TY - JOUR
T1 - The effect of increasing the memorability of category instances on estimates of category size
AU - Lewandowsky, Stephan
AU - Smith, Paul W.
PY - 1983/7
Y1 - 1983/7
N2 - According to Tversky and Kahneman's (1973) availability heuristic, people sometimes make use of the ease with which instances are retrieved when they have to estimate proportions or frequencies. One implication of this availability heuristic is that any factor that affects memorability of instances from a category should also affect the estimated category size. In one of their experiments, Tversky and Kahneman found that, after being presented with a list of names, people judged the more famous names to be more frequent. Similarly, recall was found to be greater for the more famous names. Three experiments that used Tversky and Kahneman's paradigm are reported. Repeating nonfamous names resulted in their increased recallability and a corresponding increase in estimates of their frequency (Experiments 1 and 3). Making nonfamous names more salient (Experiment 3) also had parallel effects on recallability and frequency estimates, indicating that different memory manipulations affected availability in a similar fashion. Furthermore, reliance on the heuristic was not changed as a function of prior knowledge (Experiment 2) or practice (Experiment 3)
AB - According to Tversky and Kahneman's (1973) availability heuristic, people sometimes make use of the ease with which instances are retrieved when they have to estimate proportions or frequencies. One implication of this availability heuristic is that any factor that affects memorability of instances from a category should also affect the estimated category size. In one of their experiments, Tversky and Kahneman found that, after being presented with a list of names, people judged the more famous names to be more frequent. Similarly, recall was found to be greater for the more famous names. Three experiments that used Tversky and Kahneman's paradigm are reported. Repeating nonfamous names resulted in their increased recallability and a corresponding increase in estimates of their frequency (Experiments 1 and 3). Making nonfamous names more salient (Experiment 3) also had parallel effects on recallability and frequency estimates, indicating that different memory manipulations affected availability in a similar fashion. Furthermore, reliance on the heuristic was not changed as a function of prior knowledge (Experiment 2) or practice (Experiment 3)
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0020787912&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3758/BF03202448
DO - 10.3758/BF03202448
M3 - Article (Academic Journal)
C2 - 6633252
AN - SCOPUS:0020787912
SN - 0090-502X
VL - 11
SP - 347
EP - 350
JO - Memory and Cognition
JF - Memory and Cognition
IS - 4
ER -