What is the REPRESENTATIVITY bias

Representativeness is a heuristic, or tool, that individuals apply when processing information during the selection process, indicating their tendency to make probability judgments using stereotypes and situations relatives. It is, in fact, a simple and fast way to divide people into categories.

Representativeness is a process in which it is calculated to what extent a specific event resembles a known stereotype. In this Psychology-Online article we are going to discover together what is representativeness bias in the psychological discipline, what it consists of, the effects of representativeness bias and examples of it.

Index

1. What is representativeness in psychology
2. What is representativeness bias?
3. Effects of representativeness bias
4. Examples of representativeness bias

Representativeness in psychology refers to when, to judge something, it is intuitively compared with the previously defined mental representation known as a category. Representativeness is a

The information to which it is granted more important is the frequency with which some events or patterns characteristics occur in general. Instant feedback to decide if someone or something fits into a category, such as deciding that Mario is a librarian rather than a trucker because he better represents the first image than the second.

Find out what other cognitive biases exist in the following article: What are cognitive biases: types, list and examples.

The representativeness heuristic is based on the relevance of a person's attributes, considered as a criterion to be able to consider the same person as a member of a certain category. In other words, she is the tendency to judge a person's belonging to a category insofar as that person embodies the prototype of that category.

Kahneman and Tversky have carried out most of the research on the representativeness heuristic that has led to the study of theories about distortions of judgment. Let's see an example to understand it:

• Linda, 31, single, sincere and intelligent, studied philosophy, as a student she was very involved in social and discrimination problems and participated in demonstrations antinuclear. Based on this description, it is more likely that Linda is a bank teller or that Linda is a bank teller and feminist activist.

Most people think the second solution is the more likely, in part because Linda represents her image of her as a feminist well; But is Linda more likely to be a bank teller and a feminist or just a bank teller (feminist or not)? The conjunction of two events cannot be more likely than one of the two.

Find out more about the definition and characteristics of people's perception.

This representativeness heuristic helps people quickly decide which category to place others in. Essentially, it is a reverse stereotyping process. Let's see the difference between stereotyping and representativeness:

• When a stereotype, a person is placed in a particular social category and then it is inferred that he possesses the characteristics associated with that category of people.
• When relying on the representativeness heuristic, this process is reversed, since a person has some characteristics that are associated with a social category, it follows that that person is a member of that category.

Therefore, representativeness bias can lead to downplaying other important information. Probability judgments are made on the basis of similarity of an object, event or person with respect to the reference category and, by doing this reasoning, sometimes the numbers of the champion and the rules of the game are not taken into consideration. probability.

To better understand what cognitive representativeness bias consists of, let's look at some examples of it.

Oregon Student Example

Students at the University of Oregon (1984) were told that a group of psychologists had interviewed a sample of 30 engineers and 70 lawyers summarizing their impressions in descriptions concise. The following description was drawn randomly from the mixed sample:

• Divorced twice, Frank spends most of his free time hanging out in bars. His conversations often center on regret that he tried to follow in the footsteps of his esteemed father. Long hours spent on hard academic work would have been better spent learning to be less litigious with others. Question: What is the probability that Frank is a lawyer instead of an engineer?

More than 80% of the students assumed that he was a lawyer. To what extent were the estimates changed when the description was given to another group, who were told that 70% of the sample were engineers? Not even a little. The students did not take into account the percentage of lawyers and engineers. In their minds Frank was more representative than the lawyers and that was all that mattered.

Betting example

Let's look at another example of representativeness bias. The representativeness heuristic is the direct cause of gamblers' mistakes. Errors that led to the definition of the gambler's fallacy. Players who play roulette think, for example, that if red has come out several times in a row, for example about 10, then it is inevitable that black will come out on the next spin.

Similarly, lottery players may think that a number that has not come out in a long time is more likely than a number that has come out recently. In fact, in both cases it is a question of extractions with reinsertion. With each extraction, any result will always have the same probability of happening.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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• Myers, D. G. (2009). Social Psychology. Milan: McGraw-Hill.