurrence (such as suspiciousness and peculiar eyes). This effect was labeled
the illusory correlation. Tversky and Kahneman suggested that availability provides a natural account
for the illusory-correlation effect. The strength of the association between two events could provide the
basis for the judgment of how frequently the two events co-occur. When the association is strong, it
becomes more likely to conclude that the events have been paired frequently. Strong associations will
be thought of as having occurred together frequently.
In Tversky & Kahneman's first examination of availability heuristics, subjects were asked, "If a random
word is taken from an English text, is it more likely that the word starts with a K, or that K is the third
letter?" They argue that English-speaking people would immediately think of many words that begin
with the letter "K" (kangaroo, kitchen, kale), but that it would take a more concentrated effort to think
of any words in which "K" is the third letter (acknowledge, ask). Results indicated that participants
overestimated the number of words that began with the letter "K" and underestimated the number of
words that had "K" as the third letter. Tversky and Kahneman concluded that people answer questions
like these by comparing the availability of the two categories and assessing how easily they can recall
these instances. In other words, it is easier to think of words that begin with "K", more than words with
"K" as the third letter. Thus, people judge words beginning with a "K" to be a more common occurrence.
In reality, however, a typical text contains twice as many words that have "K" as the third letter than
"K" as the first letter. There are three times more words with "K" in the third position than words that
begin with "K".
In Tversky and Kahneman's seminal paper, they include findings from several other studies, which also
show support for the availability heuristic. Apart from their findings in the "K" study, they also found:
When participants were shown two visual structures and asked to pick the structure that had more
paths, participants saw more paths in the structure that had more obvious available paths. In the
structure that participants chose, there were more columns and shorter obvious paths, making it more
available to them. When participants were asked to complete tasks involving estimation, they would
often underestimate the end result. Participants were basing their final estimation off of a quick first
impression of the problem. Participants particularly struggled when the problems consisted of multiple
steps. This occurred because participants were basing their estimation on an initial impression.
Participants failed to account for the high rate of growth in the later steps due to the impression they
formed in the initial steps. This was shown again in a task that asked participants to estimate the
answer to a multiplication task, in which the numbers were presented as either 1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8 or
8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1. Participants who were presented the equation with the larger numbers first
(8x7x6...), estimated a significantly higher result than participants with the lower numbers first
(1x2x3...). Participants were given a short amount of time to make the estimation, thus participants
based their estimates off of what was easily available, which in this case was the first few numbers in
the sequence.
Explanations
Many researchers have attempted to identify the psychological process which create the availability
heuristic.
Tversky and Kahneman argue that the number of examples recalled from memory is used to infer the
frequency with which such instances occur. In an experiment to test this explanation, participants
listened to lists of names containing either 19 famous women and 20 less famous men or 19 famous
men and 20 less famous women. Subsequently, some participants were asked to recall as many names
as possible whereas others were asked to estimate whether male or female names were more frequent
on the list. The names of the famous celebrities were recalled more frequently compared to those of the
less famous celebrities. The majority of the participants incorrectly judged that the gender associated
with more famous names had been presented more often than the gender associated with less famous
names. Tversky and Kahneman argue that although the availability heuristic is an effective strategy in
many situations, when judging probability use of this heuristic can lead to predictable patterns of
errors.
Schwarz and his colleagues, on the other hand, proposed the ease of retrieval explanation, in which is
the ease with which examples come to mind, not the number of examples, is used to infer the
frequency of a given class. In a study by Schwarz and colleagues to test their explanation, participants
were asked to recall either six or twelve examples of their assertive or very unassertive behavior.
Participants were later asked to rate their own assertiveness. Pretesting had indicated that although
most participants were capable of generating twelve examples, this was a difficult task. The results
indicated that participants rated themselves as more assertive after describing six examples of
assertive compared with unassertive behavior condition, but rated themselves as less assertive after
describing twelve examples of assertive compared with unassertive behavior condition. The study
reflected that the extent to which recalled content impacted judgment was determined by the ease
with which the content could be brought to mind (it was easier to recall 6 examples than 12), rather
than the amount of content brought to mind.
Research by Vaugh (1999) looked at the effects of uncertainty on the use of the availability heuristic.
College students were asked to list either three or eight different study methods they could use in order
to get an A on their final exams. The researchers also manipulated the time during the semester they
would ask the students to complete the questionnaire. Approximately half of the participants were
asked for their study methods during the third week of classes, and the other half were asked on last
day of classes. Next, participants were asked to rate how likely they would be to get an A in their
easiest and hardest classes. Participants were then asked to rank the difficulty they experienced in
recalling the examples they had previously listed. The researchers hypothesized that students would
use the availability heuristic, based on the number of study methods they listed, to predict their grade
only when asked at the beginning of the semester and about their hardest final. Students were not
expected to use the availability heuristic to predict their grade at the end of the semester or about their
easiest final. The researchers predicted this use of availability heuristic because participants would be
uncertain about their performance throughout the semester. The results indicated that students used
the availability heuristic, based on the ease of recall of the study methods they listed, to predict their
performance when asked at the beginning of the semester and about their hardest final. If the student
listed only three study methods, they predicted a higher grade at the end of the semester only on their
hardest final. If students listed eight study methods, they had a harder time recalling the methods and
thus predicted a lower final grade on their hardest final. The results were not seen in the easy final
condition because the students were certain they would get an A, regardless of study method. The
results supported this hypothesis and gave evidence to the fact that levels of uncertainty affect the use
of the availability heuristic.
Applications
Media
After seeing news stories about child abductions, people may judge that the likelihood of this event is
greater. Media coverage can help fuel a person's example bias with widespread and extensive coverage
of unusual events, such as homicide or airline accidents, and less coverage of more routine, less
sensational events, such as common diseases or car accidents. For example, when asked to rate the
probability of a variety of causes of death, people tend to rate "newsworthy" events as more likely
because they can more readily recall an example from memory. Moreover, unusual and vivid events like
homicides, shark attacks, or lightning are more often reported in mass media than common and un-
sensational causes of death like common diseases.
For example, many people think that the likelihood of dying from shark attacks is greater than that of
dying from being hit by falling airplane parts, when more people actually die from falling airplane parts.
When a shark attack occurs, the deaths are widely reported in the media whereas deaths as a result of
being hit by falling airplane parts are rarely reported in the media.
In a 2010 study exploring how vivid television portrayals are used when forming social reality
judgments, people watching vivid violent media gave higher estimates of the prevalence of crime and
police immorality in the real world than those not exposed to vivid television. These results suggest
that television violence does in fact have a direct causal impact on participants' social reality beliefs.
Repeated exposure to vivid violence leads to an increase in people's risk estimates about the
prevalence of crime and violence in the real world. Counter to these findings, researchers from a similar
study argued that these effects may be due to effects of new information. Researchers tested the new
information effect by showing movies depicting dramatic risk events and measuring their risk
assessment after the film. Contrary to previous research, there were no effects on risk perception due
to exposure to dramatic movies.
Health
Researchers examined the role of cognitive heuristics in the AIDS risk-assessment process. 331
physicians reported worry about on-the-job HIV exposure, and experience with patients who have HIV.
By analyzing answers to questionnaires handed out, researchers concluded Availability of AIDS
information did not relate strongly to perceived risk.
Participants in a 1992 study read case descriptions of hypothetical patients who varied on their sex and
sexual preference. These hypothetical patients showed symptoms of two different diseases.
Participants were instructed to indicate which disease they thought the patient had and then they rated
patient responsibility and interactional desirability. Consistent with the availability heuristic, either the
more common (influenza) or the more publicized (AIDS) disease was chosen.
Business and economy
One study sought to analyze the role of the availability heuristic in financial markets. Researchers
defined and tested two aspects of the availability heuristic:
Outcome Availability availability of positive and negative investment outcomes, and
Risk Availability availability of financial risk On days of substantial stock market moves, abnormal
stock price reactions to upgrades are weaker, than those to downgrades. These availability effects are
still significant even after controlling for event-specific and company-specific factors.
Similarly, research has pointed out that under the availability heuristic, humans are not reliable
because they assess probabilities by giving more weight to current or easily recalled information
instead of processing all relevant information. Since information regarding the current state of the
economy is readily available, researchers attempted to expose the properties of business cycles to
predict the availability bias in analysts' growth forecasts. They showed the availability heuristic to play
a role in analysis of forecasts and influence investments because of this.
In effect, investors are using availability heuristic to make decisions and subsequently, may be
obstructing their own investment success. An investor's lingering perceptions of a dire market
environment may be causing them to view investment opportunities through an overly negative lens,
making it less appealing to consider taking on investment risk, no matter how small the returns on
perceived "safe" investments. To illustrate, Franklin Templeton's annual Global Investor Sentiment
Survey 1 asked individuals how they believed the S&P 500 Index performed in 2009, 2010 and 2011. 66
percent of respondents stated that they believed the market was either flat or down in 2009, 48
percent said the same about 2010 and 53 percent also said the same about 2011. In reality, the S&P
500 saw 26.5 percent annual returns in 2009, 15.1 percent annual returns in 2010 and 2.1 percent
annual returns in 2011, meaning lingering perceptions based on dramatic, painful events are impacting
decision-making even when those events are over.
Additionally, a study by Hayibor and Wasieleski found that the availability of others who believe that a
particular act is morally acceptable is positively related to others' perceptions of the morality of that
act. This suggests that availability heuristic also has an effect on ethical decision making and ethical
behavior in organizations.
Education
A study done by Craig R. Fox provides an example of how availability heuristics can work in the
classroom. In this study, Fox tests whether difficulty of recall influences judgment, specifically with
course evaluations among college students. In his study he had two groups complete a course
evaluation form. He asked the first group to write two recommended improvements for the course (a
relatively easy task) and then write two positives about the class. The second group was asked to write
ten suggestions where the professor could improve (a relatively difficult task) and then write two
positive comments about the course. At the end of the evaluation both groups were asked to rate the
course on a scale from one to seven. The results showed that students asked to write ten suggestions
(difficult task) rated the course less harshly because it was more difficult for them to recall the
information. Students asked to do the easier evaluation with only two complaints had less difficulty in
terms of availability of information, so they rated the course more harshly.
Criminal justice
The media usually focuses on violent or extreme cases, which are more readily available in the public's
mind. This may come into play when it is time for the judicial system to evaluate and determine the
proper punishment for a crime. In one study, respondents rated how much they agreed with
hypothetical laws and policies such as "Would you support a law that required all offenders convicted of
unarmed muggings to serve a minimum prison term of two years?" Participants then read cases and
rated each case on several questions about punishment. As hypothesized, respondents recalled more
easily from long-term memory stories that contain severe harm, which seemed to influence their
sentencing choices to make them push for harsher punishments. This can be eliminated by adding high
concrete or high contextually distinct details into the crime stories about less severe injuries.
A similar study asked jurors and college students to choose sentences on four severe criminal cases in
which prison was a possible but not an inevitable sentencing outcome. Respondents answering
questions about court performance on a public opinion formulated a picture of what the courts do and
then evaluated the appropriateness of that behavior. Respondents recalled from public information
about crime and sentencing. This type of information is incomplete because the news media present a
highly selective and non-representative selection of crime, focusing on the violent and extreme, rather
than the ordinary. This makes most people think that judges are too lenient. But, when asked to choose
the punishments, the sentences given by students were equal to or less severe than those given by
judges. In other words, the availability heuristic made people believe that judges and jurors were too
lenient in the courtroom, but the participants gave similar sentences when placed in the position of the
judge, suggesting that the information they recalled was not correct.
Researchers in 1989 predicted that mock jurors would rate a witness to be more deceptive if the
witness testified truthfully before lying than when the witness was caught lying first before telling the
truth. If the availability heuristic played a role in this, lying second would remain in jurors' minds (since
it was more recent) and they would most likely remember the witness lying over the truthfulness. To
test the hypothesis, 312 university students played the roles of mock jurors and watched a videotape of
a witness presenting testimony during a trial. Results confirmed the hypothesis, as mock jurors were
most influenced by the most recent act.
Perceived risk
Previous studies have indicated that explaining a hypothetical event makes the event seem more likely
through the creation of causal connections. However, such effects could arise through the use of the
availability heuristic; that is, subjective likelihood is increased by an event becoming easier to imagine.
Vividness effects
Two studies with 108 undergraduates investigated vivid information and its impact on social judgment
and the availability heuristic and its role in mediating vividness effects.
In study 1, Subjects listened to a tape recording that described a woman who lived with her 7-year-old
son. Subjects then heard arguments about the woman's fitness as a parent and were asked to draw
their own conclusions regarding her fitness or unfitness. Concrete and colorful language was found to
influence judgments about the woman's fitness as a mother.
In study 2, a series of male and female names was presented to subjects; for each name, subjects were
told the university affiliation of the individual (Yale or Stanford). When some names were presented,
subjects were simultaneously shown a photograph that purportedly portrayed the named individual.
Subsequently, to assess what subjects could remember (as a measure of availability), each name was
re-presented, as well as the appropriate photograph if one had been originally presented. The study
considered whether the display or non-display of photographs biased subjects' estimates as to the
percentage of Yale (vs Stanford) students in the sample of men and women whose names appeared on
the original list, and whether these estimated percentages were causally related to the respondents'
memory for the college affiliations of the individual students on the list. The presence of photographs
affected judgments about the proportion of male and female students at the two universities. Such
effects have typically been attributed to the ready accessibility of vividly presented information in
memorythat is, to the availability heuristic.
In both studies, vividness affected both availability (ability to recall) and judgments. However, causal
modeling results indicated that the availability heuristic did not play a role in the judgment process.
Judging frequency and probability
In general, availability is correlated with ecological frequency, but it is also affected by other factors.
Consequently, the reliance on the availability heuristic leads to systematic biases. Such biases are
demonstrated in the judged frequency of classes of words, of combinatorial outcomes, and of repeated
events. The phenomenon of illusory correlation is explained as an availability bias.
In the original Tversky and Kahneman (1973) research, three major factors that are discussed are
the frequency of repetition, frequency of co-occurrence, and illusory correlation. The use of frequency
of repetition aids in the retrieval of relevant instances. The idea behind this phenomenon, is that the
more an instance is repeated within a category or list, the stronger the link between the two instances
becomes. Individuals then use the strong association between the instances to determine the
frequency of an instance. Consequently, the association between the category or list and the specific
instance, often influences frequency judgements. Frequency of co-occurrence strongly relates to
Frequency of repetition, such that the more an item-pair is repeated, the stronger the association
between the two items becomes, leading to a bias when estimating frequency of co-occurrence. Due to
the phenomena of frequency of co-occurrence, Illusory correlations also often play a big role.
Another factor that affects the availability heuristic in frequency and probability is exemplars.
Exemplars are the typical examples that stand out during the process of recall. If asked what
participants thought different set sizes were (how many men and how many women are in the class),
participants would use exemplars to determine the size of each set. Participants would derive their
answer on ease of recall of the names that stood out. Participants read a list of names of members of a
class for 30 seconds, and then participants were asked the male to female ratio of the class. The
participant's answer would depend on the recall of exemplars. If the participant reading the list recalled
seeing more common male names, such as Jack, but the only female names in the class were
uncommon names, such as Deepika, then the participant will recall that there were more men than
women. The opposite would be true if there were more common female names on the list and
uncommon male names. Due to the availability heuristic, names that are more easily available are
more likely to be recalled, and can thus alter judgments of probability.
Another example of the availability heuristic and exemplars would be seeing a shark in the ocean.
Seeing a shark has a greater impact on an individual's memory than seeing a dolphin. If someone sees
both sharks and dolphins in the ocean, they will be less aware of seeing the dolphins, because the
dolphins had less of an impact on their memory. Due to the greater impact of seeing a shark, the
availability heuristic can influence the probability judgement of the ratio of sharks and dolphins in the
water. Thus, an individual who saw both a shark and a dolphin would assume a higher ratio of sharks in
the water, even if there are more dolphins in reality.
Critiques
Ease of recall as a critique
One of the earliest and most powerful critiques of the original Tversky and Kahneman study on the
availability heuristic was the Schwarz et al. study which found that the ease of recall was a key
component in determining whether a concept became available. Many studies since this criticism of the
original availability heuristic model have repeated this initial criticism, that the ease of recall factor
became an integral facet of the availability heuristic itself (see Research section).
Alternative explanations
Much of the criticism against the availability heuristic has claimed that making use of the content that
become available in our mind is not based on the ease of recall as suggested by Schwarz et al. For
example, it could be argued that recalling more words that begin with K than words with the third letter
being K could arise from how we categorize and process words into our memory. If we categorize words
by first letter, and recall them through the same process, this would show more support for the
representativeness heuristic than the availability heuristic. Based on the possibility of explanations
such as these, some researchers have claimed that the classic studies on the availability heuristic are
too vague in that they fail to account for people's underlying mental processes. Indeed, a study
conducted by Wanke et al. demonstrated this scenario can occur in situations used to test the
availability heuristic. Future studies should be conducted to determine if and when this alternative
explanation will occur.
A second line of study has shown that frequency estimation may not be the only strategy we use when
making frequency judgments. A recent line of research has shown that our situational working memory
can access long term memories, and this memory retrieval process includes the ability to determine
more accurate probabilities. This finding suggests that more research should be conducted to
determine how much memory activation affects the availability heuristic.
Availability cascade
History
The effect was first named and defined following the results in a study from 1977. Participants in it were
given a list of 60 factoids which were plausible, but they most likely did not know. It consisted of
statements like "The first air force base was launched in New Mexico.", "Large migration of
Chinese railroad workers began in the 1880s." or "Basketball became an Olympic discipline in 1925."
They had to grade their belief that a statement was true on a scale from one to seven.
This was repeated in three occasions with two weeks between each. Twenty of the statements (one
third) remained throughout all occasions. The rest of the statements were new. Respondents graded for
the repeated statements higher in later sessions: 4.2 in the first session, 4.6 in the second session and
4.7 in the last session. However, the grading for the rest of the statements showed no discernible
pattern.
Experimental evidence
An experiment conducted by Lisa Fazio of Vanderbilt University illustrated the illusory truth effect. A
group of undergraduate students were asked to read through a list of sentences, some of which were
blatantly true, some of which were blatantly false, and others which were more complicated. For
example: "North America is a continent." (True.) "A clementine is a fully grown orange." (False.)
"Sydney is the capital of Australia." (False, but maybe not so obvious, depending on ones knowledge of
world capitals.) After, students were given another set of statements, but they were asked to rank each
statement on a scale of 1 to 6, with 1 meaning definitely false and 6 meaning definitely true. Finally,
the participants answered multiple-choice questions that corresponded to the previous statements they
had just read.
Results from this study revealed that the ease with which people comprehend statements, also known
as processing fluency, underlies the illusory truth effect. The use of repetition makes statements easier
to process, compared to new statements, which leads people to the false conclusion that the repeated
statements are more truthful.
Pop culture
Many different cultural items have been used through history to propagate false truths and lead to the
illusory truth effect. Repeated exposure to ideas about something in sources of mass media will
reinforce its truth. Some outlets that influence the illusory truth effect are films, novels, images,
advertisements, partisan news outlets, and social media.
Politics
The illusory truth effect has a visible impact in the political sphere. By appealing to unconscious biases
and beliefs, politicians are able to form believable claims, regardless of actual validity. Through
repeated exposure, the claims become increasingly believed as the illusory truth effect dictates.