Question

Media reports of Covid-19 deaths usually focus on Italy, France, Spain and nursing home deaths in the US are reports an average death rate of around 10%. They then concluded that anyone contracted the virus will have a 10% chance of dying (the base rate is about 1.5% for all cases and 0.01% for those under the age of 30). This is an example of:

representativeness heuristic.

mental accounting.

affect heuristic.

over confidence.

Answer 1

Solution: This is an example of the representativeness heuristic

Explanation:

In the given situation the media makes the COVID-19 death rate of certain countries representative of the entire population. Thereby making the conclusion that the average death rate is around 10%. This representativeness of a few countries to the entire population is not the correct way of dealing with the problem. This process of decision making based on a sample that is not the true representative is called representativeness heuristic.