7. The Availability & Representativeness Heuristics: Conclusion
At this point, you should have a solid understanding of:
- what prototypes and stereotypes are;
- how they are acquired;
- that they are part of semantic memory.
They are not good or bad in themselves. Instead, they are a cognitive product of our experience and exposure to information.
Example: Salesperson
Let’s return to the original scenario in the first post (1. What Are Heuristics?).
You open the door and see the young person wearing their uniform, smiling politely, and holding their tablet. Their mouth is already opening to start talking. You know immediately that this is a door-to-door salesperson! You know what to do! “Hi, thank you, but I am not interested.”
Can you see the representativeness heuristic at work?
You noticed a subset of features this individual had (their clothing, facial expression, and tablet) that activated your semantic memory of a salesperson. In other words, you perceived them as representative of the salesperson category based on your prior experience.
Once you made that swift categorization — by activating that mental representation / stereotype — you activated other information in addition to the surface characteristics (e.g., clothing) associated with it — such as how to interact with this type of person (based on your prior experience).
Boom! Action taken. Situation resolved.
Can you see how this is different from the availability heuristic?
The availability heuristic is not about categorical knowledge or stereotypes. It is about using a specific memory that easily comes to mind. Often, this is an episodic memory; however, it could also be semantic, such as a particular individual, historical event, or piece of information encountered previously.
How can the representativeness heuristic lead you astray?
The representativeness heuristic can lead to an error in at least two ways.
First, you might make an incorrect categorization. In this case, the person was not, in fact, a salesperson. That would be embarrassing!
Second, your stereotype may be incorrect or not applicable to the current situation. In this case, maybe the person is a salesperson, but they are not selling something no one wants, or you should not have cut them off. You might have benefited from what they were about to offer. Furthermore, if you had taken time to individuate them (i.e., carefully processed their unique features and qualities), you may have noticed that they were smiling with sad-looking eyes. If you had engaged them in a more polite and friendly way, it might have been a positive experience for both of you.
Age-based categorization and stereotypes
Here is another example of stereotypes and how they can fail us:
Video Link: Millennials Show Us What ‘Old’ Looks Like | Disrupt Aging [4:08 min] by AARP (2016).
Age-based categorization and stereotypes, especially for older adults (though not only), are among the most prevalent (Ng, 2021). People of all age groups have age stereotypes and routinely activate them in social processing (e.g., Chasteen et al., 2002; Perdue & Gurtman, 1990).
Try this
As a personal challenge, you can observe yourself in the next couple of days and try to catch yourself forming impressions and making inferences about people based on (your perception of) their age. It may be easier to do this retrospectively — think about the past day and attempt to catch this — or detect it in people around you.
