Question

What are ways to reduce people from using the availability heuristic and ways to minimize the negative effects of the availability heuristic?

Answer 1

Heuristics are the metal shortcuts or thumb rules that are used in decision making. Availability heuristic refers to arriving at a decision based on immediate and the most available examples that come to one's mind. For instance, a patient has been told by a doctor that he is at a high-risk of being diabetic, leading to death eventually. However, the patient concludes that the latter is highly unlikely and that he does not know anybody who died of diabetes.

The ways to reduce biases in decision making, one must seek more information and gain other perspectives. More information must be researched on the topic. One must also reflect on his own values, ideas and views. This would enable them to not use heuristics in order to arrive at conclusions.