Trace where your sense of risk actually came from

When a risk feels pressing, ask whether you’ve encountered data or just stories about it.

Why it works

The availability heuristic judges frequency and probability by how easily examples come to mind. In an availability cascade, the supply of examples is driven by social repetition, not by actual event frequency. Tracing the source of your "this feels common" sense — asking "have I seen data on incidence, or have I just heard many stories?" — interrupts the automatic identification of vividness with frequency.

How to do it

1. When a risk or problem feels especially salient or urgent, ask: "Where have I encountered this? News coverage, personal experience, or data?"
2. Count the types of sources: are they primary data or narrative retelling of a few cases?
3. Look up the base rate (how often this actually occurs) before deciding how much weight to give the fear.

Evidence

The availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973) is one of the most replicated effects in judgment research: ease of recall is treated as a proxy for frequency. Kuran and Sunstein extended this to social cascades in 1999. (observational)

Sources

• Tversky & Kahneman (1973), "Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability," Cognitive Psychology
• Kuran & Sunstein (1999), "Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation," Stanford Law Review

Common mistake

Mistaking the emotional intensity of a risk story for evidence of its probability — vividness and frequency are genuinely different things that feel the same.